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. In Escaping the Housing Trap: The Strong Towns Response to the Housing Crisis, renowned urbanists Charles (Chuck) Marohn and Daniel Herriges introduce a first-of-its-kind discussion of the tension between housing as a financial product and housing as shelter. This is the key insight that's been missing from the Housing Crisis Conversation; and the insight that can help cities fight back against the crisis from the bottom-up.

This book 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 rentals.

Only local change, on a neighborhood or city-wide scale, can begin to restore balance to the housing market.

Escaping the Housing Trap is the must-read resource for everyone with a stake in the future of housing in America-and that means everyone. Readers will find:

• Discussions of housing as an investment and how the country's neighborhoods are being transformed by the introduction of large amounts of investment
• Explorations of housing as shelter, including discussions of zoning policy and NIMBYism
• A comprehensive overview of the Strong Towns approach to solving the American housing crisis

UNDERSTAND THE MODERN HOUSING CRISIS, WITH LOCAL SOLUTIONS FOR LEADERS

There are two different, mutually incoherent conversations about the housing market: the one conducted by "housing" people and the one among "finance" people. In Escaping the Housing Trap: The Strong Towns Response to the Housing Crisis, renowned urbanists Charles L. Marohn, Jr. and Daniel Herriges explore both viewpoints, providing rational steps that local leaders can begin to take right now to make room for a new housing paradigm.

This book covers everything there is to know about housing in America, from the creation of the modern home mortgage and the problems it was intended to solve, all the way to the modern public policy environment that governs housing as shelter and the political forces that influence it. The authors take a deep dive into important big picture concepts, such as discussions of zoning policy and NIMBYism, the disempowering and destructive idea of cataclysmic money in housing communities, and more.

Escaping the Housing Trap: The Strong Towns Response to the Housing Crisis is an essential read for planners, advocates, experts, and all individuals who wish to understand and help solve society's housing problems of today.