Housing

The United States is experiencing rapid growth in its older population, a triumphant result of long-term investments in health and medicine.  read more »

Back in September, I wrote a piece that highlighted a notable but underestimated accomplishment in Chicago’s housing market.  read more »

Last week CalMatters – which has become a prime go-to source for coverage of news, and especially politics, in California – published a story that can only be described as infuriating.  read more »

For the last two centuries, one of the most important demographic trends has been the movement of people from rural areas to the cities.  read more »

Kamala Harris has a plan to help America’s struggling home buyers by increasing the supply of houses. Her recently released 82-page policy book, “A New Way Forward for the Middle Class,” calls for clearing away the “regulatory burden” and “red tape” that constrains new-home construction.  read more »

Throughout the West, particularly the Anglosphere, housing costs are ravaging the middle class. Homeownership, long the key to social mobility, is on the decline  read more »

This paper, by property expert Ross Elliott, explores the reasons behind our current housing shortages and identifies a range of policy measures which have contributed to – rather than alleviated – the magnitude of the current housing ‘crisis.’  read more »

Just a quick note on an encouraging article by James Rodriguez of Business Insider. Rodriguez reports a significant reduction in house prices in Austin, Texas, due to building a large number of single-family homes and apartments. I was unable to discern whether the article dealt with the Austin market (the metropolitan area) or the city (which is a housing submarket). Nor could I tell if his insightful comparison to San Francisco was the housing market (metro) or the city submarket.  read more »

In 1873, as a result of the Homestead Act, my great-great-great grandfather, of French-Canadian descent, was awarded 160 acres of land in Leelanau County, Michigan for military service in the Civil War.  read more »

Does anyone really think about the relationship a city has to its surrounding metro area? It means a lot more than you might think.  read more »