On behalf of the Dallas Housing Coalition, Dallas Area Habitat for Humanity, Verdunity, and Options Real Estate, we hope you will join us to hear from Charles Marohn, the founder and president of Strong Towns, as he discusses his latest national bestseller, Escaping the Housing Trap: The Strong Towns Response to Escaping the Housing Trap. With decades of experience as a land use planner and civil engineer, Marohn is on a mission to help cities and towns become stronger and more prosperous. He spreads the Strong Towns message through in-person presentations, the Strong Towns Podcast, and his books and articles. In recognition of his efforts and impact, Planetizen named him one of the 15 Most Influential Urbanists of all time in 2017 and 2023.

Strong Towns: Escaping the Housing Trap

Housing is an investment. Investment prices must go up. Housing is shelter. When the price of shelter goes up, people experience distress.

This is the housing trap. It’s time to escape. This presentation introduces a first-of-its-kind discussion of the tension between housing as a financial product and housing as shelter. These insights will help local communities fight back against the current affordability housing crisis, and opt out of the boom and bust cycles that have typified housing in postwar America.

This presentation offers a serious, yet accessible, history of housing policy in the United States and explains how it led us to this point in time: where we face a market that is rigged against people who, only a few decades ago, could have been homeowners or stable, long-term renters. Only local change, on a neighborhood or city-wide scale, can begin to restore balance to the housing market.