Neighborhood Defenders: Participatory Politics and America's Housing Crisis

by Katherine Levine Einstein, David M. Glick, Maxwell Palmer

Since the collapse of the housing market in 2008, demand for housing has consistently outpaced supply in many US communities. The failure to construct sufficient housing - especially affordable housing - in desirable communities and neighborhoods comes with significant social, economic, and environmental costs. This book examines how local participatory land use institutions amplify the power of entrenched interests and privileged homeowners. The book draws on sweeping data to examine the dominance of land use politics by 'neighborhood defenders' - individuals who oppose new housing projects far more strongly than their broader communities and who are likely to be privileged on a variety of dimensions. Neighborhood defenders participate disproportionately and take advantage of land use regulations to restrict the construction of multifamily housing. The result is diminished housing stock and higher housing costs, with participatory institutions perversely reproducing inequality.

Genres: Politics

228 pages, Kindle Edition

Published December 5, 2019

Reviews

[Michael Perkins · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read this academic work for research. The style is plain enough, jargon-free, but the book is highly repetitive. Probably could have been distilled into a 25-page white paper, including charts and graphs.

I grew up on the SF Peninsula where the citizens of Palo Alto have been notorious neighborhood defenders to an absolutely absurd degree. Palo Alto has been that way for as long as I can remember. The consequences have now become obvious. A saying going around from the "defenders" was "I got mine and the Hell with everyone else." This article illustrates the consequences of what the authors are laying bare in their book.

https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2...

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Speaking of Palo Alto, I was looking for something else and came across Palo Alto Online from two years ago.

Notice two columns when you scroll down: 1) an article about incivility at town council meetings (this is legendary and was once covered on a front page of the WSJ, about 15 years ago and, 2) just below that an article about the crisis of the aging population in Palo Alto, including the increased volume of calls to their suicide hotline "from older adults having suicidal thoughts due the rising cost of rentals and lack of affordable housing for seniors" in Palo Alto.

https://www.paloaltoonline.com/morgue...

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Here's another book I'm reading on the topic which is already much better than the one above.....

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4...

[رَشَد الأرحيم · Rating 4 out of 5]

In-depth study on the hurdles to affordable housing (US context)

This is a very concise and well composed study thats main premise is that affordable housing in the United States is greatly reduced because of so called, neighborhood defenders, who object to the development of new multi-family housing in their neighborhoods. According to the book, neighborhood defenders are often affluent, white, wealthy homeowners, who use several tools, such as zoning restrictions, to their advantage in order to delay and outright object to the development of affordable housing.

I found this book quite insightful although at times I felt overwhelmed by the amount of data. I also felt that $15 is a bit pricey given that it’s a short book and could have been further truncated to fit an academic paper.