My favorite thing about the belief that developers regularly make huge profits is that it suggests an immediate and obvious solution to the housing crisis: you! That's right, you can simply build affordable housing. Build housing and rent it out at honest working-class prices by accepting meagre or
In 1937, affordable housing was invented. It wouldn't be called "affordable housing" until the 1980s, and lots of housing had been affordable before then, but that was the year that the United States Housing Act introduced income-restricted housing. Later amendments would tie these income restrictions to
Sorry it's been forever. New year, new NYC mayor, exciting times to be getting back to writing about housing. Also I finally have my very own ✨chart aesthetic✨ so get ready, dear nerds. As New York City approaches a rent freeze, people continue to be up in arms
The results of this one were a big surprise to me. The question I asked is, are rents high because the new housing that's being built is too expensive? There's a lot of attention on how expensive market-rate housing is and how much luxury vs affordable
The role of big finance in housing has been getting a lot of attention lately. TikTokers made a big scare and convinced a lot of people that 40% of single-family homes are owned by private equity companies, which is not even close to being true. This turned out to be
Many people, myself included, think that finance has some important role in why the rent is so damn high. There is a growing "housing financialization" literature about this. The idea is that banks, investors, and other financial actors are driving up home and rent prices. This was a
Over the last year, many people have been grappling with the question of whether the economy sucks. Or, anyway, whether the economy was in good or bad shape before Trump hit it with a wrecking ball. This remains a question of enormous political importance. After we make it out of
Housing has gotten much more expensive in the last half century. We can learn a lot about how the rental market works by looking at who has borne that burden.
In this newsletter, I'll be sharing my research into the housing affordability crisis. I hope this will be a useful and accessible resource for people trying to understand why the housing market is so broken. I'm going to try to make one to three posts per