I was shocked -- pleasantly but genuinely shocked to see this housing story in Slate

If you haven't read yesterday's post about Olga Rosario, you ought to give it and the article I cite a look. Her story puts a human face on a major development project, reminds us of the happy endings these homes can provide. 

A couple of hours after we ran our piece, this popped up on Slate.

 I clicked the link ready to be disappointed, but it was not at all what I was expecting.

Consider the dimensions of the current discourse around housing. As homeowners fight off new housing construction in the name of protecting the aesthetics of their neighborhoods and their property values—which, it so happens, upholds long-standing race and class exclusion—the path forward for renters has become the subject of bitter dispute. The YIMBY camp, for “Yes In My Back Yard,” generally argues that upzoning will unleash constrained supply to meet backlogged demand, lowering prices. Other anti-YIMBY groupings contend that upzoning is a stalking horse for gentrification, and that unleashing market forces will only result in more housing for the wealthy and displacement for the poor. This is a simplification of the debate, as there are at least a dozen, if not more, sides to it.

Research generally shows that upzonings, particularly large ones, eventually result in additional housing and reduced rent growth. But the typical effects of upzoning are rather modest, especially in the short term. Because upzonings mostly rely on the private sector to get housing built, even in the most development-friendly locales, like Houston, developers don’t always build enough. In particular, developers overlook homes that are affordable for the low-income people who need it the most; these are less likely to be profitable. And in the absence of rent control, many renters won’t be able to afford private-market units—no matter how many of them are built.

In other words, the case for upzoning is relatively solid but deeply underwhelming as a standalone position. The upshot is that everyone is at least partly right: Upzoning can address the shortfall in supply. But it won’t come close to solving the housing crisis alone. Re-enter: public housing.

I don't necessarily agree with Denvir and Freemark's recommendations. I don't necessarily disagree. These are well argued approaches to complex problems and I'd need time to think about what they're laid out, though I suspect I'll find something to like.

Where I am in full agreement is with the framing. I have slogged my way through endless housing think pieces in Slate, Vox, the New York Times and all the usual suspects and other than this, I can't think of a goddamned one that acknowledged the complexity of the debate or conceded that people on all sides are making valid points.

It is difficult to describe how bad and unprofessional the discourse has been up to this point. What Denvir and Freemark have done should become the new template for these stories. I don't expect that it will, but then, I didn't expect Slate to run something like this.