In this precise collection, Atlantic staff writer Jerusalem Demsas turns her expertise and keen eye to the housing shortage, one of our country’s most dire yet widely misunderstood public frustrations. Demsas examines how local democracies have become co-conspirators in the anti-development aspirations of the very few, at the hefty expense of the many. These essays identify the inefficiencies and irrationalities of contemporary land-use politics and the stages they play out on, offering readers a refreshing and accessible guide to a generational crisis.

Jerusalem Demsas is a staff writer at The Atlantic where she is an established voice on the housing crisis and local democracy. Her writing spans issues from infrastructure, labor economics, and federalism to race, gender, mobility and the politics of exclusion. She also hosts the new Atlantic podcast “Good on Paper.” Jerusalem was recognized for her work in 2023 by the American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME) with the ASME Next Award for journalists under 30. Demsas is also a Visiting Fellow with the Center for Economy and Society at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University. Prior to writing at The Atlantic, Demsas was a policy journalist at Vox where she also cohosted the popular policy podcast The Weeds. She is the author of On the Housing Crisis: Land, Development, Democracy, published on September 3, 2024.

Alex Baca has worked in journalism, advocacy, architecture, construction, and transportation in DC, San Francisco, and Cleveland and is currently the DC Policy Director at Greater Greater Washington, seeking to increase the production of housing and affordable housing and reduce trips by car in the District of Columbia. Alex has written about all of the above for CityLab, Slate, Vox, Washington City Paper, and other publications.

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