Two law professors, Joshua Braver of Wisconsin and Ilya Somin of George Mason, are coming out with an article suggesting that exclusionary zoning (by which they mean, rules such as apartment bans and minimum lot sizes that are designed to exclude people less affluent than an area’s current residents) violate the Takings Clause of the […]
LATEST POSTS
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 … [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 … [Read More...]
Ruminating on Sheetz
As anticipated by the “radical agreement” among the parties and justices at oral argument, the Supreme Court’s recently released decision in Sheetz v. County of El Dorado put to rest the question of whether legislatively-imposed land use permit conditions are … [Read More...]
The sudden death of the American condo
By Salim Furth
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 … [Read More...]
The urban economics of sprawl
By Salim Furth
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 … [Read More...]
YIMBY wins again in Vermont
By Eli Kahn
On March 25, the city council of Burlington, VT, voted to pass a major zoning reform that one observer of Vermont politics (X.com’s pseudonymous @NotaBot) compared to the celebrated overhaul of Minneapolis’s zoning code.Burlington - the largest city in … [Read More...]
And the Oscar for best paper goes to…
By Salim Furth
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. … [Read More...]
Apples to apples housing cost comparisons
I recently ran across an interesting discussion on Twitter about housing costs. Someone praised Chicago's low housing costs, and someone else responded that because Chicago's most troubled neighborhoods are so unusually dangerous and disinvested (compared to … [Read More...]
Poor People Move Too
It is well known that rent control is not particularly effective in controlling rents; cities like New York and San Francisco have rent control and yet are quite expensive. Supporters of rent control, however, often argue that rent control is valuable for a … [Read More...]
Milton’s Zoning Referendum
By Salim Furth
"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 … [Read More...]
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Top Posts
- The sudden death of the American condo
- Ranking State Land Use Regulations
- How Realistic Are the Cities of Fallout?
- Is zoning unconstitutional?
- Why do condos even exist?
- New Report on Massachusetts’s Building Code Confirms: It's Harder to Build Energy-Efficient Housing When You Don't Let People Build Anything
- Ruminating on Sheetz
- Subsidizing Suburbia: A forgotten history of how the government created suburbia
- No, 'New Urbanism' And 'Smart Growth' Are Not The Same
- The urban economics of sprawl