housing
What a place to live costs and why: how much gets built, zoning, and who is blamed for the price.
FilterEveryone, all time64 from 26 people
- TP
Thomas Ptacek quoted
Security engineer; founder of Matasano Security and Latacora
Their wordsThe irony is that upzoning can actually get you high value for owners and low prices for buyers.
- 3 days earlier
- JC
John H. Cochrane quoted
Economist at the Hoover Institution
Their wordsSubsidies against fixed supply, like energy and housing, just drive prices up more.
- 8 days earlier
- NS
Noah Smith quoted
Economics writer; author of the Noahpinion newsletter
Our readingThe real estate bust began an era of crushed expectations that shows no sign of ending soon.
Their wordsThe reality is that the real estate bust inaugurated an era of crushed expectations that shows no sign of ending soon.
- 13 days earlier
- TE
Terence Eden quoted
British open-standards and open-source technologist
Their wordsPutting people into a tin-can with no windows, blank walls, and an infernal background hum will drive them mad.
↗Book Review: How to Build a Space Station by Jonathan Morrison ★★★⯪☆shkspr.mobi 1st of 3 in this piece
- TE
Terence Eden quoted
Their wordsThe fact that we don't have swarms of drones prefabbing houses in the relatively benign atmosphere of our planet should be evidence that maybe these claims aren't quite matched with reality.
↗Book Review: How to Build a Space Station by Jonathan Morrison ★★★⯪☆shkspr.mobi 2nd of 3 in this piece
- 3 days earlier
- EA
Emily Atkin quoted
Climate journalist; founded HEATED in 2019 after reporting…
Their wordssellers and agents are incentivized not to know about climate risk or communicate it. Everyone involved only needs the property to look safe long enough to pass it along
↗The open houses at the edge of disasterheated.world 2nd of 2 in this piece
- RS
Richard Stallman quoted
Founder of the Free Software Movement and the GNU Project
Their wordsFinland made great progress towards eliminating homelessness by giving people houses which they could feel was home. Alas, right-wing government has cut some of the spending and is driving homelessness back up.
↗Urgent: Raise the Wage Actstallman.org 4th of 10 in this piece
- 4 weeks earlier
- PL
Pieter Levels quoted
Dutch bootstrapper who builds and runs his internet startups alone
Their wordsThe chart of housing affordability is almost a direct inverse of how many new homes are built It's that simple Build more houses!
- 12 days earlier
- TP
Thomas Ptacek quoted
Their wordsProgressive slopulism really fucked us with this "Private equity is buying up all the houses" argument. It's a fractally stupid concern AND an excuse for deferring zoning reform.
- 3 weeks earlier
- AL
Alon Levy quoted
Mathematician turned transport researcher
Their wordsThe reason is simple: TOD doesn't care about corridors but about the underlying transit, which is a subway, not a bus stopping every block.
↗Corridor Zoning is not Transit-Oriented Developmentpedestrianobservations.com 1st of 2 in this piece
- AL
Alon Levy quoted
Their wordsthe explicit purpose of corridor zoning is to concentrate both air pollution and the perceived social pollution of apartment dwellers in quarantine zones that single-family homeowners can avoid
↗Corridor Zoning is not Transit-Oriented Developmentpedestrianobservations.com 2nd of 2 in this piece
- 2 weeks earlier
- JH
Jonathan Hopkins quoted
Housing and development writer at Strong Towns
Their wordsTo real estate professionals, slowing growth or declines in rent are often signals to stop building new housing.
↗Some Things YIMBYs Tend To Get Wrong (and Right)strongtowns.org 1st of 4 in this piece
- JH
Jonathan Hopkins quoted
Their wordsMaking housing widely affordable today through the removal of development regulations would require allowing extremely low quality housing.
↗Some Things YIMBYs Tend To Get Wrong (and Right)strongtowns.org 2nd of 4 in this piece
- JH
Jonathan Hopkins quoted
Our readingHousing subsidies cannot scale to the size of the problem, and the YIMBYs are right to say so.
Their wordsWhile there are certainly some benefits to these programs, YIMBYs are right to doubt that housing subsidies alone are a scalable solution to affordability challenges.
↗Some Things YIMBYs Tend To Get Wrong (and Right)strongtowns.org 3rd of 4 in this piece
- JH
Jonathan Hopkins quoted
Their wordsAs is the case with most businesses, suppliers in the housing industry generally set prices based on market conditions and what buyers or tenants are willing to pay, rather than on production costs.
↗Some Things YIMBYs Tend To Get Wrong (and Right)strongtowns.org 4th of 4 in this piece
- 2 weeks earlier
- SH
Samuel Hughes quoted
Editor at Works in Progress writing on architecture
Their wordsIn fact, European housing shortages are generally worse than America’s.
↗Europe's housing shortages are even worse than America'sworksinprogress.news 1st of 5 in this piece
- SH
Samuel Hughes quoted
Their wordsBut this effect is far too small to explain the increase in house prices in Europe since 1914, when, after all, most urban continental Europeans lived in flats.
↗Europe's housing shortages are even worse than America'sworksinprogress.news 2nd of 5 in this piece
- SH
Samuel Hughes quoted
Their wordsWithout densification restrictions, housing shortages will only ever be serious in cities where land is really intensely scarce, as in Hong Kong.
↗Europe's housing shortages are even worse than America'sworksinprogress.news 3rd of 5 in this piece
- SH
Samuel Hughes quoted
Their wordsIn fact, zoning was invented in Europe, in Germany and Austria-Hungary, in the late nineteenth century.
↗Europe's housing shortages are even worse than America'sworksinprogress.news 4th of 5 in this piece
- SH
Samuel Hughes quoted
Their wordsI suspect the same is often true in the rest of Europe: NIMBYism is the ultimate reason why the French and German states don’t solve their housing shortages through unbanning densification, but since the claims of the NIMBYs have been preemptively conceded by everyone, NIMBYism has basically remained latent.
↗Europe's housing shortages are even worse than America'sworksinprogress.news 5th of 5 in this piece
- 3 weeks earlier
- KW
Kate Wagner quoted
Architecture critic; created McMansion Hell in July 2016
Their wordsThe McMansion never truly goes away. It merely changes shape over time.
- 4 weeks earlier
- AM
Andy Masley quoted
Writer on AI and the environment
Their wordsThis post is about whether data centers waste the land they’re on relative to what they compete with, and my claim is that they mostly don’t compete with things we need more of (housing) and mostly compete with things we need less of (farmland).
- 4 months earlier
- MH
Morgan Housel quoted
Partner at Collaborative Fund and author of The Psychology of Money
Their wordsI think the majority of society problems are all downstream of housing affordability.
↗A Few Things I’m Pretty Sure Aboutcollabfund.com 2nd of 5 in this piece
- MH
Morgan Housel quoted
Their wordsEvery economic issue is complex, but this one seems pretty straight forward: we should build more homes. Millions of them, as fast as we can.
↗A Few Things I’m Pretty Sure Aboutcollabfund.com 3rd of 5 in this piece
- 12 days earlier
- MH
Molson Hart quoted
Manufacturer and founder of Viahart
Their wordsBetween 2015 and 2025 US manufacturing wages rose 40%, while the cost of purchasing a home rose 93%.
↗Chinese Labor Isn't Just Cheaper; It’s Better. We Need to Fix That.molsonhart.com 3rd of 4 in this piece
- 6 weeks earlier
- KW
Kate Wagner quoted
Their wordsIt is rare that the McMansion ever approaches the mythical, though it is, of coursed, steeped in its own mythology - of bootstrapism, castle doctrine and, importantly, a total commitment to individualism.
- 3 weeks earlier
- CL
Charles Fain Lehman quoted
Fellow at the Manhattan Institute working on crime
Their wordsIt turns out that simply getting people into temporary shelter—often derided by the homelessness-industrial complex as a band-aid—significantly reduces both social and individual harms of unsheltered homelessness.
↗You Don't Have to End Homelessness To Make Cities Saferthecausalfallacy.substack.com 1st of 2 in this piece
- CL
Charles Fain Lehman quoted
Their wordsRead this in the context of Christopher et al., and the reasonable conclusion is that many of the problems associated with homelessness are the result of unsheltered homelessness.
↗You Don't Have to End Homelessness To Make Cities Saferthecausalfallacy.substack.com 2nd of 2 in this piece
- 2 months earlier
- NS
Noah Smith quoted
Their wordsThe first of the two charts shows that institutional buyers — which includes private equity, BlackRock, etc. — own only a tiny sliver of the homes in America.
↗Corporations aren't the reason your rent is too highnoahpinion.blog
- 8 weeks earlier
- KW
Kate Wagner quoted
Their wordsthe ruling class in this country does not want you to have affordable housing.
↗McMansion Hell urges all New Yorkers to Rank Zohran Mamdani #1 for Mayor of NYCmcmansionhell.com 1st of 3 in this piece