Housing & the Economy
Housing as economic infrastructure. Its effect on labor mobility, consumer spending, local fiscal health, and the municipal cost of serving development at different locations and densities.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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