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

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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.
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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.
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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 26, 2026 FOOTNOTES | NOTE

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.
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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.
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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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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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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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.
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