It made me think of housing more like healthcare. I didn't feel optimistic that this crisis is going to be solved any time soon.

The great writing's no surprise, as Conor Dougherty honed his skills at The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. Rather, it's meant to inform and it does that well, with authoritative and easy-to-read writing. This book doesn't attempt to shove 'solutions' down our throat. How did it get this way? 'Golden Gates' gives you the answer, told through the stories of real people with compelling stories that illustrate the problems. Or we dump our paychecks into rent, hoping one day we'll be able to participate in America's great housing scheme.

We either dump our paychecks into expensive mortgages, because that's what we've been taught is the financially responsible thing to do. Like it or not, America's housing crisis impacts us all, but most of us don't think about it all that deeply.

With propulsive storytelling and ground-level reporting, New York Times journalist Conor Dougherty chronicles America's housing crisis from its West Coast epicenter, peeling back the decades of history and economic forces that brought us here and taking readers inside the activist movements that have risen in tandem with housing costs.

The adage that California is a glimpse of the nation's future has become a cautionary tale. Nowhere is this more visible than in the San Francisco Bay Area, where fleets of private buses ferry software engineers past the tarp-and-plywood shanties of the homeless. Today, however, punishing rents and the increasingly prohibitive cost of ownership have turned housing into the foremost symbol of inequality and an economy gone wrong. A Time 100 Must-Read Book of 2020 - A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice - California Book Award Silver Medal in Nonfiction - Finalist for The New York Public Library Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism - Named a top 30 must-read Book of 2020 by the New York Post - Named one of the 10 Best Business Books of 2020 by Fortune - Named A Must-Read Book of 2020 by Apartment Therapy - Runner-Up General Nonfiction: San Francisco Book Festival - A Planetizen Top Urban Planning Book of 2020 - Shortlisted for the Goddard Riverside Stephan Russo Book Prize for Social Justice 'Tells the story of housing in all its complexity.' -NPR Spacious and affordable homes used to be the hallmark of American prosperity.

Golden gates conor dougherty