Session Abstract
“Affordability” has emerged as a powerful political frame, driven in large part by the rising cost of housing. Yet the lack of affordable housing has been a problem in the US for decades. Why is it so hard to solve the affordability challenge? This talk situates contemporary concerns over “affordability” within the long arc of housing policy, illustrating how economic trends, policy contradictions, and the growing mismatch between incomes and housing costs produce a political economy that both undermines affordability and complicates agreement on viable solutions.
Speaker Bio
Carolina Reid is an Associate Professor in the Department of City and Regional Planning and the Faculty Research Advisor for the Terner Center for Housing Innovation. Carolina specializes in housing and community development, with a specific focus on access to credit, housing and mortgage markets, urban poverty, and racial inequality. Current projects with the Terner Center include research to understand the rising costs of construction in California, the benefits of affordable housing for low-income families, and the role of inequalities in mortgage lending post-recession on the racial wealth gap.
Carolina’s work seeks to inform state and federal policy, and she has consulted on projects for the California Department of Housing and Community Development, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Center for Community Capital, Abt Associates, as well as community development nonprofits. Her scholarship has been covered in national and international media, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, National Public Radio, and local outlets such as the Mercury News and San Francisco Chronicle. Before joining the faculty at UC Berkeley, Carolina worked for a year at the Center for Responsible Lending, where she undertook policy analyses on how provisions in Dodd-Frank could affect future access to credit for lower-income and minority households. Before that, Carolina served as the Research Manager for the Community Development Department at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco for six years. She has a BA from Stanford University and an MA and PhD from the University of Washington, Seattle.