I think such an important point that often gets lost is the idea that housing went from being a place for somebody to live to an investment and a primary wealth builder.

The book kind of talks about how that began in the 1970s, during the Great Inflation. It is a huge piece, because housing has kind of become our pension program, kind of become our inheritance program.

Property has always had a lot of wealth and inheritance tied up in it. So that’s not exactly new.

But in the Great Recession, there was a lot of talk about how people were using their home equity as an A.T.M. And so it’s really become this financial instrument. Not surprisingly, people defend that financial instrument the same way they defend themselves from higher taxes or whatnot.

What do you think is the most vexing takeaway from the book?

Whenever we think about a problem in America, for better or for worse, we always ask: What is the government doing about this or how can they help? And if the problem gets big enough, it starts to be talked about by presidential campaigns, schooling, health care — these pretty intimate things.

A lot of our housing policy is determined not at the federal level, but by a million city councils that, together, determine where, how and how much our shelter costs.

And this becomes something that resists solutions.

Many people who are interested in these big solutions don’t want to get involved in these very micro fights. Because you either have to pass laws that take power away from cities — which is upending a system that we’ve used since the beginning — or it’s getting involved in a fight one city council at a time, which resists any kind of dramatic solution.

So that kind of leads me to my last question: Do you have any hope for a broader fix?

What’s promising to me is that we are now having this conversation. Like all the Democratic presidential candidates have housing plans.