On March 11, BESI welcomed Yoni Appelbaum and Jerusalem Demsas for a highly anticipated conversation on America’s housing crisis and the decline of mobility in this country.
Appelbaum and Demsas, both journalists at The Atlantic, have recently offered long-form critiques on the topic. In his book, Stuck: How the Privileged and the Propertied Broke the Engine of American Opportunity, Appelbaum links geographic mobility to economic mobility. To secure opportunity, Appelbaum observes, people need to be able to able move where they need to move, and the current rental and housing markets don’t allow that.
Demsas’ book, On the Housing Crisis: Land, Development, Democracy, reveals how localism and provincialism in otherwise-progressive blue states — a phenomenon otherwise known as “NIMBYism” — exacerbates the housing crisis. She argues that the housing crisis is a regional issue that requires intervention at the state level.
Moderated by BESI director Paul Pierson, this conversation, recorded at Berkeley Hillel on March 11, reveals the surprising political origins of America’s housing crisis and how the loss of freedom of movement thwarts efforts to secure economic welfare for all.
About the Speakers
Yoni Appelbaum is a deputy executive editor at The Atlantic and the author of Stuck: How the Privileged and the Propertied Broke the Engine of American Opportunity. Appelbaum is a social and cultural historian of the United States. Before joining The Atlantic, he was a lecturer on history and literature at Harvard University. He previously taught at Babson College and at Brandeis University, where he received his Ph.D. in American history
Jerusalem Demsas is a staff writer at The Atlantic, where she covers housing, democracy, federalism, immigration, and economics. She hosts the podcast “Good on Paper,” in which each week Demsas and a guest take a closer look at the facts and research that challenge the popular narratives of the day to better understand why we believe what we believe. Her new book, On the Housing Crisis: Land, Development, Democracy, collects key selections of her writing in The Atlantic to offer an accessible guide to this generational crisis.
About the Moderator
Paul Pierson is the John Gross Distinguished Professor of Political Science at UC Berkeley. He is the director of the Berkeley Economy and Society Initiative and serves as co-director of the Consortium on American Political Economy. His research, which focuses on the American political economy and public policy, has been awarded several major prizes from the American Political Science Association. He is the author or co-author of seven books, including the best-selling Winner Take All Politics, written with Jacob Hacker. His latest book, with Eric Schickler, is Partisan Nation: The Dangerous New Logic of American Politics in a Nationalized Era.