A conversation with Strong Towns – Escaping the Housing Trap

On Tuesday, April 23, 2024 at 6:00PM ReForm Shreveport will host a Book Tour presentation with Chuck Marohn from Strong Towns. This book, called “Escaping the Housing Trap”, discusses the tension that exists in america today between housing as an investment and as a shelter we all need to survive. Charles Marohn has graciously asked to stop by this month on April 23rd to present this content to us here in Shreveport. Here is the description from Strong Towns:

“Housing is an investment. Investment prices must go up. Housing is shelter. When the price of shelter goes up, people experience distress.

This is the housing trap. It’s time to escape. This presentation introduces a first-of-its-kind discussion of the tension between housing as a financial product and housing as shelter. These insights will help local communities fight back against the current affordability housing crisis, and opt out of the boom and bust cycles that have typified housing in postwar America.

This presentation offers a serious, yet accessible, history of housing policy in the United States and explains how it led us to this point in time: where we face a market that is rigged against people who, only a few decades ago, could have been homeowners or stable, long-term renters. Only local change, on a neighborhood or city-wide scale, can begin to restore balance to the housing market.”

After the event, there will be a book signing and opportunities to discuss more with Chuck and others from the Strong Towns staff. The presentation will help our community understand:

• How the tension between housing as an investment and housing as shelter impacts where and how we live.
• How financial innovations in the Great Depression stabilized the housing market, and how those tools were repurposed after World War II to rapidly expand America’s cities.
• How a series of housing price bubbles and banking crises have financialized the housing market, transforming homeowners from the customer purchasing a home to the product supporting a mortgage.
• How regulations designed to facilitate the rapid growth of cities end up stagnating neighborhoods and creating artificial housing shortages.
• Why making it easier for more people to borrow more money is not a solution to housing affordability and, in fact, has only made housing less broadly attainable.
• The huge difference between a goal of making affordable housing and a goal of making housing affordable.
• Where cities can effectively intervene to make their housing market more locally responsive, broadly increasing affordability without participating in the boom and bust cycle of the broader housing market.

This event, which will be held at Louisiana State University, Shreveport (One University Place, Shreveport LA 71105) will be live-streamed on the ReForm Shreveport Facebook page, and saved for viewing later. We hope you can come to LSUS.