Housing

One of the far-too-often repeated statements made by urban, coastal elites is that one’s future cannot be found in the countryside. These city-centered Americans often believe that economic growth, jobs, and the nation’s future can only be found in big cities and that rural America remains a dead-end, brain-drained world with minimal opportunity.  read more »

Sidewalks have long been considered to be essential parts of America’s social and communal infrastructure. As Jane Jacobs recognized many decades ago, sidewalks are “the main public places of the city’’ and ‘‘its most vital organs.’’ For Jacobs and subsequent scholars of urbanity, sidewalks are active sites of socialization and allowing for open interactions and accidental encounters; they also serve as conduits to easily connect people to their communities as well as create spaces of contention and conflict.  read more »

From the ancient world to modern times, the class of small property owners have constituted the sine qua non of democratic self-government. But today this class is under attack by what Aristotle described as an oligarchia, an unelected power elite that controls the political economy for its own purposes.  read more »

The Urban Reform Institute has published the 2021 edition of Demographia United States Housing Affordability, which rates middle-income housing affordability in the third quarter 2020.  read more »

In the middle of October, something astonishing happened: the Government and the National Party held a joint news conference to announce that they had agreed on the way to make housing more affordable.  read more »

Sacramento politicians and the urban growth lobby they so diligently serve have created a narrative that there is something very wrong with living in (or wanting to live in) a single-family neighborhood. Single-family neighborhoods are -- so the narrative goes -- “racist,” “immoral,” and “evil.”  read more »

The long-standing aspiration for home ownership has intensified during the pandemic and with the popularity of remote work. For many, it is no longer necessary to live conveniently close to work, as more and more employees are able to reduce the number of commuting days. This new hybrid model has spurred an increase in demand for housing with more space, both within the house and in the yard.  read more »

My latest column is now online at Governing magazine. It’s a further discussion of Howard Husock’s book The Poor Side of Town: And Why We Need It. For those of you who weren’t able to check out the recording of our AEI book event, this piece discusses some of the key points.

Below is an excerpt from the column:  read more »

Since 1932, Congress has passed dozens of laws aimed at making rental housing and homeownership more affordable. Many of these laws created new programs while few of the older programs were abolished.  read more »

I spend entirely too much time listening to experts in business, government, and academia explain the economy in general and the property market in particular. Looking back, very few people who are purported to know how the economy works, based on empirical evidence, have successfully predicted the wild spikes and crashes over the years.  read more »