Response to Comments on "Supply Skepticism Revisited"

We thank Anthony Damiano, Tim Helm, Cameron Murray, and Clayton Nall for their thoughtfulresponses to our article “Supply Skepticism Revisited.” We also thank the editors of Housing Policy Debate for bringing the “debate” back into the journal. We hoped our article would help to provide a clearer definition of the issues and a firmer understanding of both what existing researchshows and what it has yet to answer. This back-and-forth only helps to further those goals.

Our article asks what recent evidence shows about the effects additions to housing supplyhave on rents at both the citywide and neighborhood levels, the effects of that new supply ondisplacement and neighborhood change, and how these effects vary across locations and hous-ing types. We focus on the considerable volume of new research released since we published ouroriginal “Supply Skepticism” article in 2019 (Been et al., 2019). Since that time, concerns about housing affordability pressures and the role land use regulations play in rising rents and priceshave only grown, and state and local policymakers are starting to respond by trying to relax various barriers to development. Yet many continue to resist new housing and land use changesthat would facilitate new housing. So we thought it would be useful to revisit the evidence andtry to “bridge the divide between arguments made by supply skeptics and the research thatexplores the effects of increased housing supply” (Been et al., 2024).