During the Trump Administration, liberals sometimes criticized conservatives for being anti-anti-Trump: that is, not directly championing Trump's more obnoxious behaviour, but devoting their energies to criticizing people who criticized him.Similarly, I've seen some articles recently that were … [Read more...]
Would the Vienna strategy work here?
Progressives often argue that American cities should imitate Vienna's 1920s strategy of building enormous amounts of public housing while controlling rents paid to private landlords. But a look at the birth of Vienna's public housing system shows why that system is not easily replicated.A … [Read more...]
Is affordability just, “You get what you pay for”?
In a tweet this week, the Welcoming Neighbors Network recommended that pro-housing advocates keep supply-and-demand arguments in their back pockets and emphasize simpler housing composition arguments:https://twitter.com/WNNProHousing/status/1582157909827653636This advice makes an … [Read more...]
How big is the housing shortage?
Land for sale. Photo: appaloosa (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)Two teams of researchers recently released estimates of the U.S. housing shortage - and they differ by a factor of five. Is the national shortage 20 million homes or just 4 million? With a range that big, both published by pro-housing groups, … [Read more...]
Long-term renters ARE short-term renters (maybe)
One reason local governments are often hostile to Airbnb and similar home-sharing websites is that politicians believe that the interests of short-term renters and long-term renters are opposed- that is, that Airbnb wastes housing units that could be used by long-term renters. This claim is of … [Read more...]
Review: Homelessness is a Housing Problem
In Homelessness is a Housing Problem, Prof. Gregg Colburn and data scientist Clayton Page Aldern seek to answer the question: why is homelessness much more common in some cities than in others?They find that only two factors are significant: 1) overall rents and 2) rental vacancy rates. Where … [Read more...]
Reasons to be a Census skeptic
Over the past week, the press was chock full of 2020-style headlines like "Census Bureau Confirms Pandemic Exodus from SF." That's because according to the Census Bureau, virtually every urban county in the U.S. (even urban counties in growing metros like Dallas and Atlanta) lost population between … [Read more...]
Do HOAs justify zoning?
At a recent webinar, Prof. Christopher Serkin of Vanderbilt Law School made an interesting argument. He pointed out that a) Sun Belt cities tend to have less restrictive zoning than northern cities; b) Sun Belt cities also have more homeowners' associations (HOAs) with restrictive rules; and … [Read more...]