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Blockers and Pillars come from Up for Growth’s housing framework.

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June 23, 2026 WRITING | ESSAY

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.
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May 27, 2026 FOOTNOTES | NOTE

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.
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May 24, 2026 FOOTNOTES | NOTE

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.
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December 12, 2025 SPEAKING | KEYNOTE

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.
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May 10, 2025 WRITING | ESSAY

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.
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March 8, 2019 WRITING | ESSAY

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.
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January 18, 2019 WRITING | ESSAY

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.
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October 23, 2018 WRITING | ESSAY

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.
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