I study whether Los Angeles citywide discontinuous increases in real estate transfer taxes aimed at preventing homelessness and funding affordable housing affect housing supply outcomes in the construction industry. I discover significant responses to the tax reform in the local housing market, in terms of volume sold at prices below the taxation threshold, and the quantities of units sold. I assemble a novel dataset of building permits, using AI-powered textual analysis of permit descriptions to extract granular information on construction activity. With a plausibly exogenous variation in exposure to the tax reform in LA county, I explore a real estate market channel through which the tax reform may affect housing construction. The tax’s primary effect was to broadly suppress construction activity rather than shift development toward affordability or multi-family housing. Luxury homeowners increasingly opted to remodel rather than sell, exacerbating supply constraints. These results challenge the assumption that taxing high-end housing aids affordability. 

I explore the temporal dynamics of localized policy intervention by examining adjacent counties subject to differing levels of pandemic-related restrictions. Specifically, I find that the imposition of an additional workplace closure measure in a given month is initially associated with a transitory suppression of housing price growth relative to a neighboring counterpart. However, this negative effect does not persist; over time, the trajectory reverses, and a positive adjustment in house price change emerges in the subsequent months.