Land-Use Regulation and the Growing Cost of Housing with Emily Hamilton | EP100

Emily Hamilton Emily Hamilton is a Senior Research Fellow and Director of the Urbanity Project at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. Emily’s research focuses on urban economics and land-use policy. 

In this episode we talked about:
-Emily’s  Bio & Background
-Land use regulation
-The evolution of zoning regulations
-Single Family Housing Ownership
-Housing Regulations Challenges
-Affordable Housing
-Rent Control
-Vacancy Decontrol
-Policy Restrictions
-Accessory Apartments
-BANANA - Build Absolutely Nothing -Anywhere Near Anybody
-Resources and Lessons Learned

Useful links:
Book: “Green Metropolis” by David Owen
https://www.mercatus.org/scholars/emily-hamilton
@ebwhamilton Twitter

Transcriptions:

Jesse (0s): Welcome to the working capital real estate podcast. My name is Jesper galley. And on this show, we discuss all things real estate with investors and experts in a variety of industries that impact real estate. Whether you're looking at your first investment or raising your first fund, join me and let's build that portfolio one square foot at a time. Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Jesper galley and you're listening to working capital the real estate podcast. My special guest today is Emily Hamilton. Emily is a senior research fellow and director of their abandon the project at the Mercatus center at George Mason university.

 

Emily's research focuses on urban economics and land use policy. And she joins us today to talk about housing in the United States and a little bit more broadly in general, in Canadian and other north American markets. Emily has, how's it going today?

 

Emily (48s): Good. Thanks for having me, Jessie.

 

Jesse (50s): Yeah. Thank you so much for, for joining the podcast for listeners that aren't, aren't familiar with your work at Emily. Maybe you could give us a little bit of a high level description of how you got into the space that you're in right now, as it pertains to, you know, economics land use policy and the like

 

Emily (1m 9s): Sure. Yeah, I'm an economist studying mostly the effects of land use regulations, local zoning roles and their effect on housing affordability. I first got interested in this policy area when I wound up in an internship in the planning department of my hometown in Colorado, before that I really had not been aware that all of these local zoning roles have such a large role of shaping what our cities and neighborhoods look like.

 

But once you learn about all the intricacies of rules, like parking requirements and height limits and setback requirements, it's really changes. I think how, how we see the built world around us.

 

Jesse (1m 60s): So I've always been fascinated with urban economics, as it relates to the work we do in commercial real estate. A triumph of the city was, was a book that was recommended to me a few years ago. I thought it was another interesting avenue into how these policies that you're describing or that you research play into the actions of individuals. And I guess economics in general, how that, how people kind of adapt and the incentives that we set up, how people use those incentives and collectively make certain decisions.

 

Maybe you could give us a little bit of a background of land use regulation in general. You know, we didn't invent the wheel and suddenly somebody is like, you need three meters or four feet to build a that there. So what was k