Salim Furth

Salim Furth

More yachts than apartments

Sag Harbor, New York, has more yachts than apartments. To its credit, the local government took steps to allow one local landowner to replace a parking lot with affordable apartments intended for local service workers. But state law is so…

Federal legislative history

Housing policy expert Madeleine Marr dug into previously-written legislative histories of federal housing bills. She was kind enough to share her bibliography, including in parenthesis which housing laws are covered:

Understanding Indian regs & reforms

Two useful resources came across my desk this week. From Sargun Kaur and Bhuvana Anand, an analysis of recent building reforms in eight Indian states – not all of which succeeded in expanding the practically buildable space. They use a…

Vacancy chains – linked

Kudos to the Pew housing research team for successfully tracing a real-life moving chain in Washington, D.C. They started at the bottom, with a woman named Titi who was living in a homeless shelter, and traced six rounds of vacancies.…

Mayors matter

Via Kevin Lewis, a new paper in an influential econ journal demonstrates that mayoral elections have a large influence on housing supply outcomes. It also shows that developer’s political contributions pay off in ways that sound like corruption. Returns to…

Plymouth, Indiana

News from the outskirts of a small midwestern town: [Following up on a neighbor’s complaint,] Building Commissioner Dennis Manuwal reviewed the property and confirmed the shed, which sits just two feet from the property line, was in violation of city…