Affordability
The gap between what housing costs and what households can pay. Covers rent and price dynamics, filtering and the limits of relying on it, subsidy programs, and how supply conditions transmit into affordability outcomes.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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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