Keen On

At the debate last night, Kamala Harris opened her remarks by talking about the need for America to fix its housing crisis. And crisis it is, at least according to Jerusalem Demsas, a staff writer at The Atlantic who has written extensively on the increasing scarcity and rising cost of American housing. In her new collection of essays, On the Housing Crisis, Demsas suggests that the best way to confront this crisis is to aggressively construct new housing. Build Baby Build, in other words. And, for Demsas at least, the sooner the better.Jerusalem Demsas is a staff writer at The Atlantic where she is an established voice on the housing crisis and local democracy. Her writing spans issues from infrastructure, labor economics, and federalism to race, gender, mobility and the politics of exclusion. She was recognized for her work in 2023 by the American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME) with the ASME Next Award for journalists under 30. Demsas is also a Visiting Fellow with the Center for Economy and Society at