Ep 26: The Future of Housing in California — and the Nation — with Dana Cuff and Carolina Reid

UCLA Housing Voice

Shane Phillips 0:04
Hello, this is the UCLA housing voice podcast. And I'm your host, Shane Phillips. Each episode we discuss a different housing research paper with its author to better understand how we can make our cities more affordable and more equitable places to live. Believe it or not, we have been putting together this podcast for a year now. And this is our final episode of season one. We'll be back in a month or so. But if you've enjoyed the show up to this point, we would really appreciate your support in the form of a five star rating on Apple podcasts or Spotify, or a review on Apple. Sharing the podcast with a friend or colleague is also a big help. This episode is a special one featuring a couple of my collaborators on a report published back in March for the California 100 initiative. My guests are Dana Cuff of UCLA City Lab, and Carolina Reid of Berkeley's Turner Center for Housing innovation. And the report looks at the past, present and future of housing in California. We dig into some of the policies and past decisions that might make California uniquely bad when it comes to housing outcomes, but also the history we share with the rest of US and why our story and our problems are really the story and problems of a nation. The report is a great introduction to the what, why, and how of the housing crisis, and this interview is the intro to that intro. As a part of the report and this conversation, we also envision the future of housing and the critical choices that will shape that future. That also happens to have been one of the most challenging and rewarding parts of the project. So take a listen and check out the report too if you like. The Housing Voice Podcast is a production of the UCLA Louis Center for Regional Policy Studies, and we receive production support from Claudia Bustamante, Olivia Arena, and Hanna Barlow. While we're on break, feel free to send me your feedback or show ideas at [e-mail]. Let's get to our conversation with Dr. Cuff and Dr. Reid.
Dana Cuff is a Professor of Architecture here at UCLA and the founder and director of City Lab and Architecture and Urban Research Think Tank, and Carolina Reid is an associate professor of City and Regional Planning at Berkeley, as well as the faculty research advisor at the Turner Center for Housing innovation. Dana, welcome to the Housing Voice podcast.
Dana Cuff 2:38
Thanks for having me.
Shane Phillips 2:39
And Carolina, welcome to you.
Carolina Reid 2:41
Thanks so much, I'm delighted to be here.
Shane Phillips 2:44
So the project we're going to be talking about today isn't quite a research paper like we usually do, it's a report. But I think it's important for a few reasons that I'll get into. And this is also the Lewis Center show, so I can make exceptions when it means we get to share our own work here. To give some background, this report was one of 13 commissioned by the California 100 initiative, each of us tasked with looking at a different aspect of policy within the state. Ours was housing and community development but there were also reports on transportation, advanced technology, immigration, health and health care, energy, and various other topics. We were given two tasks; one was to outline the facts, origins and trends that define the housing landscape in California or to put that another way to explain how things stand today, how we got here, and where we're headed to was to think about what the future of California looks like 20,50,100 years in the future, and what that future might look like, depending on the goals and the values that we prioritize today, and in the coming years. So before I go on to explain more about the project, normally at the start here, we would ask that both of you give us a tour of your hometown or favorite city, but we're kind of short on time. And there's two of you. And