UCLA Housing Voice

• Ep. 101: Beyond Zoning with John Zeanah and Andre D. Jones (Incentives Series pt. 4)

  Your city just legalized “missing middle” housing in its zoning code… now what? With Memphis, Tennessee, as a case study, John Zeanah and Andre D. Jones discuss the hidden non-zoning barriers to developing small apartment buildings — and how to lower them. This is part 4 of our series on misaligned incentives in housing policy.Show notes:Zeanah, J. (2025). Beyond Zoning: Hidden Code Barriers to Middle-Scale Housing. Center for Building in North America.Garcia, D., Carlton, I., Patterson, L., Strawn, J., & Metcalf, B. (2024). Making missing middle pencil: The math behind small-scale housing development. UC Berkeley Terner Center for Housing Innovation. Zeanah, J. (2022 January 12). Memphis, TN Amends Local Building Code to Allow up to Six Units Under Residential Building Code (IRC) to Enable Missing Middle Housing. Opticos Design. 'Beyond Zoning' Abstract:In recent years, planners have made zoning reform a key priority to enable housing supply, including “missing middle” housing … This article explores the barriers beyond zoning that can hold back development of middle-scale housing. It begins with a background on why these lesser-known codes matter for housing diversity. This is followed by a case study of a project in Memphis, highlighting the non-zoning barriers posed to the development of an infill collection of cottages and small apartment buildings, and how they were overcome. Next, the article delves into specific categories of barriers, from building codes and fire safety mandates to infrastructure and local ordinances, explaining how each can impede middle-scale housing projects. Finally, it concludes with an Action Steps for Planners section, offering implementable strategies for reforming codes and coordinating across departments to unlock middle-scale housing development.

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• Ep. 100: The Big 100!! Listener Questions, (Re-)Meet the Hosts, and Book Club

  The hosts gather to celebrate the 100th episode of UCLA Housing Voice. We also answer listener questions and announce the first book for our book club.Show notes:Appelbaum, Y. (2025). Stuck: How the Privileged and the Propertied Broke the Engine of American Opportunity. Penguin Random House.Appelbaum, Y. (2025 February 10). How Progressives Froze the American Dream. The Atlantic.Phillips, S. (2020). The Affordable City: Strategies for Putting Housing Within Reach (and Keeping it There). Island Press.Lens, M. C. (2024). Where the Hood At? Fifty Years of Change in Black Neighborhoods. Russell Sage Foundation.Lens, M. C., & Monkkonen, P. (2016). Do strict land use regulations make metropolitan areas more segregated by income? Journal of the American Planning Association, 82(1), 6-21.Manville, M., Monkkonen, P., & Lens, M. (2020). It’s time to end single-family zoning. Journal of the American Planning Association, 86(1), 106-112.Lee, A. E. (2023). The Policy and Politics of Highway Expansions. UC Davis. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/13x3n8zr. Chapelle, G. (2018). Does social housing crowd out private construction? (Working paper). Science Po.Elmendorf, C. S., Nall, C., & Oklobdzija, S. (2024). What state housing policies do voters want? Evidence from a platform-choice experiment. SSRN.https://www.hcd.ca.gov/housing-open-data-tools/statewide-housing-plan-dashboard https://easyreadernews.com/aes-ruling-against-redondo-may-open-door-to-builders-remedy-developments-statewide/ Episode 81: How New Zealand Passed Its Ambitious Zoning Reforms with Eleanor WestSee remaining show notes and each host's favorite episodes at https://www.lewis.ucla.edu/2025/10/22/100-the-big-100-listener-questions-re-meet-the-hosts-and-book-club/

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• Ep. 99: The ‘International’ Code Council with Jesse Zwick (Incentives Series pt. 3)

  North American buildings are built different — literally. Councilmember Jesse Zwick explains how the organization behind our unusual standards is built to fail, and he makes the case for a new approach. This is part 3 of our series on misaligned incentives in housing policy. Show notes:Zwick, J. (2025). Out of Code: The Hidden Costs of US Building Standards.Episode 78 of UCLA Housing Voice, on the relationship between building height and construction costs (in the US).Wikipedia article on the Grenfell Tower fire in London.Stephen Smith’s Slate article about elevator building codes.Episode 98 of UCLA Housing Voice, on elevator building code in the US and Canada.Strong Towns article featuring the quote by Lawrence Veiller.

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• Ep. 98: Elevators with Stephen Smith (Incentives Series pt. 2)

  Elevators in the U.S. and Canada cost 3–5 times as much as elevators in other high-income countries. Stephen Smith explains why and how our well-intentioned elevator standards make cities less safe and accessible. This is part two of our series on misaligned incentives in housing policy.Show notes:Smith, S. (2024). Elevators. Center for Building in North America.Part 1 of the Incentives Series, Single-Stair Buildings and Eco-Districts with Michael Eliason.Abstract:Americans make over 20 billion trips per year by elevator – twice the number of trips made by what people think of as mass transit. Despite the association between elevators and high-rises, the average elevator in the United States only has four landings, with elevators being as much a tool for convenience and accessibility as for able-bodied necessity.But despite being the birthplace of the modern passenger elevator, the United States has fallen far behind its peers. Elevators in the United States have remained a fairly niche item in residential settings – expected in a high-rise or a big new mid-rise apartment building, but otherwise largely absent from the middle-class home. In absolute terms, the United States has fewer elevators than Spain – a country with one-seventh the population, and fewer than half the number of apartments. And behind its lack of elevators, North America faces a crippling cost problem. The price to install an elevator in a new mid-rise building in the United States or Canada is now at least three times the cost in Western Europe or East Asia. Ongoing expenses like service contracts, periodic inspections, repairs, and modernizations are just as overpriced. High-income countries with strong labor movements and high safety standards from South Korea to Switzerland have found ways to install wheelchair-accessible elevators in mid-rise apartment buildings for around $50,000 each, even after adjusting for America’s typically higher general price levels. In the United States and Canada, on the other hand, these installations start at around $150,000 in even low-cost areas.

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• Ep. 97: Single-Stair Buildings and Eco-Districts with Michael Eliason (Incentives Series pt. 1)

  This is the first episode of our series on misaligned incentives in housing policy. Michael Eliason shares insights from his book, Building for People, on building code reforms and eco-district redevelopment projects throughout Europe.Show notes:Eliason, M. (2024). Building for People: Designing Livable, Affordable, Low-Carbon Communities. Island Press.Youtube video of Vauban, an eco-district in Freiburg, Germany.City of Paris website on the Clichy-Batignolles eco-district, with photos.Episode 59 of UCLA Housing Voice, on the Costs of Discretion with Paavo Monkkonen and Mike Manville.Google Maps view of the Confluence eco-district in Lyon, France and the neighborhood directly to the north.Episode 14 of UCLA Housing Voice, on Family-Friendly Urbanism with Louis Thomas. Check out Stephen Smith’s single-stair and elevator reform tracker at the Center for Building in North America website.

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