About

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

Select any filters. Results update as you go.

Clear all

Showing 38 of 52 pieces

Results

October 1, 2026 SPEAKING | KEYNOTE

Permission is not production

Remarks at the Natural State Housing Summit in Little Rock on the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, where the chain between a federal law and a built home breaks down in Arkansas, and why capital is part of supply.
Open
September 19, 2026 FOOTNOTES | ANALYSIS

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.
Open
September 16, 2026 FOOTNOTES | ANALYSIS

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?
Open
September 16, 2026 FOOTNOTES | ANALYSIS

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.
Open
September 7, 2026 FOOTNOTES | NOTE

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.
Open
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.
Open
May 28, 2026 FOOTNOTES | NOTE

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.
Open
May 28, 2026 FOOTNOTES | NOTE

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.
Open
May 28, 2026 FOOTNOTES | NOTE

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.
Open
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.
Open
May 24, 2026 FOOTNOTES | NOTE

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.
Open
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.
Open
May 24, 2026 FOOTNOTES | NOTE

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.
Open
May 14, 2026 FOOTNOTES | NOTE

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.
Open
March 24, 2026 WRITING | ESSAY

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.
Open
February 27, 2026 SPEAKING | KEYNOTE

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.
Open
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.
Open
May 22, 2025 WRITING | ESSAY

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.
Open
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.
Open
April 11, 2025 WRITING | ESSAY

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.
Open
May 24, 2024 MEDIA | ARTICLE

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.
Open
July 14, 2022 MEDIA | ARTICLE

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.
Open
July 14, 2022 MEDIA | ARTICLE

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.
Open
October 15, 2021 WRITING | ESSAY

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.
Open
July 29, 2021 WRITING | ESSAY

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.
Open
June 12, 2020 WRITING | ESSAY

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.
Open
May 15, 2020 WRITING | ESSAY

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.
Open
April 1, 2020 WRITING | ESSAY

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.
Open
February 28, 2020 WRITING | ESSAY

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.
Open
October 18, 2019 WRITING | ESSAY

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.
Open
May 17, 2019 WRITING | ESSAY

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.
Open
May 14, 2019 WRITING | ESSAY

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.
Open
April 25, 2019 WRITING | ESSAY

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.
Open
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.
Open
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.
Open
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.
Open
May 16, 2018 MEDIA | ARTICLE

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.
Open
April 16, 2018 MEDIA | ARTICLE

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.
Open