Vacant apartments come from bad policy, not a conspiracy
On Halloween, 2022, some elected officials held a performative press conference to talk about “Zombie Apartments.” They claim property owners are engaging in a mass conspiracy to keep rent-stabilized apartments vacant in an attempt...
The tyranny of the Phillips Curve
Repeat after me, class: Growth does not cause inflation. Write it on the blackboard 100 times.
For decades, the economics profession has been trying to tell us all just the opposite. They keep shoveling out...
Housing’s recession already happened?
A lot of people still expect the U.S. to fall into a recession. But for the housing market, the recession could already be in the rearview mirror.
Builders are sounding less downbeat than they were...
Fusion wariness
Livermore National Laboratory’s announcement is certainly a breakthrough, but it’s a commercially limited one. Nuclear fusion has long been hailed as the next great energy source, capable of providing nearly limitless power without the...
Am I the only techie against net neutrality?
No, I am not a paid shill for the cable industry. I am no fan of Comcast or any other ISP I’ve ever had the “pleasure” of dealing with. I’m skeptical of large corporations...
Death and taxes
If you're planning on dying soon, you might want to hurry up. It's that other certainty of life you'll want to watch out for. The estate tax, which taxes the inheritance you pass on...
The time the federal government built a flawed housing project and tore it down...
On the 50th anniversary of the demolition of Pruitt-Igoe, it’s nearly impossible to understate the failure of the St. Louis public housing project.
Famed architect Minoro Yamasaki, who would go on to design the World...
What goes wrong when the government interferes with prices
Prices are a fact of life, and so is complaining about them. You probably prefer lower prices on just about everything, but especially when buying a house or paying for college, and you wish...
The cost of inaction
Most of us share a common trait: We are “housers.” We understand the foundational importance of the home.
Our homes, of course, meet a basic need—shelter. But our homes can and should also provide stability...
The one issue every economist can agree is bad: Rent control
But there are a few questions where there’s near unanimity, and rent control is one of them. Pretty much every economist agrees that rent controls are bad. And in the last decades of the...
The day the leasing office died
The landlord selected an apartment for the prospect, that is, as soon as the results of the leasing application and credit screening were deemed acceptable. An obedient tenant could sit and wait for the...
The Home Act
Maryland's HOME Act is legislation that would prohibit landlords and other property owners from declining Section 8 vouchers, deeming it discrimination based on "source of income." While proponents believe the Act will eliminate high...
When Washington bureaucrats hold the reins of power
The Biden administration was in a box in late July. They desperately wanted to extend the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s controversial eviction moratorium. But the judicial writing was on the wall. They...
The death of the small apartment building
Developers in the U.S. built 358,000 units of new multifamily housing in 2017. That’s less than half the number of single-family homes built last year, but the gap between the two has narrowed a...
The new housing problem facing low-income renters
There’s a new problem facing low-income individuals seeking affordable housing: Even if they have a housing choice voucher to subsidize rents in the private market, landlords do not want to accept voucher tenants. A...
