Ezra's Bookshelf

Golden Gates

by Conor Dougherty · 290 pages · ~5.5 hrs

Society & CultureUrban Planning & Architecture

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San Francisco's housing crisis epitomizes a national failure, and journalist Conor Dougherty traces how the city that gave the world the counterculture and the tech boom became unaffordable to ordinary workers. Through the stories of activists, developers, politicians, and residents, he examines why housing costs consume ever larger shares of American incomes and what might be done about it. Sonja Trauss appears throughout the book as a founder of the YIMBY movement, which argues that the solution to high housing costs is building more housing. She organizes in favor of new development, challenging the neighborhood groups that have historically blocked construction. Dougherty follows her battles with homeowners who fear that new buildings will change their neighborhoods, revealing how progressive values can reinforce exclusion. The book also profiles renters facing eviction, teachers who cannot afford to live near their schools, and investors buying up single-family homes. Dougherty, who covers housing for The New York Times, grounds the story in economics and history. He explains how zoning laws and environmental review processes constrain supply, how federal tax policy subsidizes homeownership over renting, and how the local politics of land use favor incumbents over newcomers. The result is a clear-eyed account of a crisis with no villains, only a system that produces outcomes nobody chose.

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