June 26, 2025
Does Building Light-Touch Density Housing Lower Single-Family Home Values? Evidence from Seattle, WA and Charlotte, NC
Summary: Opponents of Light-touch Density (LTD) infill argue that it will lead to outright home price declines or, at the very least, slower home price appreciation (HPA). However, evidence from Charlotte and Seattle shows that the construction of LTD housing—such as duplexes and townhomes—does not adversely impact HPA of single-family detached (SFD) homes in the…
June 24, 2025
Public Housing and Rental Subsidies
Since the 1930s, the federal government has subsidized local housing projects aimed at uplifting the poor. The specific policies have evolved, but the theory has been that federal aid is needed because the states cannot solve their own housing problems and private markets fail to invest in affordable housing. Federal housing efforts are led by…
June 24, 2025
Why Do Republicans Support the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit?
President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” aims to avert the tax increases that would result from the expiration of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, and it’s drawn criticism for not doing enough to reduce the debt or deficit. Earlier in June, The Washington Post reported on publicly funded homes in some cities costing taxpayers more than…
June 23, 2025
Boston’s Backward Housing Policy: More Demand Will Only Exacerbate the Supply Crisis
Boston’s housing policies keep treating symptoms while ignoring the disease. Last month, the city proudly unveiled its Co-Purchasing Housing Pilot Program, offering $50,000 in zero-interest, deferred-payment loans to help lower-income households cover down payments and closing costs on multi-family homes. The idea is to allow multiple individuals to pool resources and purchase homes together. It sounds…
June 10, 2025
America’s Housing Supply Problem: The Closing of the Suburban Frontier?
Housing prices across much of America have hit historic highs, while less housing is being built. If the U.S. housing stock had expanded at the same rate from 2000-2020 as it did from 1980-2000, there would be 15 million more housing units. This paper analyzes the decline of America’s new housing supply, focusing on large…
June 5, 2025
More Evidence of How Housing Regulation Is Bad for Housing
The American Dream’s geographic escape hatch is slamming shut. New research reveals that once-affordable sunbelt cities like Phoenix, Dallas, and Miami now mirror the restrictive housing markets of San Francisco and New York. The implications for economic dynamism are profound and worrisome. For decades, America’s housing market operated on a simple safety valve principle: When…
June 4, 2025
Congress Is Subsidizing the Wrong Neighborhoods
When President Trump signed Republicans’ 2017 tax legislation into law, one section in it stood out for its ambitious goal: directing private investment dollars to left-behind communities. The law provides a tax incentive for long-term investment in economically disadvantaged communities that were designated by governors as so-called opportunity zones, subject to federal standards based on the communities’…
May 27, 2025
The Surprising Role of Large Developers in Solving the Housing Crunch
Against the odds—and conventional wisdom—the nation’s largest home builders have engineered a dramatic shift toward serving first-time homebuyers (FTBs). New data from the AEI Housing Center show that in 2024, 51.2% of all new construction sales by the top 20 builders went to FTBs, up significantly from just 38.6% in 2014. This shift has occurred…
May 10, 2025
How Single Room Occupancies Could Be the Answer to NYC’s Housing Crisis
It was another local tragedy attracting passing notice before being overtaken for our attention by the latest stray bullet homicides and subway assaults. But those concerned with “affordable housing” have much to learn from the Easter morning deaths of three Queens residents and the displacement of perhaps a dozen others in a fire in an…
May 7, 2025
Displacement by Design: How Bad Policy Made Housing Scarce, and How We Can Fix It
Musical chairs is one of the first games we play as children. The rules are simple: there are fewer chairs than players. When the music stops, someone ends up standing. Not necessarily because they weren’t fast enough—but because the game was designed for someone to lose. Now imagine blaming the child for losing. We question…