Reviews for Faversham - Landmark Dog Of Manhattan

The average rating for Faversham - Landmark Dog Of Manhattan based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2014-03-11 00:00:00 John Powers "Remarkable" The book was a challenge of the conventional thinking about the role of rental housing in the market and it produced a novel set of policy-relevant solutions about rental housing. As such, it represented an important step forward in the intellectual debate about the place of rental housing and offered scholars a new way of thinking about and framing analytical questions about rental housing…entertaining and unique Journal of the American Planning Association Summer 2009 page 375 Gilderbloom's 'Rethinking Rental Housing' destroys the argument 'we must build more'. 'Rethinking Rental Housing' is a standard text at universities across the nation. It's a study of 120 fast-growing and slow growing cities that sets the record straight on rent." San Jose Mercury News, August 20, 2000 Rethinking Rental Housing is an important new book on the rental housing crisis...--Capitol Gains Highly readable. Extensive references. Recommended for collections in public policy and economics. --Choice --Congressional Quarterly's Editorial Research Reports Straight forward and convincing. --Peter Dreier, Director of Housing City of Boston John Gilderbloom and Richard Appelbaum show that sociologists could make major contributions to debate about a housing policy designed to reverse trends...An original regression analysis...This is an important book. For sociologists, it summarizes a dispersed literature and suggests issues for research...The authors raise the fundamental issue of entitlement to affordable housing and propose the kind of policy necessary to reverse current trends. --Judith J. Friedman, Contemporary Sociology Certainly Gilderbloom & Appelbaum have not shirked their perceived responsibility in facing an important social problem. Well-researched, with a 27-page bibliography, "Rethinking Rental Housing" serves as a fine reference and a commentary on an issue that must receive increasing attention. In an election year it is wise reading for those concerned on all levels and for those in the private sector who seek a realistic view of the current situation. --Diana Ayres, The Houston Post It is an excellent review of the rental housing crisis and potential solutions. It is important you have engaged the debate regarding the "non-market housing alternatives" that The Enterprise Foundation works so hard to enact. --James Rouse, Chairman of the Enterprise Foundation Rethinking Rental Housing has 43 pages of notes and references. The authors are scholars with practical experience in urban problems. New light is shed by the research, the professional analysis of it and by the authors' innovative proposals. --Robert Sollen, The Independent John Gilderbloom and Richard Appelbaum, academic sociologists and progressive housing activists, have made major contributions to the revived debate over American housing policy and also to the way in which social scientists view housing and housing policy research...They offer empirical data refuting key market- based assumptions and offer progressive policy proposals...This books offers guidance in the post-Reagan era of the progressive housing movement. --Dennis Keating, Shelterforce Rethinking Rental Housing is uniquely useful because it recognizes, and rejects this common premise--and goes on to map out an alternative course of action. --Harold Henderson, Planning It's easily the most significant piece on housing policy written in the last 30 years. Finally is examined the unquestioned assumptions on which 40 years of postwar housing policy has been based and finds that the emperor governing American housing policy is stark naked. Gilderbloom & Appelbaum strip away the faulty and fictional basis for a national housing policy and offer in its stead a sound, comprehensive, and rational program to guide American housing policy into the 21st century. They offer the 1st effective approach to solving the growing problem of housing affordability. --Daniel Lauber, Past President American Planning Association Gilderbloom and Appelbaum have provided us with an exhaustive and penetrating study of rental housing in the United States. They go beyond the usual preoccupation with market factors to demonstrate the social & political processes which determine the availability of rental housing. In the process, they make clear that the problem of housing is essentially a sociological problem; it is rooted in social processes, and it has large effects on social life. Anyone who wants to understand the growing crisis in rental housing in America will want to read this book --Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward, Regulating the Poor This book is a compelling debunking of many of the myths which surround the debate over housing subsidies and policy. By carefully applying a research approach which considers the 'social' aspects of housing, rather than simply an abstract notion of its economic value, this work goes a long way toward humanizing and personalizing the debate over housing policy. Gilderbloom and Appelbaum's work will be a welcome relief from the steady drumbeat of 'conventional wisdom' which is so common today. Looking for facts instead of justifications for ideological positions reached decades ago has led the authors to conclusions which no housing advocate can or should ignore. --Barry Zigas, President, National Low Income Housing Coalition An impressive and important work. This book is a landmark in the discussion of rental housing in the U.S. It should be consulted by policymakers, read by housing activists, and assigned by professors. It makes clear how the real world of rental housing operates. --Derek Shearer, co-author of Economic Democracy Gilderbloom and Appelbaum have labored hard and earnestly in rethinking the problems of rental housing in the United States...commendable industry...Their list of references--spread over twenty-seven closely printed pages--on the subject of the rental housing market in the United States and related matters, includes not only materials from the 1970s and 1980s but also some items from as far back as the late 1940s and early 1950s thrown in for good measure. --Harry Frumerman, Book News Rethinking Rental Housing is a path-breaking analysis. It is a refreshing sign of new times in the social sciences in the United States, and raises a host of significant questions about how housing markets operate in cities and offers answers that regularly conflict with conventional social science wisdom...Gilderbloom and Appelbaum should be congratulated for providing the kind of research that can guide progressive policymakers, should they arise in local communities, in taking the actions necessary for the solution of the housing crisis. Moreover, their work shows the value of a broad sociological approach to urban problems that takes into account not only the basic economic dimensions of the urban crisis but also the social and political dimensions. --Joe Feagin, author of the Urban Real Estate Game Rethinking Rental Housing should be required reading for every planner and elected official involved in housing policy. And all planning students would be wise to read this volume if they really want to understand the dynamics of the housing crisis with which they will have to struggle during the coming decade. --Journal of the American Planning Association Rethinking Rental Housing is an important book dealing with this critical social problem. It is well conceived, researched, and written. At the same time it challenges some of the time-honored assumptions of traditional urban sociology, economics, and geography. This book is a sign of new times in urban sociological thinking...this is a book well worth the attention of urbanists. It distinguishes itself from a large share of works in the "new" urban sociology by its dedication to the data at hand...it is an admirable piece of work. --Mark La Gory Social Forces Rethinking Rental Housing is a unique & invaluable guide for everyone concerned with housing needs: local and national elected and appointed officials, grassroots groups, church groups who consider affordable housing to be part of their ministry, academic institutions offering urban planning and policy programs, and individuals who are looking for realistic solutions to a very real problem...brings the skills of sociology to the issue of rental housing markets with commanding vitality. --Gracia Berry Urban Resources "they have carefully researched their subjects and offer concrete first steps toward achieving their goals." --Joan Crowder Santa Barbara News Press "...this first-rate study of rental housing in today's US" --Cooperative Economic News Service "...this clearly spelled out analytical position, the book is both challenging and pioneering and deserves a wide readership, particularly among neoclassical economists!" --Journal of Urban Affairs

Review # 2 was written on 2020-01-30 00:00:00 Frank Greces This book is really two separate backs: a leftist attempt to justify state intervention in rental markets, and a more technocratic list of solutions to increases in rent during the 1970s. I am certainly more predisposed towards free-market solutions than the authors; nevertheless, I found this book interesting if not persuasive. The authors assert that rental housing, rather than being priced competitively, is governed by a price-fixing landlord oligopoly. Thus, increasing housing supply alone will not bring down rents. This argument is supported by a regression analysis that addresses differences between various cities' rents in 1980. The most important factors are median regional income (affecting demand) and single-family housing cost (affecting landlords' cost of doing business). However, new construction and vacancy rates, according to the authors, have little independent affect on housing prices. By contrast, the amount of units held by landlords with over ten units is a more significant factor (though not as significant as housing costs and incomes). The authors accordingly conclude that even though demand affects rent, supply does not. Somehow, landlords are able to fix prices even if supply increases. Thus, rent cannot become affordable without massive government intervention. There are a number of possible problems with this argument: *As a theoretical matter, how can demand matter when supply doesn't? If a cartel can fix prices, shouldn't it be able to do so regardless of demand? Indeed, the authors admit that where vacancy rates are high enough, rents actually go down- for example, in Houston during the "oil patch recession" of the mid-1980s. *If landlords could fix rents, the correlation between the number of units held by the very largest landlords (who can presumably fix prices more easily) and a city's rents should be higher than the correlation between rents and the number of units held by smaller professional landlords (i.e. landlords with over 10 units). But if I read the authors' study correctly, the percentage of units held by landlords with over 10 units correlates more with high rents than the percentage of units held by landlords with over 50 units. Of course, an alternative explanation for these correlations is that tenants are simply willing to pay more for units held by more professional landlords. (I know I am!) *The authors speculated that rental conditions would get worse because of the 1986 tax reform, because tax reform would remove incentives for rental investment. Similarly, the authors worry that overly severe capital gains taxes might "have the effect of reducing the incentive to construct rental housing." But if supply is irrelevant to rents, why should investment matter? *The authors admit that rental housing is not particularly profitable, and that rental income alone is not enough to balance most landlords' budgets without federal subsidies and tax loopholes. But if landlords can fix prices, how can rents be too low to cover expenses? *Residential real estate, though more concentrated than nonrental housing, is not all that concentrated by the standards of American industry. According to the authors, only 13% of rental housing is held by landlords with 50 or more units (a group that may include quite a few landlords, depending on the region). *And although the authors could not have known this in the 1980s, we now know that regions where zoning is extremely restrictive and construction lags behind job growth (such as northern California) tend to be extremely expensive, which suggests that housing supply is in fact very important. The authors even try to defend rent control, asserting that cities with rent control have not experienced declines in rental construction. But the authors concede that this is true only because most such laws usually exempt new construction. In other words, rent control is harmless only when it is toothless. The only real result of such laws is to redistribute income from long term tenants (who pay controlled rents) to newer tenants who do not. (The authors defend this situation by asserting without much explanation that the former group is poorer - but it may be the case that poor people often have more unstable lives and thus are more likely to move often). At the end of the book, the authors propose a variety of less obviously controversial fixes. The authors propose that rather than (a) building more nasty housing projects or (b) subsidizing private landlords, government should subsidize nonprofit cooperative housing that actually gives tenants a partial ownership interest in return for limiting their right to profit on resale of their units - certainly an interesting idea.