Hey, this is Ezra. I am still out sick, but I'll be back on Tuesday. I am thankfully

and finally on the mend. Until then, we're rearing one of my favorites from last year.

This episode on the cost and crisis of housing with Urban Economist Jenny Shoetz. Enjoy.

I'm Ezra Klein. This is the Ezra Conchell.

If you've been listening to the show or reading my columns lately, you know, I'm circling this question

of why liberalism so often fails to build. Most of all, in the places liberals hold the most power.

And there's no more damning or central example of this failure than housing.

The five states in the US with the highest rates of homelessness are New York, Hawaii,

California, Oregon, and Washington. Some of the bluest states in the country, not one red state

on that list. And they are consistently unable to build enough homes at prices people can actually

afford. And at the core of that failure is the failure to build enough homes full stop.

And that means working class people can't live where the wages are highest. They can't live where

the opportunities for them are most promising, where the safety nets are most expansive. That means

people who might want to live in say states that guarantee abortion rights can't afford to.

That means a state like California that prides itself on all the green energy infrastructure

it's building is pricing people who would want to live in that infrastructure.

Indistates where they use more fossil fuels or it's pricing people into parts of California itself

where they have to drive much further into work. Housing is fundamental when you fail to provide it

that failure reverberates throughout society. It leads waste to all your other carefully laid policy plans.

And ideals. Few understand the ins and outs of America's housing system or systems like Jenny

Shoetz. She is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute and she's the author of the new book Fixer

Upper, How to Repair America's Broken Housing Systems, which is one of the clearest

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