Yesterday, I participated in the Federalist Society National Lawyers Convention panel on "Socialism or Sensible Protections? Zoning, Rent Control, and the Housing Crisis." Although I proposed this topic to the Federalist Society Executive Committee on Property Rights (of which I am a member), I did not pick the title. The panel wasn't really about socialism, except tangentially. But it certainly was about zoning, rent control, and housing! The other participants were James Burling (Pacific Legal Foundation, author of Nowhere to Live: The Hidden Story of America's Housing Crisis), Prof. Peter Byrne (Georgetown), and Prof. Sara Bronin (George Washington University, author of Key to the City: How Zoning Shapes Our World). My own presentation was partly based on my recent article "The Constitutional Case Against Exclusionary Zoning" (coauthored with Josh Braver). We also published a shorter, nonacademic, version in the Atlantic.
