Bookshelf

Alumni and faculty members who would like to have their books considered for this listing should contact Stacey Himmelberger, editor of Hamilton magazine. This list, which dates back to 2018, is updated periodically with books appearing alphabetically on the date of entry.

Nowhere to Live: The Hidden Story of America’s Housing Crisis by James S. Burling ’76

March 20, 2025

Tags Alumni Book

(Skyhorse Publishing, 2024).

For many families, homelessness is no longer someone else’s problem. It is right around the corner, a real threat in their own immediate future. The author goes on to maintain, “Our housing crisis is the result of a long history of government policies, court cases, and political manipulation. While these disparate causes make up a tangled web, they have one surprising root: the attack on private property rights. For more than a century, government policies and court decisions have attacked, undermined, and eroded private property rights. Whether it be exclusionary zoning, eminent domain abuse, rent control, or excessive environmental regulations, the cumulative impact of these assaults on private property is that it’s become increasingly difficult — or even impossible — to build adequate housing supplies to meet market demands. We are fast approaching a time when millions of typical Americans will, quite literally, have nowhere to live.”

Burling, who serves as vice president for legal affairs at Pacific Legal Foundation in Sacramento, Calif., takes readers through the history of how we got here. With stories going back to the Civil War, the early 20th century, and the “urban renewal” movement of the 1950s, Nowhere to Live reveals “how the government layered mistake upon mistake to create the current crisis. It also provides a way out: not by government fiat, but through the restoration of private property rights.”