Traces how locally induced housing cost increases led US federal policy-makers to toss out the safeguards against lending excesses that had been put in place during the 1930s. This history of these issues considers gentrification, environmentalism, sprawl, anti-sprawl movements, and more, and specifies thirteen changes to policies at the federal, state, and local levels to provide better and less expensive urban housing, desirable neighborhoods, and thriving workplaces across the country.