Housing Costs

Time Is Money for Housing Developments (and Residents)
While strict, suburban-style regulations often get a bad rap for the lack of housing in high demand cities, the red tape and other obstacles that delay development could be the worst culprit.

Is There a Perfect Density?
This post offers a critique of claims that there is an ideal, "Goldilocks density."

Housing Not Keeping Pace With Employment in the Twin Cities
The Twin Cities provide a case study for the role of the housing market in regional employment markets.

Novel Solutions for Affordable Housing
The housing crisis calls for creative solutions.

Big Investment Firms Are Dominating the Landlord Business
Large investment companies are betting against homeownership—by buying up homes in suburban areas and putting them on the rental market.

Op-Ed: To Lower Housing Costs, Make it Cheaper and Easier to Build Housing
The argument in the headline, put more specifically: inclusionary zoning, fees, legal challenges, and minimum apartment sizes are counter-productive. The only policy that will add housing stock, is to make it much cheaper to add housing stock.

Chicago's Black Residents Continuing to Leave the City
The Census shows that black residents are leaving Chicago and the surrounding areas. Many tie the trend to disinvestment in black neighborhoods, including the closings of schools.

Gay Neighborhoods Are Getting More and More Expensive
Trulia has created a "Neighborhood Pride Score" to determine the communities with the largest gay populations. Access to those neighborhoods comes at a high price.

Homeless Numbers Continue to Rise in and Around Los Angeles
Rents continue to rise in Los Angeles and more people are living in their cars.
Some Hoping to Build Housing See Churches as an Obstacle
Miami-Dade Commissioner Barbara Jordan has expressed concerns that seldom-used churches aren’t paying taxes, take up valuable land, and would be better used to build housing for the Black community.

Exposé: Development Obstruction in Los Angeles
Homeowners groups use their influence to extract payments and concessions in Los Angeles.

Homeless People and Expensive Housing Cause an Identity Crisis in Berkeley
The city of Berkeley is suffering the consequences of the urban revival—soaring housing costs and humanitarian crises don't reconcile with the city's famously progressive politics.

Families Feel Pushed Out of San Francisco
Many families cannot afford to live in San Francisco, where housing prices are high and houses fit for families raising children are hard to come by.

Rents Falling at the Upper End of New York's Real Estate Market
The construction of thousands of rental apartments in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens are credited with driving down costs at the upper end of the New York City rental market.

Vancouver May Fast-Track Modular Laneway Homes
The city of Vancouver has emerged as a leader in "laneway" housing: secondary units built onto existing lots, often facing an alleyway. To boost supply, the city may expedite permitting for modular units.

Comparing Energy Costs in Cities Around the Country
Residents of Rust Belt cities might pay less for housing, but they pay a lot more for energy.

Affordable Housing and the 2016 Election
The cost of housing affects millions across the country, but the issue has been conspicuously absent in the campaigns. Hillary Clinton's plan includes an imprecise remedy, while Donald Trump's pronouncements have been vaguer still.

Op-Ed: Stay Expensive, New York—It Helps the Rest of the U.S.
Here's a controversial assertion: expensive, desirable cities are doing everyone else a favor by forcing people to move.

Planetizen Week in Review: August 1, 2016
Political junkies, map nerds, and transit fans all got plenty of big news to digest during the last week of July 2016.

Report: Britain's Suburbs on the Decline
London's central core never experienced the deterioration many American downtowns lived through, but the inner city/suburb dynamic was still at play. Now poverty is moving outward.
Pagination
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