A cohort of young Millennial and Gen Z politicians have centered their campaigns this year on housing costs, and the divide is more generational than partisan.

Policymakers have been making the case that more supply is a better check on housing costs than rent stabilization. May apartment rental data backs up that narrative. Rents ticked up modestly last month, the fifth consecutive month of sequential growth. But May’s reading was the lowest for that month since 2010, according to apartment data […]

Leaders in Akron, a heartland city nearly 40 miles south of Cleveland, hope to shed the city’s “Rust Belt” label and drive its emerging revival by making it easier to build new homes. To achieve the objective, planners believe they’re on the verge of eliminating minimum lot sizes to counteract a shrinking-city paradox. Population loss […]

Homeless encampment

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro declared he intended to go big on housing. On Monday, at least one piece of that ambition cleared the state House with a bipartisan vote, setting up a tougher sell in the Republican-controlled Senate. The House passed House Bill 2186, requiring municipalities statewide to allow one accessory dwelling unit per residential […]

Zoning reform has grabbed most of the attention in housing policy circles, but sometimes it’s the unglamorous, technical building code changes that save builders real money. Single-stair reform was the first to sweep through state legislatures and city halls as a tool to spur missing-middle housing. Washington state is now cutting deeper into the building […]

Zohran Mamdani ran for mayor on one promise: make New York City affordable again. This week, he moved to further dismantle the rules New York spent decades erecting to prevent residential density. Mamdani released a 10-year housing plan pledging to build 200,000 new affordable homes while preserving 200,000 more. “These are the most ambitious affordable […]

U.S. Capitol in the foreground, an apartment building tinted red in the background

Yglesias supports an alliance and has key points of agreement with libertarians, but also criticisms of libertarianism. I welcome former and respond to the latter.

In two separate photos, split down the middle, the left photo has a man in a leather jacket holding a baseball bat, and another man is wearing body armor and a baseball hat, while in the photo on the right stands a man wearing body armor, a long black jacket, and a holstered sword.

New Rochelle embraced the abundance mindset long before the “yes in my backyard ” crowd made it cool. Today, the city, 25 minutes north of New York City by train, is a reference point for how zoning reform and predictable approvals can speed mixed-income housing production citywide. The city built on a 2015 rezoning that […]

David Modica

Last year, New Hampshire lawmakers jumped on the bandwagon of state legislatures targeting a worsening housing shortage by mandating that local governments permit multifamily housing in commercially zoned areas. The effort sought to boost housing supply and improve affordability by stripping away local zoning authority. Local governments, true to the state’s “live free or die” […]

A bill overriding local zoning authority to allow housing on idle Southeast Florida golf courses drew little public attention during Florida’s legislative session. When the Infill Redevelopment Act passed, warnings over problems it could cause bubbled up, but only in limited circles. It passed in March without a single “nay” vote in the Senate and […]

Historic preservation laws often violate constitutional property rights, and block construction of new housing.

After years of pushing housing affordability reforms, Colorado legislators hit a wall — crashing up against the limits of how much zoning control they could strip from local governments. This year, they sought to require most cities to allow single-family homes on lots as small as 2,000 square feet, about a third the size of […]

North Carolina House Democrats will take another shot at sweeping housing reform. Several cycles of defeat on similar legislation loom in their rearview mirror. Undaunted by a string of previously unsuccessful efforts and banking on a redoubled surge of political will to address housing affordability, lawmakers introduced House Bill 1056, titled “Relieving Housing Bottlenecks,” on […]

Virginia has become the latest state to clear the way for churches and other faith groups to build affordable housing on their land, borrowing a page from a California precedent-setting attainable housing win-win innovation. Virginia-based faith groups have a four-year window beginning Jan. 1, 2027, to start affordable housing projects after the state legislature approved […]

Layered photos of Marilyn Monroe

A third go at trying to reboot starter-home construction in Minnesota is on life support at the state Legislature, with supporters scrambling to revive it before the session ends. High-profile zoning reform bills failed in a House committee and missed key Senate deadlines late last month, potentially dooming the effort as had happened over the […]

The fight over Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s sweeping housing reform agenda is intensifying as both sides harden their positions. Supporters and detractors by the thousands delivered their opening arguments Thursday at the first major hearing on Pritzker’s six-bill package. Pritzker’s BUILD plan seeks to lower costs by making construction easier and faster statewide. It would […]

A California home builder sought to build three additional houses on lots it had owned for more than two decades in a coastal county. That should have been easy. It had already built four nearby homes. But it wasn’t. Years of court hearings followed when a state agency overrode San Luis Obispo County’s authority and […]

This emerging school of thought has its flaws. But it's a potentially valuable ally for libertarians and other free market advocates.

Michigan lawmakers returned from spring recess with housing affordability clearly in their sights. A bipartisan group shepherding a package of bills this week picked up strong support from a coalition of housing advocates and business groups, including the Home Builders Association of Michigan. That backing could help pass an initiative Gov. Gretchen Whitmer launched earlier this […]

Idaho capital

Virginia’s Faith in Housing Act is in limbo after Gov. Abigail Sanberger's amendments, with legislators returning April 22 to decide.

The St. Louis Fed says that high costs for labor, land, capital and materials exacerbate the housing shortage.

Kentucky's failure shows how difficult housing politics remain even as other states manage to pass modest reforms.

Assembly Bill 2074, dubbed the Downtown Revitalization Act, would ease approvals and offer state-backed, low-interest financing near major transit hubs.

Housing and state houses