September 25, 2024
The Promise — and Danger — of Kamala Harris’s YIMBYism
Vice President Kamala Harris is not wrong to emphasize that the best solution to our housing shortage is the construction of new homes. She’s actually enunciated something close to a program to do so: tax credits for small “starter” homes, as part of a push for 3 million new houses. It’s encouraging that the Democratic presidential candidate shows a basic knowledge…
September 20, 2024
How Public Housing Fueled Boston’s Busing Riots
This month marks the 50th anniversary of the North’s worst episode of school desegregation–related racial violence: Boston’s busing riots. Mobs hurled rocks at buses filled with black students newly assigned to South Boston High School, set on the “heights” of that largely white neighborhood. At the time, and in retrospect, the violence was blamed on…
August 26, 2024
Vouching for Self-Sufficiency
It’s hard to sympathize with the Parkoff Organization, the New York real estate firm that owns some 4,000 apartments across the city. According to a new lawsuit, housing “testers” caught the group discriminating against potential tenants whose rent would have been subsidized by housing vouchers. The Fair Housing Justice Center (FHJC), which brought the suit, claims that Parkoff…
August 23, 2024
Can Kamala Harris Learn the Housing Lessons from Her Own History?
In a biographical aside in her Thursday night nomination-acceptance speech, Kamala Harris spoke eloquently, and perhaps inadvertently, about “affordable housing” policy. She recalled the neighborhood in the East Bay where her mother rented an apartment: In the Bay, you either live in the hills or the flatlands. We lived in the flats — A beautiful, working-class neighborhood…
August 18, 2024
Why NYC’s Most Affordable Housing May Already Be Available
Mayor Adams’ ambitious rezoning proposal he calls the “City of Yes” — aimed at encouraging new housing construction throughout the five boroughs — is filled with commonsense ideas such as permitting apartments to be built above storefronts and relaxing the expensive requirements for new parking. Adams, in many ways, is harkening back to the golden…
August 16, 2024
The Harris Campaign’s Foolish Down-Payment-Assistance Scheme
On the surface, Kamala Harris’s proposal to provide $25,000 in down-payment assistance to first-time homebuyers looks to be an incentive for upward mobility. Historically, homeownership has been the foundation for wealth creation for those of modest means. On closer inspection, however, down-payment assistance sends the wrong message — not only because already high home prices are likely to…
August 6, 2024
Trump’s Tax Law Diminished Incentives for Charitable Giving, But We Can Fix It
Debate over the potential renewal of the so-called Trump tax cuts of 2017 will be building as their expiration approaches next year. The focus will likely be on corporate and personal tax rates. But there’s a less-appreciated but consequential side effect of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act: its impact on charitable giving. Simply put,…
May 14, 2024
Biden Can Follow FDR and Dump His VP
Almost exactly 80 years ago, a Democratic leader from the Bronx huddled privately with President Franklin D. Roosevelt. As told in the powerful new book by historian David Roll, “Ascent to Power, How Truman Emerged from Roosevelt’s Shadow and Remade the World,” Ed Flynn and other leading Democrats were concerned that his vice president, the far Left…
May 4, 2024
Make Parents Pay for Kids Who Miss School To Curb Chronic School Absenteeism
The COVID pandemic has ebbed, but one of its most damaging long-term effects has not. Chronic school absenteeism — collateral damage from students accustomed to staying home for alleged online learning — persists across the country. In New York City, a stunning four in 10 students — some 353,000 — were chronically absent, for the last full school year…
April 30, 2024
I’m a Conservative But Defunding NPR Is a Mistake. What Should Happen Instead Might Be Surprising
The liberal political and cultural bias of National Public Radio has moved center-stage, thanks to the Free Press essay by Uri Berliner, the former NPR editor who resigned earlier this month. In his essay he correctly observed that NPR news both caters to and reflect “the distilled worldview of a very small segment of the US…