This debate is important because if we're wasting our time on pushing for zoning reform when everything is just financing... that matters!

Here's why I think zoning and other permitting/regulatory constraints are important to focus on

/thread

https://twitter.com/talmonsmith/status/1904558851271115217

Permitting and regulatory requirements are essentially costless to fix. I could ctrl-F any zoning code in the country and easily delete the minimum lot size reqs/parking minimums.

Rates are different! The Fed doesn't have a mandate to care about housing starts.

I like @MattBruenig's piece on Abundance today and I wanted to offer my two cents of what connects housing, energy, and transit projects under one umbrella.

/thread First, all of these are land use issues! The pathologies I reported on in housing are evident on energy and transit, despite the vast differences in the underlying technologies, financing issues and political valences.

Sorry to just talk MY book but...

This has been a problem with this discourse from the beginning. People like @RoKhanna read "investors" and assume it means institutional investors/PE but that's not what the cited research says!

Thread.

https://twitter.com/RoKhanna/status/1900398909744456169

Redfin defines investors as ANY institution or business that purchases residential real estate.

But the bill @RoKhanna points to only focuses on cases where the investor's assets exceed $100 million! Which is NOT the majority of investors he says are distorting sub-markets.

New >> California and New York are projected to lose up to 8 electoral votes in 2030. Texas and Florida are projected to gain 8.

If Kamala Harris had to compete with that map, even winning Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin wouldn’t have saved her. Population migration to red states from blue ones isn’t an act of God, it’s the direct result of failed housing policies in Democratic led states.

New >> I went to Minneapolis to find the fake environmentalists -- instead I met a bunch of real ones.

On the culture war brewing inside environmentalism:

theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/… The housing crisis is dividing the environmental coalition. The pressure to build is coming into conflict with laws and values skeptical of development.

In Minneapolis, residents have overturned years of pro-housing laws by suing under a '70s environmental law.

New >> In 2020 DC planted 35 trees on a small, publicly owned hill, kicking off one of the strangest controversies I've come across when reporting on local government.

theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/… The first I heard about the trees is when Ward 8 Councilmember Trayon White introduced an emergency resolution to remove three trees in his ward.

The argument? Apparently the trees constituted a public safety risk and could negatively impact property values.

The American love affair with homeownership needs to come to an end.

theatlantic.com/newsletters/ar… The article is long, so I'm going to pull out just a few points into this thread.

Some problems are conceptually difficult — improving underperforming schools, helping people heal from traumatic life events — but homelessness isn’t one of them.

We know how to solve the crisis — so why don’t we?

theatlantic.com/magazine/archi… First, rebuttals of the common beliefs that homelessness is *caused* by mental illness, drug abuse, the weather, or social programs.

New >> Three rules for thanksgiving: Don’t bring up politics, religion, or housing policy.

theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/… New research from @ClaytonNall, @CSElmendorf, and @stan_okl indicates that 30-40 percent of people that building new homes would *increase* the cost of housing!

A few responses to some of the twitter hubbub around my article!

theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/… First, I want to say that the heated conversation replicates many of the problems I address in my article — namely how unrepresentative the people engaging on twitter are.

New >> Fake democracy meetings aren't going to save the climate.

theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/… Environmental justice advocates and their congressional allies are rightly concerned about the harm climate change is doing and will continue to do to marginalized communities.

But performatively democratic processes won't save them.

New >> Is Marc Andreessen a NIMBY?
theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/… Yesterday, I came across a peculiar public comment, signed by Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen and Marc Andreessen, violently opposing updating the Town of Atherton's proposal to make it possible to build multi-family housing in America's richest zip code.

Ambitious plan from Team Biden on housing out this morning!

Their hope is that these reforms will lead to the construction of 1.5 million homes over the next 5 years. Still digging into the details but a few things I want to draw out:

whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/… Transportation Department is prioritizing density and transit-oriented-development as it disburses discretionary funds from the bipartisan infrastructure package. Not entirely new but it appears this could go beyond just a few billion dollars.

A HUD senior advisor wrote an entire thread on the causes of homelessness without mentioning the housing supply crisis one time.

He then blames the tech elite for being willing to pay high housing costs and advocates that they refuse en masse. What?

https://twitter.com/Richard_S_Cho/status/1525484851377455105

Someone should send this book to HUD. cc: @ColburnGregg @compatibilism

ucpress.edu/book/978052038…

New >> In 2020, a lot of people were making a lot of predictions.

Some of it was helpful, much of it was wrong.

In my first for @TheAtlantic I look back at some of the predicted catastrophes that weren't. (Thread)

theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/… Before we get into the why, I want to point out that there hasn't been much of a reckoning about how wrong some of these extremely prominent predictions were.

The eviction "tsunami" which was predicted to be up to 40 million people? Evictions are below trend from pre-pandemic.

New >> When I came across this TikTok in my feed, I was vaguely annoyed at the disdain it held for new buildings.

Then I looked into it and realized that the "gentrification building" the creator was complaining about was actually affordable housing. vox.com/22650806/gentr… The development has 245 units, is named after a prominent local Black leader, and was praised by locals for getting rid of the old building that used to have "mice and bugs."

My latest piece tries to answer two big questions:

What is gentrification? And what role does it play in an urban landscape where most neighborhoods experience very little racial or income integration?

vox.com/22629826/gentr… One of the hard things I try to suss out in this piece is how to ethically integrate neighborhoods.

This means both integrating high-income white enclaves and also integrating predominantly POC, disinvested neighborhoods.

New >> People want someone to blame for today's dumpster fire of a housing market.

It feels terrible to be priced out of the market as a new homebuyer and BlackRock is a convenient scapegoat.

But the real culprits aren't on Wall Street. (Thread)
vox.com/22524829/wall-… Institutional investors (like BlackRock) are an absolutely tiny part of the market.

They own around 300,000 single family units as of 2019. For context, there are 15 million one-unit detached single family home rentals and 80 million detached single family homes total.

New >> Is there a housing bubble? Maybe.

Does the answer to that question really change what the long term solutions are to our housing crises? No.

vox.com/22464801/housi… The case for calling the housing market a bubble:
- home prices have shot up
- the market's "frenzy"

@RobertJShiller described this aspect of bubbles to me as "a sort of epidemic of an idea, of a feeling of what one should do with one’s life or leisure or what’s cool."

New >> Yesterday, @glennkelman tweeted out a bizarre anecdote about a woman promising to name her first born after a homeowner if they picked her bid.

It showcases how housing shortages can open the door to discrimination and fair housing violations.

vox.com/2021/5/26/2245… In an extremely unbalanced market where sellers may get several offers well above asking price, they have the to choose between similar bids with non-price metrics, for instance how much they like the buyers (often based on a personal cover letter).

New >> I talked to Amy Klobuchar about her bipartisan plan to tackle the housing supply crisis.

vox.com/22382212/housi… While Biden's recently announced grant program will provide $$ to localities who remove exclusionary zoning policies, Klobuchar's program helps them get there.