From rising rents to high interest rates to limited supply, housing policy is a central issue in the 2024 election cycle. Brookings Mountain West, in partnership with the Lied Center for Real Estate, is hosting a community forum examining the local, state, and federal impacts of Nevada’s housing challenges. 

“Nevada’s Housing Policy Landscape: Data, Analysis, and Policy Solutions” will take place on Monday, Sept. 23, in the Greenspun Hall Auditorium on the UNLV campus, and is free and open to the public to attend. 

Faculty from UNLV’s Lied Center for Real Estate, professors Shawn McCoy and Nicholas Irwin, along with housing and urban policy professor emeritus Arthur C. Nelson will present new research and recommend policy actions from three housing studies. 

“Crafting effective policy to address Nevada’s housing affordability needs requires a better understanding of the data at a more local level,” said Irwin, research director at the Lied Center for Real Estate. “Metro-level averages can hide much of the important differences in the housing market across the Las Vegas Valley and political leaders may be unaware of the housing needs within their own districts.”

In their housing study, “Investors & Affordability in the Housing Market: District-Level Analysis in Southern Nevada,” McCoy and Irwin use data from a variety of sources to provide an analysis of Nevada’s housing market with attention to investor-owned properties in the single-family home and rental markets.

“The Lied Center’s efforts to translate housing market data from the aggregate to the neighborhood level will provide a clearer picture of the market and firmer footing for legislators to enact policy,” said Irwin.

Looking at the economic effects of the pandemic on the housing market, Aaron Klein, Senior Fellow and Miriam K. Carliner Chair in Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution, suggests in his study “Examining Housing Inflation Post COVID,” that housing’s unique role as an asset class purchased by the Federal Reserve may be a factor explaining the rise in the cost of housing.

Arthur C. Nelson, professor emeritus at the University of Arizona, looks ahead in his housing study “Nevada’s Predictable Household Train Wreck and What to Do About It.” His report uses the census headship rate concept to estimate the number of unformed households, finding that Nevada is "missing" nearly 60,000 households due to the limited stock of affordable housing. Nelson projects total household demand in Nevada to 2040 which, together with currently missing households, establishes overall housing needs for the state and its counties. 

Following these presentations, two panels of experts will discuss improving Nevada’s housing policy landscape. 

The first panel will feature national voices discussing our housing finance system, moderated by Klein. He will be joined by David Sanchez, acting chief of staff for the U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development, Susan Wachter, professor of real estate & finance at the University of Pennsylvania, and Elizabeth Carroll, executive director for agency relations at JPMorgan Chase Home Lending. 

The second panel, led by David Damore, executive director of Brookings Mountain West and The Lincy Institute, will discuss opportunities to improve access to housing in Nevada and feature the voices of Shanti Abedin, vice president of housing and community development at National Fair Housing Alliance, Shawn McCoy, director of the Lied Center for Real Estate at UNLV, and Dagny Stapleton, community housing administrator for Clark County.