The break offers, as always, a good moment to step back from the noise and the treadmill of the week-to-week. As I’ve done in previous holiday columns, I think it is worth turning to a deeper question – thinking about housing as a system that unfolds over decades and not just quarters.  What does housing actually do for society, beyond providing shelter? For most of modern history, housing has been as much a public health intervention as an economic good. Indeed, the earliest housing policies in most places can be thought of as reactions by the wealth to the spillovers…

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