Pew 40d ago

"It brought so much joy to my life knowing that Michael had a chance to be a kid again." That's Titi, a Washington, D.C., resident who was separated from her son, Michael, while living in a shelter—only to be reunited with him a year later after she gained a stable place to live. Titi's story highlights the nation's housing shortage—currently at 4 million to 7 million homes—and how building more housing of *any* kind can help boost affordability and availability. How so? Moving chains. Research from University of Notre Dame's Evan Mast shows that when you build new housing, including high-end apartments, it creates openings downstream in lower- and middle-income neighborhoods as people move up. Using this framework, Pew found that the low-income apartment Titi moved to from a shelter would not have opened had a luxury apartment building not been built in downtown D.C. when it was. But by building more apartment, even luxury ones, D.C. created a moving chain that freed up at least five affordable homes—including Titi's. "It is so heartwarming to know that through the efforts of producing more housing that this woman has now found a home and her family has been reunited," says D.C. Deputy Mayor Nina Albert.