Will Anyone Ever Be Able To Build Again in San Francisco?
OW DID THE richest state in the country end up with its worst housing crisis? And is there any politically practical way out of its mess?
Those are the two questions running through Conor Dougherty’s Golden Gates: Fighting for Housing in America. The book takes a deep dive into the struggle people undergo to find shelter in ultra-expensive California—specifically, in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Zoning policy is about as sexy as a four-hour municipal land-use hearing, so it’s no mean feat that Dougherty is able to transmute regulatory minutiae into a breezy, characterdriven narrative that illustrates the central reason so many cities are so damn expensive: “a dire shortage of available housing in places where people and companies want to live.” pays attention to academic research—particularly the work of
