As home prices decline, Southern Californians who bought at the peak are nervous
Surging mortgage interest rates threatened to squash Michael and Christine Hawkins’ dream of home ownership. But this fall when the couple saw a Canoga Park condo languish on the market, they devised a plan.
The Trials of Solitary Confinement
Known colloquially as “the hole” and euphemistically as “segregated housing,” “restrictive housing,” or “special housing,” solitary confinement is a form of punishment in which people are locked in parking-space-sized cells twenty-three hours a day, with no meaningful human contact for weeks, months, years, or decades. Prison officials call the practice a necessary tool for safety. Reformers call it inhumane.
Homeownership can bring out the worst in you
“Homeowner” is an identity baked into the fabric of America. From political speeches to articles and advertising, Americans are bombarded with messaging valorizing homeownership.
POV: Militarization of Policing Risks Turning US Cities into Battlespaces
During President Trump’s now-infamous walk to St. John’s Church for a photo op earlier this month, he was escorted by the Secretary of Defense and a four-star general in battle fatigues. National Guard troops and unmarked federal agents used tear gas, flash grenades, and rubber bullets to clear the president’s path of otherwise peaceful protestors. Defense Secretary Mark Esper’s recent calls for government actors to “dominate the battlespace” played out right in Lafayette Square, a grassy plaza adjacent to the White House in front of an Episcopal church. The message seemed clear: the full force of the US military stood in support of President Trump’s authoritarian pageantry.
The housing wealth effect? Not in the Great Recession
We’ve all heard the story about the exceptionally large “housing wealth effect” that preceded the Great Recession. Homeowners felt increasingly rich as their homes boomed in value, and their newfound wealth encouraged them to spend like never before. “Using homes like they’re ATMs” was the cliché. Demand soared, production surged, and the economy boomed still further.
Episode 42: How Not-In-My-Backyard Politics Keep Housing Costs High
Expensive housing in major cities is holding back the American economy. Policy makers are trying to respond, but new housing developments commonly spark a big, not-in-my-backyard local backlash. Why can’t the broader public succeed in demanding new housing against local homeowners? New research offers two big pieces of the answer.
Why Some Politicians Shun Promotions
Put off by gridlock and partisan knife fights in upper reaches of politics—both in Washington, D.C., and in state capitals—city executives appear to be happy homebodies. “The bulk of mayors in our survey certainly said, ‘We’re cool being mayor,’” says Katherine Levine Einstein, a College of Arts & Sciences assistant professor of political science, who conducted the research with Maxwell Palmer, also a CAS assistant professor of political science, and David Glick, a CAS associate professor of political science, with help from Robert Pressel (CAS’16, GRS’16).