Geetika Nagpal's job market paper, written with Sahil Gandhi, shows that a 2017 increase in allowed floor area ratio in Mumbai had a tremendous impact on affordability by accidentally improving the economics of smaller apartments.(Note that the authors are updating the paper, so some of the … [Read more...]
Responsive Cities in the arena: Brazil floods
Update: Support the recovery work of Responsive Cities Institute by donating via PayPal.Last year, Alain Bertaud and I traveled to Porto Alegre and spent time learning from the excellent architects and urbanists at the Responsive Cities Institute - you can think of it as a practitioner-led, … [Read more...]
Market Affordable
Check out my new post at Metropolitan Abundance Project:How “inclusionary” are market-rate rentals? In metropolitan Baltimore, a family of four making $73,000 in 2024 qualifies for 60% AMI affordable housing, where it would pay $1,825 per month for rent, utilities included. A third of new … [Read more...]
No Solutions, Just Tradeoffs
File under "sad", not under "surprising":We provide evidence of intensified discriminatory behavior by landlords in the rental housing market during the eviction moratoria instituted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using data collected from an experiment that involved more than 25,000 inquiries of … [Read more...]
The sudden death of the American condo
Condos are disappearing. They persist now mainly in pre-2010 buildings. Among multifamily homes built in the 2020s, just 1 in 25 is owner-occupied. What happened?Frasier's Seattle condo wouldn't be built todayI pulled American Community Survey data via IPUMS to get a better grasp of the … [Read more...]
The urban economics of sprawl
Should YIMBYs support or oppose greenfield growth? Two basic values animate most YIMBYs: housing affordability and urbanism. Sprawl puts those values into tension.https://twitter.com/salimfurth/status/1775556643909935597Let's take as a given that sprawl is "bad" urbanism, mediocre at … [Read more...]
And the Oscar for best paper goes to…
A friend asked what are the best papers supporting land use liberalization. That's a broad question, but here are some of my answers.AffordabilityThe basic case for zoning reform, across the political spectrum, is that the rent is too damn high. Michael Manville, Michael Lens, and Paavo … [Read more...]
Milton’s Zoning Referendum
"Wow!" the reporter said, "I knew you from Milton, but I didn't know you were from East Milton. Tell me what it feels like?"Sport sites in East Milton: Sgroiball and sleddingWell, until last week it was not that dramatic. East Milton is an old railroad-commuter neighborhood favored by … [Read more...]