114 research outputs found
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Opposition to development or opposition to developers? Experimental evidence on attitudes toward new housing
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Not Nearly Enough: California Lacks Capacity to Meet Lofty Housing Goals
Are civil-law notaries rent-seeking monopolists or essential market intermediaries? Endogenous development of a property rights institution in Mexico
As the fourth contribution in the 'Land' section, this paper forms a research 'diptych'
with the next paper by Levy. Whereas she focuses on the notarial institution in midnineteenth
century Mexico, this contribution examines it in a contemporary context.
The notary is one of the chief components of property rights protection in civil-law
systems, performing various public functions such as writing deeds for real estate
property. Yet notaries are considered an 'inefficient' institution by many, due to the
perception of rent-seeking behavior enabled by their near-monopoly over validating
property rights claims. This study examines notaries in Mexico to unpack the
apparent contradiction in the role of notaries in economic development. I use a
combination of interviews with notaries and clients, and data on notarial practice and
bureaucratic outcomes across the country, to examine notaries' social function. The
theoretical lens of endogenous development and institutional functionalism reveals an
alternate explanation for their seemingly high-cost services, as well as their role in
economic development. Mexican notaries have a dual social function: public
representative and private service provider. They perform diverse and essential
activities, which in other countries are performed by multiple actors such as real
estate agents, escrow offices and title insurance companies. Thus, what is perceived
as inefficiency by some can be interpreted as an efficient response to the context in
which they operate, and their semi-privatized nature can overcome problems found in
other bureaucratic arrangements
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Federal Housing Assistance in Los Angeles County is Primarily for High-Income Neighborhoods
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It's Time to End Single-Family Zoning
Local planning in the United States is unique in the amount of land it reserves for detached single-family homes. This privileging of single-family homes, normally called R1 zoning, exacerbates inequality and undermines efficiency. R1’s origins are unpleasant: Stained by explicitly classist and implicitly racist motivations, R1 today continues to promote exclusion. It makes it harder for people to access high-opportunity places, and in expensive regions it contributes to shortages of housing, thereby benefiting homeowners at the expense of renters and forcing many housing consumers to spend more on housing. Stacked against these drawbacks, moreover, are a series of only weak arguments in R1’s favor about preferences, aesthetics, and a single-family way of life. We demonstrate that these pro-R1 concerns are either specious, or can be addressed in ways less socially harmful than R1. Given the strong arguments against R1 and the weak arguments for it, we contend planners should work to abolish R1 single-family zoning
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Transit Oriented Los Angeles: Envisioning an Equitable and Thriving Future
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Rules of Division: The Influence of Land Use Regulation on Income Segregation
Regulatory constraints on supply are a key factor in San Francisco’s affordable housing crisis
In recent months, much has been made of San Francisco’s affordable housing crisis, with many commentators blaming the increased demand for housing on the influx of affluent workers drawn to the Bay Area’s creative and tech industries. Using a dataset of more than 7,300 land parcels, Nils Kok and Paavo Monkkonen find that San Francisco’s real problem is its poor supply of affordable housing. They argue that the city’s relatively low rate of affordable house building can be attributed to regulatory barriers in the form of extensive project approvals and project reviews, which are fuelled by the power of local stakeholder organizations
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