In an effort to go beyond my normal “we have a housing crisis, not just an affordable housing crisis” rap, I read Fixer-Upper: How to Repair America’s Broken Housing Systems by Jenny Schuetz. I was interested in it because it looked like it would be prescriptive, not just descriptive in nature and I was not disappointed. The chapter headings pretty much tell the story:

1. Housing Sits at the Intersection of Several Complex Systems
2. Build More Homes Where People Want to Live
3. Stop Building Homes in the Wrong Places
4. Give Poor People Money
5. Homeownership Should Be Only One Component of Household Wealth
6. High-Quality Community Infrastructure is Expensive, but it Benefits Everyone
7. Overcoming the Limits of Localism
8. Build Political Coalitions around Better Policies

I’ll be doing a separate post on each chapter and as I do I’ll link to them from the list above. In the meantime you can see a presentation by Schuetz related to this over at Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies’ website.