Peter Salins's The Ecology of Housing Destruction and Salins's co‐authored work with Gerald Mildner, Scarcity by Design, provide fascinating evidence of the unintentionally harmful effects of urban policies, and their role as catalysts for further harmful policies designed to ameliorate previous harms. The result is a web of counterproductive regulations confronting bewildered policymakers and frustrated citizens. In his The Federal Government and Urban Housing, on the other hand, R. Allen Hays not only misses the existence of these complex policy dynamics, (...) but fails to assess accurately the consequences of the housing policies he favors. His work does, however, offer useful insights into the nature of policy decisions. (shrink)