O
n Monday, The Washington Post announced a new assignment for Rachel Siegel, who will now cover the economics of housing and real estate. This is a significant move as housing affordability has become a crisis in many cities and is a major concern for voters as the election approaches. The COVID-19 pandemic had a profound impact on both residential and commercial real estate markets, and additional factors such as soaring mortgage rates and new fees for brokers have added to the instability.

    Rachel's coverage will provide readers with a comprehensive understanding of the housing crisis and its causes, as well as breaking news on how and where people will live and work in the future. She has a strong background in this area, having covered the Federal Reserve for the past four years, during which time she documented the steepest rise in inflation and interest rates in a generation with insight and creativity. She has also demonstrated a focus on real estate, even before inflation pushed rent and mortgage rates skyward, as evidenced by her coverage of empty office buildings in Austin and vacant labs in Cambridge, Mass., as well as her exploration of an "urban doom loop."

    Before her current role, Rachel covered breaking news for Financial through the early stages of the pandemic. She joined The Post as a Metro intern in 2017 and wrote one of her favorite stories about a man who drives shuttle buses for some of D.C.'s most vulnerable residents. Rachel studied history at Yale, where she was also an editor at the Yale Daily News.

    Rachel is based in Washington, D.C., where she enjoys hosting dinner parties, hiking with her large, floppy dog, Clouseau, and visiting her friends in The Post's foreign bureaus. She will begin her new assignment on October 1.