Will the Feds Take Over Local Zoning?
One of the Biden Administration’s first executive orders has revived the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s “Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Rule.” This rule was proposed by the Obama Administration, but time ran out before it could be fully implemented. The Trump Administration rescinded the rule. The rule requires communities which receive grants from the […]
As Arlington Housing Prices Soar, Supply is Unresponsive
The worst fears of Amazon critics are coming true. Housing prices are becoming increasingly unaffordable — even before Amazon sets up shop at its HQ2 facility in Arlington and floods the region with 25,000 employees. The average home price in Arlington County jumped 7% in the past year to $713,000, as investors poured into the […]
Want More Affordable Housing? Try Free Markets
Exclusionary regulation at the local level is the root cause of unaffordable housing, and a rollback of exclusionary regulation is the best long-term solution, argue Salim Furth and Emily Hamilton, research fellows at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center. “Contemporary American land use law embodies the bad idea that private land ought to be publicly planned. In […]
Housing’s Supply-Side Revolution
IndieDwell converts shipping containers into affordable housing. The Idaho-based business has taken an idea championed locally by entrepreneurs Sheila and Sidney Gunst (see “Thinking Outside the Container“) and turned it into a growing business enterprise. The company now sells 640-square-foot dwellings, including the cost of delivery and installation, for $78,000. Add $11,500 to build a […]
Virginia’s Unaffordable Approach to Affordable Housing
If the public policy debate over affordable dwellings is as impoverished as that described in The Virginia Mercury recently, poor Virginians are doomed to lives of housing misery. Here’s how reporter Ned Oliver sums up the controversy: “Is affordable housing something for the state to tackle, or should it be left to cities and counties to address […]
Housing Affordability for Millennials
As the global epicenter of technology innovation, Silicon Valley creates a massive amount of wealth — but the housing supply, hemmed in by geography and zoning regulations, is incredibly restricted. The resulting housing crunch is so severe that Millennials are hard pressed to live there. The median income for Millennials in the San Jose metropolitan area is […]
Suburbia Not Only Not Dying—It's Thriving
Fortune magazine’s Leigh Gallagher got a large amount of publicity over the summer for her book, The End of the Suburbs: Why the American Dream is Moving. Major newspapers did articles repeating her claims, and she expounded them on various blogs and talk shows: Millennials hate the suburbs, Baby Boomers are moving back to downtowns, […]
Economic Impact: Home affordability in Richmond area Hits Highest Level
(This column ran in the Richmond Times Dispatch on February 4, 2013.) Home affordability in the Richmond region stood at its highest level in the third quarter of last year since 2003. The region had 51.9 percent of households that could afford to buy a median-priced home — with half the houses selling for more […]
Do Americans (and Virginians) Still Love the Suburbs?
One of the hottest debates today among urbanists and economic geographers is the extent to which population growth and development are shifting from the periphery of U.S. metropolitan areas back to their urban cores. The latest contribution to this discussion, “Even after the Housing Bust, Americans Still Love the Suburbs,” by Jed Kolko in the […]