Florida’s Board of Governors is made up of “political appointees from the business world, from insurance executives to roofing contractors, who are dictating how professors must teach their courses and even providing state-created textbooks for doing so.”
My new piece in @truthout.bsky.social
Q: How does new rental construction impact rent prices?
A: It depends.
New research finds BIG developments:
⬆️ rents of lower-priced units by 4.4%⚠️
⬇️ rents of higher-priced units by 1.7%.
@tonydamiano.bsky.social & Chris Frenier tell us why submarkets matter.
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
Thank you so much for this honor! All thanks to the wonderful organizers in Philly who let me document these struggles and approach to educational justice in the city!
Link to the full series here: bsky.app/profile/urba...
New construction will be important, but so will preservation. Acquiring buildings creates a pathway for habitability and affordability that the market isn't providing.
This can also help with building decarbonization, which is not only mandated by LL 97, but urgently needed
doi.org/10.1016/j.er...
4. Technical assistance for resident democracy helps neighbors participate meaningful in their buildings. HPD has some of these programs, an new opportunities through the Office of Mass Engagement are possible.
3. *Public funding/finance* lowers financing costs and deepens affordability. HPD and HDC have these powers.
A revolving loan fund for *permanent financing* and taking a public equity stake could significantly reduce ongoing operating costs, by reducing debt service.
2. *Public development* achieves economies of scale and reduces costs. Legal authority exists through NYCEDC, HPD, NYCHA, NYC Preservation Trust, and the Dept. of Design and Construction
We don’t think it makes sense to create a new SHDA for NYC, since most of the powers already exist, though scattered across multiple agencies:
1. *Public ownership* creates permanent affordability, which can be done though NYCHA and/or the NY Preservation Trust
That’s where a progressive building agenda comes in.
We lay out 4 key components, modeled after the Social Housing Development Authority proposal - now as the federal Homes Act (Ocasio-Cortez/Smith) and a bill in NYS (Gallagher/Cleare)
www.nytimes.com/2021/03/03/o...
By one estimate, a 1% increase in supply leads to a 0.2% reduction in rents. To put that in context, a back of the envelope estimate is that NYC would have to add 1.2m units to make the median rent affordable to the median renter.
Alternate method is even more stark: bsky.app/profile/hjac...
There’s also deep contradiction in the supply only argument: if the real estate sector needs rising rents to be incentivized to build, what happens when prices supposedly go down from new supply?
In another paper, the real culprit is inequality. Some people have enough money for housing, and in a free market they bid up prices for everyone.
bsky.app/profile/hjac...
Yet there is growing evidence that deregulation may not be a silver bullet. Federal reserve economists have argued that regulations do not explain housing supply or prices.
bsky.app/profile/hjac...
Housing policy for the past few years has been gripped by a singular idea: that home building regulations and zoning are the only thing holding us back from a cascade of new housing that will provide an affordable home for all.
The first in the @urbandemos.bsky.social Working Paper Series is what we call a “progressive building agenda”.
In this case, the goal is to create housing for all, not only for who the market will bear.
hdl.handle.net/2451/75567
All by:
@maxbuchholz.bsky.social
@tkemeny.bsky.social
Gregory F. Randolph
Michael Storper
They do note that increasing supply can have other good policy goals (reducing car dependency, carbon emissions, etc.), but claiming it alone will solely solve housing affordability is not grounded in reality.
Instead, address inequality and increase affordable housing.
This tracks with rising rents across metropolitan areas.
They also note that this inequality is also driven in part by the growth of non-wage income (investments + salary)
A key part of the argument is a focus on not just supply, but demand. They argue that incomes have risen over the past 50 years, especially for college educated workers.
Optimistically, it would take the NYC metro over 16 years and over 1.4m units to make the city affordable, using only the market.
Realistically, they argue, it would be more like 113 years, building over 22m units 🫠
First, they say upzoning and deregulation will have minimal impacts on affordability.
To do this, they ask: how many units need to be created to make housing affordable to the mean non-college educated worker? They do this under "optimistic" and "realistic" (based on prior research) scenarios.
New working paper that adds to the growing critique of the "deregulationist" approach to singularly solving housing affordability.
They argue that instead, the main culprit is growing inequality.
researchonline.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/13...
Check these out! And stay tuned over the coming days for breakdowns of the different proposals.
First up: Building Blocks of a Progressive Building Agenda
We are pumped to have this paper finally out in these streets!
Urban sociologists! I'm organizing a Community and Urban Sociology Section session at the 2026 ASA Annual Meeting titled "Housing as an Asset." Please submit extended abstracts or full papers related to topics on homeownership, house values, taxation, mortgages, etc. Deadline is 2/25. bit.ly/3Zx2eez
Bonus for Census data nerds:
* Full-count data 1900-1950, restricted for 60/70
* Comparable geographies for whole time series (enumeration districts/block groups)
* Identifies non-Hispanic White/non-Hispanic Black individuals
* this paper only Black-White segregation, but Hispanic-White coming soon.
While overall segregation has declined in recent decades, nearly half of its durability in 2020 is accounted for by this macro-segregation. Suburban NIMBYism is a likely culprit.
But then quickly after, Black suburbanization accelerated. In the process, white suburban communities cordoned themselves off, and we have segregation rising within the suburbs. Especially between suburban municipalities.
