Why Housing Is Artificially Expensive and What Can Be Done About It (with Bryan Caplan)

Written in 1959, 'Life and Fate' is a monumental novel that narrates the story of the Shaposhnikov family during the Great Patriotic War. The novel is set against the backdrop of the Battle of Stalingrad and delves into the lives of numerous characters, including Soviet physicist Viktor Shtrum, who grapples with anti-Semitism and moral dilemmas in a totalitarian state. The book juxtaposes the horrors of war and the Gulag with the intimate lives of its characters, exploring profound philosophical and moral questions. Despite its initial suppression by the KGB, the novel was eventually smuggled out of the Soviet Union and has since been recognized as one of the greatest Russian novels of the 20th century.

The novel, set during December 1949, takes place in a sharashka near Moscow, a research facility where prisoners, including scientists and engineers, work on secret projects for the Soviet government. The story follows characters like Lev Rubin, Dimitri Sologdin, and Gleb Nerzhin as they navigate the complexities of their privileged yet oppressive environment. The title alludes to Dante's 'Inferno,' where the first circle of Hell is limbo, reflecting the relatively better conditions but moral limbo of the prisoners. The novel delves into themes of conscience, moral imperative, and the struggle to retain human dignity within a totalitarian system. Solzhenitsyn's work is semi-autobiographical, drawing from his own experiences in the gulag system.

In this pioneering study, Bernard Siegan argues that zoning fails to achieve its intended goals of ordering urban growth and separating incompatible uses, instead driving up housing costs and reducing competition. The book uses Houston, which does not have zoning laws, as an example to demonstrate how markets can manage growth and separate uses naturally. The new edition includes a preface by law professor David Schleicher and an afterword by urban planner Nolan Gray, providing additional context and updates on the topic.

The book explores how neighborhood participation in the housing permitting process exacerbates existing political inequalities, limits the housing supply, and contributes to the current affordable housing crisis. It highlights that individuals who participate in these processes, termed 'neighborhood defenders,' are often socioeconomically advantaged and use land use regulations to delay or prevent new housing projects, leading to diminished housing stock and higher housing costs. The authors use sweeping data, case studies, and empirical analyses to illustrate how these participatory institutions perversely reproduce inequality.