In many cities, poor people occupy valuable urban land close to downtown jobs, amenities, and transit. They can afford to live there because the housing stock in inner areas is usually older. If it hasn't been completely renovated, the result can be quite cheap, even if the land is pretty … [Read more...]
Will congestion pricing hurt cities?
In a series of recent posts, Tyler Cowen has taken the view that congestion prices in major downtowns are a bad idea. This is what one might expect of a typical New Jerseyan, but not a typical economist.The writing in these posts is a bit squirrelly (or is it Straussian?), but as best I can make … [Read more...]
New Report on Massachusetts’s Building Code Confirms: It’s Harder to Build Energy-Efficient Housing When You Don’t Let People Build Anything
Photo by Cloris Ying on UnsplashThe state of Massachusetts lets municipal governments choose how strictly they regulate energy efficiency in buildings. Fifty-two of the state’s municipalities use the base building code, whereas 299, including Boston, have opted into the stricter “stretch” … [Read more...]
Rhode Island’s housing process package
"Renting in Providence puts city councilors in precarious situations." That was the Providence Journal's leading headline a few days ago, as the legislature waited for Governor Daniel McKee to sign a pile of housing-related bills (Update: He signed them all). Rhode Island doesn't have a superstar … [Read more...]
On coexistence
One common NIMBY* argument is that new housing (or the wrong kind of new housing) will "destroy the neighborhood." For example, one suburban town's politicians fought zoning reform in New York by claiming that allowing multifamily housing "is a direct assault on the suburbs."Indeed, many people … [Read more...]
Detroit: LVT would fix that
In a recent Mackinac Policy conference, Detroit's Mayor Mike Dugan proposed *drum roll* a land value tax. Sort of. Mayor Dugan’s proposal would create separate tax rates for land and capital improvements (i.e. the buildings on top). Specifically, he wants to decrease the tax rate on buildings by … [Read more...]
What’s Scott Alexander asking, anyway?
In a pair of posts, Scott Alexander goads his mostly-YIMBY readers by claiming to believe that density is likely to increase prices.To quantify his readers' views, he laid out a thought experiment in a Google poll, the results of which we'll no doubt see in a few days. You can see the poll … [Read more...]
Cataloguing California’s Cornucopia of Land Use Legislation
The Terner Center for Housing Innovation at the University of California, Berkeley has released a policy brief summarizing the effect on housing production of the bewildering array of new housing laws California has enacted since 2016. A preliminary analysis of market effects of the new laws, … [Read more...]