Book Notes: Escaping the Housing Trap: The Strong Towns Response to the Housing Crisis by Charles L. Marohn Jr. and Daniel Herriges

Escaping the Housing Trap: The Strong Towns Response to the Housing Crisis by Charles L. Marohn Jr. and Daniel Herriges

Places Discussed

Posted 2024-05-14

Book Notes by John December

Charles Marohn and Daniel Herriges uncover the trap ensnaring people who seek housing as shelter: a complicated system of financial products, government-backed debt, barriers to building, and housing prices unmoored from people's ability to pay. The authors suggest a way out: build on local needs, employ incremental development, and finance housing using sustainable, local methods scaled to the home buyer's income.

In the Strong Towns tradition of the previous books, Strong Towns: A Bottom-up Revolution to Rebuild American Prosperity (2020) and Confessions of a Recovering Engineer: Transportation for a Strong Town (2021), the authors first provide a historical analysis to uncover the economic, social, professional, public, and market forces at play in the complicated domain of the topic—in this case, human shelter. From this examination, the authors describe an approach—not a solution—that advocates for local, bottom-up, incremental action. For financing, their approach works outside of the financial products powering housing today. The paradigm shift in housing that may emerge from this Strong Towns approach could build on the patterns that have grown cities for centuries and re-employ the power and ingenuity of people working together to build communities.

The authors are adamant that the book is an approach and not a "solution"--let alone "The Solution"--to the housing crisis. By this insistence, this book may truly guide people out of the housing trap--and not ensnare them in another.

This concise book examines this subject with clarity, revealing many dimensions of housing I had not encountered before:

I. The Housing Trap Consists of Financial Products

The foundation of the housing trap rests on the alchemy of transforming housing from human shelter to global financial products. This transformation unfolded in a series of historical steps with these highlights:

Housing originated as a shelter that people built with local resources and then incrementally expanded or maintained.
During the 1860s, in response to the US Civil War, the National Bank Acts established a banking system and mortgages (p. 21). The cost of materials and labor to build better quality housing motivated people to get these mortgages to finance building houses. Local banks lent money for mortgages but only with careful terms to avoid undue risk. Banks set amounts loaned at only 50% of the home value, and the buyer would pay interest for five years or less, and then the entire principal would be due (a balloon payment) (p. 21).
During the Great Depression of the 1930s, people could no longer pay their home mortgage payments or balloon payments as they fell due. Banks seized homes and sold them on the market, and house prices fell. In response, the Home Owner's Loan Corporation (HOLC), established in 1933, worked with distressed homeowners to refinance mortgages with longer terms, such as 20 years, and with amortization. The HOLC loan program created a system of color-coded maps that identified which neighborhoods would get loans (green) and which neighborhoods would not get help (red) (p. 24).
Even with HOLC programs, local banks might still get stuck with bad loans, so The National Housing Act of 1934 established the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) to protect local banks against losses (p. 24).
Local banks still encountered mortgage risks, even with FHA insurance, and lacked the capital to create new mortgages. In response, the Federal National Mortgage Association "Fannie Mae," established in 1938, bought FHA mortgages from local banks. Fannie Mae quickly transformed home mortgages from local to national financial products (p. 25). The authors describe the changes in home mortgage payments, such as 30-year terms, down payments, and monthly payments on interest as well as principal (pp. 26-27). The authors identify 1945 as when "The housing trap was now built." (p. 28).
With the housing trap built, the next step was to prepare the trap for prey (setting the trap). The post-World War II recovery marked a time of increased demand for housing after decades of privation during the economic depression and World War. The "Planning for Permanence" scheme touted by J. C. Nichols (pp. 29-30) to sell suburban homes ignited this pent-up demand by a process of standardized financing and building techniques to construct houses in large numbers all at once on open land outside of cities (pp. 30-34). Work to standardize and mass-produce housing and related products led to highways and suburban development. Inner cities were redlined or denied mortgage financing. Wealth left cities for suburban developments. The suburbs grew to embrace the housing products and the subsequent growth of automobile dependency. Critics and authors have described this process (Kay, 1997; Duany et al., 2000; Solomon, 2003; Hirschhorn, 2005; Wasik, 2009; Ross, 2014; Florida, 2017; Kenworthy, 2017; Newman et al., 2016; Newman & Kenworthy, 1999; Newman & Kenworthy, 2015).
The critic James Howard Kunstler, author of The Geography Of Nowhere: The Rise And Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape (1993), characterized this suburbanization process as "the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world."
Complicated financing methods continued to expand the housing trap to capture more buyers. Agencies and programs formed: the G.I. Bill of Rights (1944) and mortgage guarantees (p. 35). Fannie Mae changed (in 1954 and 1968) to become a private entity (p. 36). Ginnie Mae (Government National Mortgage Association) was set up to purchase government-backed mortgages (p. 37). Mortgage-backed securities (MBS) based on these loans could be sold on the market, including to Savings & Loan associations (S&Ls) (p. 37). The authors state, "This feels complicated because it is. It creates a set of far-flung relationships and interdependencies that are not as discernible as those present in traditional local banking." (p. 37). By 1970, "The housing market was now the foundation of the economy." (p. 38).
In the 1970s, rising inflation and interest rates made it difficult to obtain housing and make mortgage payments. In response, the Housing and Community Development Act of 1974 and the Emergency Housing Act of 1975 protected banks from financial loss and expanded money for people to take on debt. To purchase mortgages from S&Ls that were having financial trouble, Congress created the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, Freddie Mac. In 1979, Freddie Mac's debt was set to the same responsibility as federal debt, making it a government-sponsored enterprise (GSE) (p. 45).
The financial products based on home mortgages became more complicated and took on a life of their own. In 1984, The Secondary Mortgage Market Enhancement Act expanded the market for MBS securities by guaranteeing them to the equivalent of US Treasuries. The authors mark the year 1984 as when "home ownership and the housing market were on their way to becoming the literal foundation of the economy." (p. 47).
In response to the S&L crisis of the late 1980s, The Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery, and Enforcement Act of 1989 established loans for people who had low ability to pay, created sub-prime mortgages, and established a system of licensing and certifications to place appraisal numbers on the value of a house.
Since house financing was the foundation of the economy, budget policy, housing and urban policy, transportation policy, zoning, suburban policies, as well as social pressure and marketing worked individually and collaboratively to prop up the trajectory of housing prices to rise in order to maintain the return on investment in the financial products (pp. 51-62).
A "zoning lockdown" (pp. 73-96) made appealing cities (such as Somerville, Massachusetts, p. 73) mostly illegal to build under zoning codes. Zoning zeal attacked housing such as multifamily and triple-deckers (p. 77), rooming houses (p. 79), residential hotels or single-room occupancy (SRO) (p. 80). Housing became scarcer because of FHA mortgage guidelines (p. 83), redlining (p. 86), and downzoning (p. 88). Build and no-build zones came to dominate cities (p. 90) as well as lost "missing middle" housing (p. 91). The financial products for housing became specialized in funding particular, profitable and reproducible architectural forms. For example, a 5-over-1 building (with a concrete podium as floor one and five wood frame floors above) could be customized and marketed to any level of appeal (p. 67). (See also: How Zoning Broke the American City (2022)).
The 2008 financial crisis in subprime debt created the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) (p. 61) and later ZIRP and QE (p. 63) to shore up banks. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were nationalized (pp. 68-69).
In 2008, former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan admitted a "flaw" in his thinking: he had assumed that banks and other investors would protect their shareholders and equity. However, the 2008 crisis showed that this was not the case. Greenspan confessed: "I discovered a flaw in the model that I perceived is the critical functioning structure that defines how the world works. I had been going for 40 years with considerable evidence that it was working exceptionally well." Greenspan's flaw was his belief that free and competitive markets would spontaneously work to self-regulate. However, as the authors note, housing was not a free and competitive market: "There has not been a free market in housing in a very long time. Given the state's role in shaping the market for raw land through the provision of public infrastructure such as roads, one could argue there never has been." (p. 146).

The bottom line is that the societal need to house people is so vital that it created a government-backed system of complicated and increasingly inscrutable financial products--a housing trap. The housing trap's strength arises out of the need for people to feel secure and housed, as outlined in Maslow's hierarchy of needs (pp. 3-4), but also by housing's role as a financial vehicle for many people--not just the homeowner--to accumulate wealth as an asset class. The result is a shocking realization: national economies depend on financial products that depend on housing not lowering in prices. The lesson of the 2008 crisis was that "if the housing market fails, the financial system fails.... [house] Prices can't go down." (p. 70).

II. The Housing Trap Adapts to Ensure its Prime Directive

The housing trap follows its prime directive (to keep housing prices rising) by creating only its preferred housing types using established financial products. Home buyers or renters must choose from what developers build, no matter how expensive or misaligned to their needs or preferences. This result, cleverly marketed, uses circular reasoning to boldly claim that it provides what the market wants. The authors illustrate this skewed market with an analogy--a hypothetical situation where only two brands of expensive shoes are sold through an intricate system of price supports and regulations. This absurd shoe market results in high prices, and many people cannot obtain shoes (pp. 8-10).

The housing trap blocks people from finding housing scaled to their income, needs, or preferences.

The result is that:

"What we have is a status quo that allows virtually every politically influential interest group to benefit and profit. This includes homeowners and real estate interests. It includes local governments. It includes essentially everyone except renters (especially aspiring home buyers) and the poor." (p. 109)

The housing trap creates a cohort of owners and finance people (p. 5) who seek to keep the supply of their private goods scarce and always rise in value, making it difficult or impossible for people without housing to obtain it scaled to their income (p. 5).

Many intelligent and well-meaning people have attempted to create a solution, or (more foolishly) The Solution, to the housing trap. Some efforts have augmented the housing supply for the very poor, and other programs have endeavored to improve the current financing system. Many have created innovative techniques for construction. However, the housing trap cannot easily be dismantled: it develops more features to placate the people stuck in it, and it also builds more structures to thwart or sidetrack those who seek an exit from it. The housing trap works to protect itself:

Tax policies placate homeowners. The home mortgage interest tax deduction subsidizes home debt (The authors did not mention this). Lower property tax rates for wealthy owners are set by underestimating the property's market value (p. 196).
Popular opinion puts excessive social pressure to be a "homeowner," and denigrates renting as "throwing money away." This book's description of the housing traps helps me see why. Some of this seems to originate from the mindset of older generations who enjoyed the early days of the housing trap, which served them well. They now know that to keep their home values high, they need new generations to enter and stay in the housing trap. These older generations can angrily berate anything like "micro-housing" or "tiny homes" or any other option other than the large-style homes in which they are invested. According to the people inside the housing trap, you must pick your home in the burbs or upscale condos. If you do not, the only other choices are to resign yourself to the fate of living in the inner city, inside a crowded tenement, or in a "tiny house."
An oligopoly of builders works only at the high end of the housing spectrum because that is where the financial products work. These politically connected builders likely appreciate the higher prices they can get for housing because of lower competition and the tight supply of missing middle and affordable housing options. Ironically, these "greedy" developers are often the ONLY builders of new housing in some city areas. However, they can face the wrath of some people (including competitors) as well as housing advocates who always seem to have to have smug critiques of the 5-over-1 building styles and elaborate reasoning as to why the building will bring either gentrification (for developments made at market rates) and "poverty housing" (for development at affordable rates).
Affordable housing programs are designed not to disturb the general run-up in housing prices (p. 133). They do provide housing, but on limited terms that simply do not scale or provide nearly enough units. When Affordable units are included, they are subsidized by higher prices for the market-rate units, hence pumping up the cost of the market-rate housing.
NIMBY ("Not in My Backyard") opposition to new housing originated from objections to specific land uses near homes (p. 98), but this expanded so that "opposition to new housing is strongest among existing homeowners... [who] are the beneficiaries and defenders of a regulatory system that is designed to keep housing scarce and unaffordable and thus to heap financial reward upon those who already own it." (p. 100). However, the authors point out that this characterization misses the viewpoint of these opponents of change--they see themselves as defenders of the community against exploitative outsiders (p. 101). Through their opposition, they seek to maintain the privacy and exclusivity they were promised when the suburbs arose (p. 105).
Local power politics (p. 108) gives voice to homeowners "whose primary interest is in maintaining their property values [who] are a powerful and often dominant interest group in city politics." The public comment process gives a strong voice to opposers to any new building. NIMBYs hate the "growth machine" of business interest linked to development and real estate growth. The authors observe (p. 110): "There are now advocacy groups whose purpose is explicitly to defend single-family zoning, strict development restrictions, and the 'planning for permanence' system of land-use regulation that have been dominant since the 1930's" (e.g., Livable California).
The tiny house movement seeks a way out of the housing trap by shifting to smaller dwellings and enthusiastically showing off creative design, clever staging, and adaptive building techniques. However, the tiny house imagery plays into the housing trap by providing a stark choice: either you buckle down and pay for a real home--a McMansion or upscale luxury condo--or your only other choice is to live in a tiny living space--there is no middle ground. If I could personify the words of the housing trap, it might say (sarcastically): "Ok, you want something affordable, here is what you get," and shows you an impractical shack and smirks, "see how cute." The housing trap wants to ensure that there is nothing practical scaled in size to your needs and income because that might mean there are cheaper options for housing widely available, which the housing trap cannot allow.
Starter homes--the term the authors prefer for small houses--is a simple term conveying the timeless form of small housing and cottages that people have built, low-key, for thousands of years (p. 159). The authors describe how starter homes serve as realistic, practical, dignified shelter of modest size for people to choose for many stages of their lives. This distinction between a popular fad and timeless human practice may be why the Instagram-friendly "tiny house" meme seems to irk the authors.
As a direct mocking of the term NIMBY, the advocates for more housing supply took on the term YIMBY ("Yes in my backyard."). With the laudable goal to find a way out of the housing trap by increasing the housing supply, YIMBY's shout to the housing trap to "build build build build build build..." and the housing trap happily complies by building more high-end "upscale, luxury" apartments and condos. The housing trap grudgingly makes a comically few Affordable housing units that are an insignificant addition to the housing supply, and with subsidies that increase the price of the other (non-Affordable) units (p. 123), and thus keep the housing prime directive ("housing never goes down in price") happily in place.
The authors trace how empirical evidence shows a "relationship between vacancies and falling or stabilizing rents" at a regional level (p. 124), and this bolsters the idea of increasing housing supply to lower costs. However, this effect is regional (p. 125), not local--that is, a regional price stabilization does not necessarily help people depending on finding affordable housing in a specific place (p. 126). YIMBY groups, better organized and working at the local and state level, have worked on legislation. Upzoning was the new effort, and Minneapolis passed a citywide elimination of single-family zoning in 2018--by simply allowing up to a triplex on nearly every residential lot (p. 128), but "The triplexes have been slow to materialize." (p. 128).
Later, upzoning for transit corridors that allowed taller and larger buildings and abolished parking requirements showed success in stabilizing or lowering rents (p. 129).
Despite some YIMBY results, the authors question why YIMBYs help large-scale developers build more upscale units. The results do not always lead to significant rent drops for people struggling to find affordable housing because developers can always stop making new supply in the face of falling demand or prices (p. 123; p. 130).

Many of the efforts to escape the housing trap--Affordable housing programs, YIMBYs, and tiny homes--involve earnest motivations. They are noble efforts, but since they operate within the confines of the housing trap, they do not escape the housing trap's prime directive to keep the overall price of housing rising and based on financial products and associated housing types insensitive to local conditions. The housing trap ignores the ability of people to pay for housing or the actual needs of people for affordable housing that is not "luxury" and "upscale."

The opposite of the housing trap's imperatives for housing production informs the Strong Towns approach.

III. A Strong Towns Approach Re-Orients Housing to Local Needs and Incremental Development

The Strong Towns approach escapes the housing trap by starting with the humble recognition that people need housing scaled to their income built with local, incremental action (pp. 201-202). The critical insight is to first acknowledge that the complications of the housing trap are so great that an approach needs to operate in parallel with existing financial products for housing rather than trying to battle from the inside of the housing trap directly ("...do it outside of the current paradigm but while the current system remains intact," p. 155) but yet be revolutionary in its paradigm shift (p. 155). This approach embraces locally-based, bottom-up, incremental development that can replicate and scale up through true complexity (not complication) in the behavior inherent in the interaction of people in social and economic systems.

The Strong Towns housing approach embraces general principles (p. 202): local collaboration, financial solvency, productive use of land, transportation for prosperity, healthy local economy, incremental investments, resiliency over efficiency, evolution through feedback, the embrace of "chaotic but smart" bottom-up action, avoidance of top-down ("orderly but dumb") action, human-scale focus, and careful monetary accounting.

The authors describe many bottom-up strategies to escape the housing trap, including (pp. 154-199):

Add affordable housing and grow the city's tax base without increasing its liabilities (p. 154).
Add housing in a way that increases financial capital in the community and does not adversely disturb local housing markets (p. 154).
Give ways for NIMBYs to benefit (p. 155).
Work with YIMBYs to add housing (p. 155).
Work alongside large developers in a more open, competitive market (p. 155).
Finance housing by "repurposing old [financial] tools" (p. 155).
Work within local, state, and federal governments still invested in the housing trap paradigm (p. 155).
Recognize that all neighborhoods change, with no exemptions (pp. 156-157).
Make incremental development by right (without special approval required) (p. 158) and easily and rapidly obtained--with "simplicity and flexibility" (p. 177). In contrast, large-leap development (in a change that is more than incremental) can proceed with a more arduous process (p. 158).
Do not force radical change on any neighborhood, but use "Gentlefication" (p. 174).
Create low barriers to owning a house--the starter home (p. 159).
Allow walking and bicycling to replace auto trips (p. 160). Here, the authors fail to mention public transit's role for alternatives to auto trips. People struggle to find a solution to their housing + transit costs, and public transit offers a way to help. Public transit is useful for people of all ranges of age and income. (See: American Public Transportation Association, "Benefits of Public Transportation"; Litman, Todd., "Responding to Public Transit Criticism"; Litman, Todd., "Evaluating public transit benefits and costs"; American Public Transportation Association, "Economic Impact Of Public Transportation Investment").
Work within existing infrastructure (pp. 160-161).
Build an incremental development culture (incrementaldevelopment.org) (p. 167).
Allow people to "find their farm" (p. 168) or an area of the city to improve.
Build through the "swarm" (p. 176) of neighborhood-scale builders.
Help incremental developers who face challenges such as parking (p. 176) (See also: Mepham, 2024), and unanticipated costs. The authors state, "To make their work viable in more contexts, small developers need simplicity and flexibility. The elimination of single-family zoning and parking mandates are near prerequisites for incremental development to have a meaningful impact in any neighborhood." (p. 177).
Finance local housing by avoiding long-term liabilities by matching development to the existing neighborhood value. This can mean a range of developments along the full spectrum of housing size, from appropriate sites for smaller incremental steps to multistory, mixed-use developments (pp. 184-185).
Consistently work for "an abundance of units at lower price points" in the face of inevitable intense and emotional concerns about large-scale projects (large-scale projects are a reaction to the market lacking a supply of housing) (p. 186). The authors advise, "Don't spend energy opposing multifamily construction unless you spend 10 times as much effort supporting the bottom-up approaches..." (p. 187). Expensive housing is an outcome of the housing trap, not its cause. Expensive housing is needed because people who can afford it want to live in it--it is a valid type of housing, along with the wide spectrum of housing for every budget a city should offer.
Support repurposing empty bedrooms as small apartments in existing homes, perhaps through a micro TIF (Tax Incremental Financing) (p. 187).
Support backyard cottages (p. 188) but with carefully specifing the zoning changes needed (waiving parking requirements, setbacks, and other details) to allow them to happen, as shown in Los Angeles (p. 131).
Motivate people and capacity for housing to jump "off the sidelines" (p. 189) to improve neighborhoods and keep financial capital in the neighborhoods (p. 191).
Finance small developers (p. 191).
Avoid gimmicks to waive utility connection fees new development--this undermines the solvency of local utilities (p. 193).
Use fair local tax policies that do not subsidize large-value properties by underestimating the property's market value (p. 196).
Consider the supposedly "fringe idea" of valuing property in total--including the value of the land in addition to the buildings on it (versus just the value of the buildings). Neighborhoods stagnate with large, empty lots, parking lots, or undeveloped land sitting idle, and a land value tax could remove the market incentive keeping land locked up idle (pp. 198-199).

The Strong Towns approach to housing embraces humility, works with a deep understanding of the historical roots and current operating system of the housing trap metaphor, and advocates for local and cooperative labor and ingenuity as a strong alternative to build human shelter in communities. The authors cite Jane Jacobs as an inspiration at their book's end: "Jane Jacobs was right; cities must be created by everybody, from the bottom up." (p. 206).

IV. The Framing Issues for Housing Show a Bigger Picture

The authors wisely omitted many details and issues to create a clear, focused book. The book reveals the history and operations of the housing trap, and the authors make a strong case for escaping it based on an approach of local, incremental development and financing.

After reflecting on the book, I see some significant issues that frame the bigger picture of housing:

The housing crisis is global. The struggle of people to find housing throughout the world echoes some Strong Towns ideas. In the book Shadow Cities: A Billion Squatters, A New Urban World (2005), Robert Neuwirth documents human survival strategies that, on the surface, may seem very primitive and anti-social but may be a complex and very sophisticated reaction to a political system that does not include them. Neuwirth observes the informal housing created using building construction techniques, which transition through materials: cardboard to wood, wood to brick, and brick to reinforced concrete. People build their dwellings piece by piece, as they can afford them without going into debt and as their family needs change. This reflects the Strong Towns incremental mindset of hyperlocal, incremental development. Squatters have to work step-by-step to establish shelter in the precarious, ubiquitous pattern of human civilization--informal settlement--that about one billion people throughout the world inhabit.
Public transit has a role in housing. The part missing from the book is a recognition of the housing + transportation costs people face when choosing a place to live. Public transit can help with the transportation costs. People can utilize public transit and live car-free or car-lite and reduce the demand for automobile infrastructure and parking spaces in cities. Public transit has played a role and has provided advantages for people in cities throughout nearly two centuries of human history. (See: American Public Transportation Association, "Benefits of Public Transportation"; Litman, Todd., "Responding to Public Transit Criticism"; Litman, Todd., "Evaluating public transit benefits and costs"; American Public Transportation Association, "Economic Impact Of Public Transportation Investment"). As a way to create complete neighborhoods, public transit is a part of a 20-minute city concept (Capasso Da Silva, et al., 2020).
Zoning has taken its toll on cities. In Arbitrary Lines: How Zoning Broke the American City and How to Fix It (2022), author M. Nolan Gray describes how zoning has been a means to "break" the American city by limiting what can be built, where it can be built, and for whom. The author calls for an abolishment of zoning and instead offers alternatives to unleash the power of cities.
Parking has a role in housing. Marohn and Herriges look at parking in the context of the incentives to driving in chapter 6. They cite parking economist Donald Shoup (p. 104) to highlight the maladaptive process of trying to control parking problems by zoning away people. Shoup's article identifies how cities have incentivized driving and discouraged walkable neighborhoods by providing "....separated land uses, low density, and ample free parking." The article quoted, "Parking Reform Will Save the City," is adapted from Donald Shoup's book Parking and the City (2018).
However, this brief quote is just part of the larger story of parking. The Strong Towns approach can gain much by observing that parking, like housing, is subject to supply and demand market conditions. As a significant land use in cities, parking policies can affect how cities form, how people get around, and what gets built and where. David Mepham in Rethinking Parking (2024) shows how "we have tended to ignore parking as a planning and urban design issue, and as a consequence, we have typically degraded the places that provide it." (p. 1). The study of parking's role in urbanism, established with Donald Shoup's works, The High Cost of Free Parking (2005, 2011) and Parking and the City (2018) continues with the work of Richard W. Willson in Parking Reform Made Easy (2013), the Parking Reform Network, and the recent books Carmageddon: How Cars Make Life Worse and What to Do About It (2023) by Daniel Knowles and Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World (2023) by Henry Grabar.
I do not believe Strong Towns = Small Towns, but I am afraid some people might. Housing exists in the context of land use in large cities and metropolitan areas with legacy infrastructure and involvement in regional, national, and global economies. Vast differences in urban geography show different densities of living and varying forms of housing and transit modes, including very tall buildings and urban rail transit. This wide range means that a bottom-up approach cannot just deal with what is easily understandable or conditions that might exist in a small town. Strong Towns must work within the reality of contemporary, complicated, and complex life.
Many writers about urbanism—including Jane Jacobs herself—formed big ideas based on close observation. These big ideas can inform patterns of action at the grass-roots level. Knowledge and research, applied locally, shouldn't be rejected as "top down." Big ideas that have support in thought and empirical evidence can apply well to specific, local actions. The Strong Towns concepts similarly, emanate from carefully derived principles and books (pp. 201-206) and apply to local action. The authors point out that any Strong Towns approach must coexist with current, legacy features of our built environment and economy. Strong Towns has to work within the complexity and legacy of urban areas as they are now. I appreciate the Strong Towns approach and believe it does not imply a parochial approach toward urbanism.
Providing housing for all people may need innovative funding. An approach that rejects the housing trap might uncover some uncomfortable results about the ability of free markets to supply shelter for all people. Social housing (non-market housing) is a routine option in Vienna and other places for housing (pp. 145-145), and such programs might be the best approach to sensibly and sustainably provide housing for national populations without creating a monstrous system of financial products.
Enabling small and incremental builders to create housing may reveal that missing middle housing is not profitable or profitable enough for market builders to create at scale. The authors mention that philanthropies could be involved (p. 191; p. 195) to make the financing happen. This may seem uncomfortable for people who may believe that our current housing system represents the "free market"--when it does not. People may consider that social housing or government or charity-funded housing is "communism" or "socialism." However, they need to realize that the basis for our housing system now involves government-backed mortgages as well as government-built and government-subsidized roadways and subsidized automobile travel, government-subsidized suburban and urban housing, government-subsidized infrastructure including bridges, airports, roadways, sidewalks, sewage systems, and more. The delusion that the housing market is free is what tripped up Alan Greenspan--his "flaw."
A humble approach can accept helpful ideas from other movements without jealousy or rancor. Public transit, parking economics, and zoning play a role in housing. The movements for NIMBYs, YIMBYs, and "tiny homes" all have motivated very passionate people who could add great vitality to building the escapes from the housing trap. Well-considered ideas applied locally by empowered people can create housing.
Technologies such as 3-D-printed homes or the remarkable ingenuity of small home builders might help break free from the housing trap. Technology is not an end in itself-and is not The Solution to the housing trap. Technology where it shows value for people in local, specific contexts can be a part of the escape from the housing trap.

The biggest lesson I gained from this book is that it shifted my belief about where the blame for the shortage of housing falls. The blame does not rest with the NIMBYs, current homeowners, or even (so-called "greedy") developers, although they all participate in it. Instead, a financial system of mortgages and financial products has seeped into the world economy (The economic crisis of 2008 is proof of this).

We need to have housing that is genuinely scaled in price to people's incomes, needs, and preferences and represents authentic choices in a "public market" (my term for a market model that combines the public protections required and the dynamism of competitive market forces). A housing finance system needs to emerge that works hyper-locally in parallel with the current one (p. 132). The approach includes micro-financing, planning from the bottom up, and building incrementally, with local people in control.