Atlantic Journalist Yoni Applebaum Discusses his new Book STUCK in Conversation with New York Times Writer Binyamin Appelbaum

Atlantic journalist Yoni Appelbaum’s  STUCK: How the Privileged and the Propertied Broke the Engine of American Opportunity shows us that the decrease in affordable housing, rising inequality, and political polarization are all symptoms of a little remarked upon problem in American life: people aren’t moving–actually changing where they live–as much as they used to.  Both parties agree that Americans face a housing crisis. Republicans are blaming a rising number of immigrants competing for homes and pushing up prices. Democrats are attacking corporate greed, focusing on landlords fixing rental prices and private-equity firms snapping up single-family homes. But even as skyrocketing real estate prices have voters screaming for help, neither party is looking at the bigger picture.

The underlying problem is that America has stopped building enough housing where people want to live. Over the past fifty years, local communities—and progressive jurisdictions, in particular—have thrown up barriers to the construction of new housing, pricing themselves beyond the reach of most Americans. As more people compete for fewer homes, rising prices are leaving ordinary families with painful choices and no good options. What Americans often describe as an affordable-housing crisis is actually a mobility crisis. In his new history of American mobility, Appelbaum shows that for two centuries, Americans were uniquely free to move toward opportunity, giving individuals the chance to shape their lives and improve their fortunes. For the first time in history, if you didn’t like where you were born, you were free to move somewhere to reinvent yourself.  Appelbaum traces how racism, xenophobia, and class-based snobbery combined to produce a powerful set of new legal tools, allowing communities to exclude those they deemed undesirable. But he also shows how progressives eagerly took up these tools and used them to champion the empowerment of local communities, historic preservation, and the environment—to inadvertently devastating effect.

For every reader who is concerned about the trajectory of the country, Stuck provides a clear explanation of what’s gone wrong—and a straightforward plan for how to set it right.

Yoni Appelbaum is a deputy executive editor of The Atlantic and a social and cultural historian of the United States. Before joining The Atlantic, he was a lecturer on history and literature at Harvard University. He previously taught at Babson College and at Brandeis University, where he received his PhD in American history.

Binyamin Appelbaum is the lead writer on economics and business for The New York Times editorial board. He writes about public policy, often through the lens of economics. In recent years he has focused on issues including economic inequality, climate change and the housing crisis. Appelbaum examines what is broken and illuminates paths that might lead to a better place. He also happens to be Yoni’s brother.

Books will be available for sale by East City Bookshop. A book signing will follow the conversation.