Every piece, in one place.
Search and filter every essay, Homefront briefing, media appearance, speaking engagement, and entry by section or keyword. If it lives on this site, it lives here.
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Showing 49 of 49 entries.
Old housing can depreciate and still become less affordable
Filtering is not simply what happens when buildings get older. Whether depreciation becomes affordability depends on the supply response around them.
How quickly should land-use reform change behavior?
Chicago offers an early test of land-use reform: if a rule was constraining viable activity, how quickly should behavior change once the restriction is removed?
Multifamily insurance is becoming a capital problem
If owners cannot pass higher insurance costs through to tenants, the next effects may show up in property values, debt capacity, equity returns, and investment decisions.
Corporate purchases remain nationally small
Institutional buyers are a small share of national home purchases, though concentrated in some Sun Belt metros. The measurement question is which threshold counts as institutional in the first place.
The $546,000 Door
Chris LaGrand and I explain why Build America, Buy America lands hardest on affordable deals, where capped rents and fixed awards leave added costs nowhere to hide.
A win, not the win
Homefront briefing on the House's 396–13 passage of the ROAD to Housing Act, the build-to-rent fix it delivered, and whether the Senate will keep it.
ROAD talks survive the reset
A bill surviving amendment is not the same as a bill advancing. What matters now is whether the bank language stays attached and whether Senate leaders spend floor time on it.
Building near transit pencils out for cities
Where a home is built changes what it costs a city to serve it. The fiscal math on infill and the housing math point in the same direction.
New market-rate housing is not just for rich renters
New apartments are routinely described as luxury. Denver’s numbers test that assumption, and raise the harder question of what new market-rate supply does for rents further down the market.
Wisconsin shows the ROAD Act's affordability case
Three provisions, three different theories of what makes housing expensive: who buys existing homes, how long review takes, and whether local governments can plan past one appropriations cycle.
Affordable housing is local economic infrastructure
The case for affordable housing is usually made on fairness. This one is made on local balance sheets: consumer spending, workforce stability, and the tax base a city actually collects.
House THUD bill protects core housing programs but trims public housing
Appropriations reveal priorities more plainly than speeches. This bill protects vouchers and homelessness aid while trimming public housing, and asks for performance without funding the underlying shortage.
The road to more housing still runs through permitting
Transportation money is one of the few levers Washington can pull on local land use. The design problem is calibration: incentives too soft change nothing, too blunt and the politics collapse.
A bipartisan housing bill clears the House, but the Senate test still matters
A 396–13 vote signals unusual agreement on housing. Whether that consensus survives the Senate, and whether the manufactured-housing provisions change what gets built, are separate questions.
Washington’s scissor stair reform shows how code fixes can unlock more homes
Building codes decide floor plates and capital stacks as surely as zoning decides density. Washington’s single-stair change is a test of how much housing a technical code fix can unlock.
Waters and Warren split on housing strategy, even as both want a win
Two legislators who both want a housing win disagree about whether investor limits protect tenants or constrain the capital stack. The split is really about which constraint they think binds.
Terner’s simulator shows why housing policy is local
The same zoning or financing reform can produce very different results in Denver, San Diego, and Tucson. What varies is which constraint actually binds in a given market.
Housing Shortage Isn't Just a Money Problem
Politico examined how federal housing policy aimed at limiting institutional investors may be constraining capital and slowing new housing production, raising concerns about unintended consequences for supply.
The fix is on the table
Homefront briefing on Section 901, the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, and the targeted fix needed to protect new housing production.
Residential transition lending is becoming housing finance infrastructure
Hard money lending has quietly become an $85 billion market. The question is what it means when infill and small rehab projects depend on a capital channel sitting outside banks and the GSEs.
The market isn't waiting
Homefront briefing on federal housing policy, market behavior, and what uncertainty means for what gets built.
Build to rent is collateral damage
I joined The Rent Roll to explain how the Road to Housing Act's BTR provision froze capital, why the seven-year sell rule is unworkable, and what Congress should fix
The supply bill that reduces supply
Homefront briefing on federal housing policy and what the build-to-rent restriction could mean for housing supply.
Why limiting investment time horizons for build-to-rent communities is bad for affordable housing
I explain why treating purpose-built rental neighborhoods like scattered investor-owned homes risks shrinking the capital stack behind new housing supply.
Federal housing policy and the states
Remarks at the Council of State Governments East housing event on the emerging federal housing supply agenda, what is moving in Congress, and why state action remains decisive.
Housing needs a system that can deliver
Remarks on why America's housing shortage is a systems problem, how fragmented governance produces underbuilding, and why a modern housing framework is needed to align local action, state capacity, federal investment, and accountability.
Using Our Public Land for Public Benefit
I explain why land scarcity now drives housing costs everywhere, and how long-term ground leases on underused public land could unlock hundreds of thousands of homes.
We didn't just price out renters. We priced out the ability to build.
How regulation, delay, and rising development costs turned a housing affordability crisis into a breakdown in the basic ability to build — and where that leaves federal policy.
Housing isn't just an affordability crisis
America's housing shortage is not just about affordability. It is a production failure with consequences for public health, equity, transportation, and economic opportunity.
Is Congress Having Its YIMBY Moment?
Semafor examined the growing bipartisan federal agenda around housing supply, including proposals aimed at reducing barriers to development and rewarding local reform.
The Housing Shortage Isn't Just a Coastal Crisis Anymore
The New York Times examined how the housing shortage had spread well beyond high-cost coastal metros, drawing on Up for Growth's analysis to show underproduction as a national constraint.
There's a Massive Housing Shortage Across the U.S. Here's How Bad It Is Where You Live
NPR examined the scale of the national housing shortage, drawing on Up for Growth's analysis to show a deficit of millions of homes and the pressure it creates for prices, affordability, and access.
Courage at all levels
I examine why local housing reform needs support from state and federal institutions, especially when capacity, incentives, mandates, and political risk shape implementation.
Ending single-family zoning? Not quite.
I separate what zoning reform can do from what it cannot, arguing for more housing options without pretending land-use reform solves every constraint.
The downstream impacts of the rental crisis
I follow missed rent payments through owners, workers, lenders, local governments, and future development to show how a rental shock propagates.
Creating the Workforce Needed to Build Housing
Writing early in the pandemic, we argue that retraining workers for construction could speed recovery and ease the labor shortage that limits housing production.
Housing is where jobs go to sleep at night
Why economic development policy is increasingly intertwined with housing — how a nationwide shortage of homes became a drag on jobs, GDP, and regional competitiveness, and the local barriers most responsible for it.
Solutions to the housing crisis come in all sizes – including small homes
I use accessory dwelling units to show why legalizing housing is only the first step when financing, permitting, construction, and tax barriers remain.
New Rochelle, New York: A case study in how focusing on transit can increase housing options
I recount how New Rochelle rezoned its downtown around its train station, and why the Build More Housing Near Transit Act aimed to encourage that approach.
Part One of our Series on the Broken Housing Ecosystem: Impact Fees
I introduce a series on the broken housing ecosystem by showing how impact fees that rise as growth slows can undercut the development cities need.
The Legacy of Redlining Lives on Today Through Exclusionary Zoning
I compare 1930s redlining grades with zoning maps in St. Louis and Portland to show how exclusionary single-family zoning sustains old patterns of segregation.
The fifth wave of housing advocacy
I place the emerging supply and access movement in a longer history of American housing policy and ask whether a fifth wave was forming.
The Cautionary Tale of Portland’s Inclusionary Housing Policy
Noel Johnson and I examine Portland's permit data after inclusionary housing took effect and argue the policy was reducing housing production at most income levels.
Housing is the environmental issue of our time
I connect housing, transportation, land use, and environmental outcomes, asking how where we build homes changes travel, land consumption, and emissions.
It’s not just more supply – addressing existing housing plays an important role in curing America’s broken housing ecosystem
I argue that housing policy has to distinguish shortage from vacancy, quality, preservation, and affordability problems because different markets fail in different ways.
A Housing Agenda for Rural America
I use a visit to Mason County, Washington, to show that rural communities face their own housing shortage, and what local, state, and federal policy could do.
Why older homes become more unaffordable if new homes cost more to build
I trace how higher development costs can suppress new production and transmit scarcity into the prices of older homes in high-demand markets.
The American Housing Crisis Might Be Our Next Big Political Issue
Bloomberg CityLab examined the growing effort to make housing affordability and underproduction a national policy issue, including Up for Growth's early work on housing supply.
Just How Widespread Is the Housing Shortage?
The Wall Street Journal examined how broadly the housing shortage extends across the country, drawing on Up for Growth's early work on underproduction and the consequences of failing to build enough homes.
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