September 23, 2024
The Kamala Harris Plan for More Housing Shortages
A signature feature of Kamala Harris’s housing plan is providing first-time home buyers with $25,000 in down-payment support, at a total cost of $100 billion over four years. Absent a severe recession, this policy is all but certain to lead to higher home prices. That’s because the four million program recipients would become price setters for…
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…
September 11, 2024
As America’s housing crisis intensifies, the American Housing and Economic Mobility Act of 2024 has emerged as a high-profile yet expensive solution.
The bill comes with a $500 billion price tag and endorsements from leading Democrats, including Vice President Kamala Harris. Moody’s, a major financial services company, has also blessed the act, predicting it will lower rents and significantly boost the supply of affordable housing. But before the country embraces this rosy outlook, it must confront a stark reality: Government interventions in housing…
September 4, 2024
Kamala Harris’s Housing Plan Would Be Worse Than Doing Nothing
Originally appeared in Newsweek On August 16, presidential candidate Kamala Harris unveiled a series of housing proposals that recycle the same failed strategies that have plagued federal housing policy for decades. Among the key components are subsidies for the construction of 3 million new housing units over four years, as well as a total of $100 billion…
September 2, 2024
This Is How to Fix the Housing Crisis
Vice President Kamala Harris correctly identified one of America’s biggest problems when she said that “there’s a serious housing shortage.” America’s affordable-housing crisis exacerbates wealth inequities, leads low-income parents to live in neighborhoods with less upward mobility and reduces our country’s capacity for economic growth, innovation and adaptation to regional shocks. Unfortunately, her proposed solutions…
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…
July 29, 2024
The Real Impact of Zoning and Land Use Reforms Contrary to the Urban Institute’s Claims
Not in my backyard (NIMBY) adherents across the country are beginning to weaponize a recent Urban Institute study that reviewed 180 zoning reforms and concluded these reforms barely affected the housing supply. Given Urban’s wide distribution and the paper’s seemingly comprehensive approach, coupled with the eagerness of NIMBYs to exploit such research, housing supply advocates need to be aware…