Who Can Fix the Housing Crisis - NYT Pundits, German Shepherds, or Bilbo Baggins?
Jason, Rob, and Asher are taking out a huge, unaffordable mortgage on the housing crisis. What’s behind the shortage in housing? Why is it that no one, except canine Tik Tok influencers with billion-dollar bank accounts, can afford to own a home? While mainstream pundits press for an energy-blind buildout of desert sprawl and gleaming towers of glass and steel, we propose a surprising change of course inspired by little people with hairy feet. Originally recorded on 5/21/25.
Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.
Sources/Links/Notes:
- The story of Gunther, the world's most moneyed canine.
- You can't make this stuff up: Gunther offers to buy Nicholas Cage's island.
- David Wessel, "Where do the estimates of a 'housing shortage' come from?," Brookings Institute, October 21, 2024.
- Alex Fitzpatrick and Alice Feng, "Americans' average daily travel distance, mapped," Axios, March 24, 2024.
- Jon Gertner, "America Is on Fire, Says One Climate Writer. Should You Flee?," New York Times, March 22, 2024.
- U.S. News and World Report, "Fastest-Growing Places in the U.S. in 2025-2026."
Good Ideas for Addressing the Housing Crisis:
- Jason Bradford, "Growing the Shire, Not the 'Burb: Facing the Housing Crisis with Ecological Sanity," Resilience, May 27, 2025.
- Global Ecovillage Network
- Nate Hagens, "Alexis Zeigler — Living Without Fossil Fuels: How Living Energy Farm Created a Comfortable Off-Grid Lifestyle," The Great Simplification, April 9, 2025.
Energy-Blind Non-Solutions for the Housing Crisis:
- Conor Dougherty, "Why America Should Sprawl," New York Times, April 10, 2025.
- Binyamin Applebaum, "Build Homes on Federal Land," New York Times, April 15, 2025.
- Ezra Klein, "Abundance and the Left," The Ezra Klein Show, April 29, 2025.
- Samuel Moyn, "Can Democrats Learn to Dream Big Again?," New York Times, March 18, 2025.
- Tyler Cowen, "Ezra Klein on the Abundance Agenda (Ep. 236)" Conversations with Tyler, March 7, 2025.
Related Episode(s) of Crazy Town:
- Episode 37. Discounting the Future and Climate Chaos, or… the Story of the Dueling Economists
Activity