The best book on zoning and NIMBYism you’ve never read might well be The Housing Bias by Paul Boudreaux. The author is a law professor, but you’d be forgiven for thinking he’s a journalist. His writing is engaging - and occasionally funny – and he does what is unthinkable for many scholars: drives … [Read more...]
Why rents aren’t keeping up with house prices
Global house prices have been out of control for quite some time. This has helped to reduce economic growth, increase unemployment and was even diagnosed as the greatest cause of inequality in the developed world in a 2016 paper by Matthew Rognlie. However, rents have failed to show the same … [Read more...]
The Duplex: Gateway Drug to Urban Density
After over a century, Berkeley, California may be about to legalize missing middle housing - and it’s not alone. Bids to re-legalize gradual densification in the form of duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, and the like have begun to pick up steam over the last several years. In 2019, Oregon legalized … [Read more...]
Latest rent research
A recent paper by UCLA researchers discusses 2019-20 literature on the relationship between new construction and rents. The article discusses five papers; four of them found that new housing consistently lowers rents in nearby buildings.For example, Kate Pennington wrote a paper on the … [Read more...]
How YIMBYs used Ostrom to recruit conservatives
A major barrier to the market urbanist’s ability to make the case for building more housing is the question of aesthetics. When you refer to density in cities, it’s easy to picture large brutalist towers and the slum-like conditions that can be seen in much of the developing world. Of course, this … [Read more...]
Why Houston Isn’t An Argument for Zoning
Someone just posted a video on Youtube using Houston, Texas as an argument in favor of zoning. The logic of the video is: Houston is horrible; Houston has no zoning; therefore every city should have conventional zoning.This video and its logic are impressively wrong, for several reasons. … [Read more...]
What’s Wrong With Hong Kong?
One common argument against new housing is that the laws of supply and demand simply don’t apply to dense cities like New York, San Francisco ands Hong Kong, because new housing or upzoning might raise land prices.* After all (some people argue) Hong Kong is really dense and really … [Read more...]
Are increased levels of homeownership good for affordability? No… and yes.
For over a century, policymakers have argued that homeowners take better care of their neighborhood and are just generally more desirable in other ways. As early as 1917, the federal Labor Department created a propaganda campaign to encourage home ownership. And in 1925, Commerce Secretary Herbert … [Read more...]