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Growing federal debt will take its toll on city budgets
Growing federal debt will take its toll on city budgets John Seiler | December 20, 2024 IT HAS TO END SOMETIME. The national debt has soared above $36 trillion – and counting. And when the party does end, cities are going to be hit. How hard is for the future. ...
Blog
Read the latest from PRI's Free Cities Center
The market, not politics, should drive office conversions
At least everyone agrees there’s a problem. Americans’ preference for commute-free employment has yielded a surfeit of office vacancy. The phenomenon is a calamity for lessors plagued by plummeting income. Earlier this month, The Seattle Times reported that one of the city’s “most aggressive, and tenacious, developers” has “defaulted on a $240 million loan ...
Blog
Oregon housing demand down, but so is affordability
Oregon housing demand down, but so is affordability By Randal O’Toole | December 13, 2024 Nearly two years ago, Oregon’s Gov. Tina Kotek set a target of increasing the number of homes built in Oregon each year from 22,000 to 36,000. At the time, I argued that the subsidies Kotek was ...
Blog
Voters slam California with new local taxes and bonds
Voters slam California with new local taxes and bonds By John Seiler | December 6, 2024 California’s Nov. 5 election totals, finalized on Dec. 5 by county registrars, show voters slammed local taxpayers with around $2.3 billion in new direct tax increases. Plus $47.1 billion in new bond debt, which ...
Blog
Read the latest from PRI's Free Cities Center
Can cities keep up as California steps up housing lawsuits?
Housing Element parameters are determined by the state, guiding cities and counties to produce sufficient inventory to accommodate community needs. While Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA) numbers get updated every eight years, what is planned for – and what is actually built – have long differed. The state this year ...
Blog
Read the latest from PRI's Free Cities Center
BOOK REVIEW: ‘Key to the City” – or the key to more control?
She is a “Mexican-American architect, attorney, professor and policymaker whose interdisciplinary work focuses on how law and policy can foster more equitable, sustainable, well-designed and connected places.” The author grew up in Houston, served for seven years as the head of Hartford, Conn.’s planning and zoning commission (her ex-husband was ...
Blog
Despite latest defense, zoning is just government coercion
Despite latest defense, zoning is just government coercion By Kerry Jackson | November 22, 2024 Central planning never goes out of style on the political left. On occasion, though, it gets special attention. That’s the case with a new book written by, according to Governing magazine, “an architect and zoning ...
Blog
Read the latest about California's high speed rail boondoggle
Despite the promises, bullet train is lesson in ‘sunk costs’
Unfortunately, California officials pay no attention to sunk costs, which are reflected in the spending for the California High Speed Rail System. If there is a classic lesson regarding “sunk costs,” the ongoing project of building a bullet train from San Francisco to Los Angeles is the poster child. Yet, ...
Blog
Market innovations can make our cities energy independent
Market innovations can make our cities energy independent By Edward Ring | November 15, 2024 A revolution in urban planning is well under way, driven by advances in wastewater recycling and runoff harvesting, along with waste-to-energy technologies and indoor agriculture. But perhaps the biggest and most unheralded breakthrough is the ...
Blog
Beyond rate cuts: Revived housing requires zoning reform
Recent reports by USC researchers and market analysts suggest that California’s already pricey housing stock requires far more than an interest rate cut to balance out, meaning an onrush of moderately priced units aren’t likely in the near term. But there has been further legislation from Sacramento this past session ...
Growing federal debt will take its toll on city budgets
Growing federal debt will take its toll on city budgets John Seiler | December 20, 2024 IT HAS TO END SOMETIME. The national debt has soared above $36 trillion – and counting. And when the party does end, cities are going to be hit. How hard is for the future. ...
Read the latest from PRI's Free Cities Center
The market, not politics, should drive office conversions
At least everyone agrees there’s a problem. Americans’ preference for commute-free employment has yielded a surfeit of office vacancy. The phenomenon is a calamity for lessors plagued by plummeting income. Earlier this month, The Seattle Times reported that one of the city’s “most aggressive, and tenacious, developers” has “defaulted on a $240 million loan ...
Oregon housing demand down, but so is affordability
Oregon housing demand down, but so is affordability By Randal O’Toole | December 13, 2024 Nearly two years ago, Oregon’s Gov. Tina Kotek set a target of increasing the number of homes built in Oregon each year from 22,000 to 36,000. At the time, I argued that the subsidies Kotek was ...
Voters slam California with new local taxes and bonds
Voters slam California with new local taxes and bonds By John Seiler | December 6, 2024 California’s Nov. 5 election totals, finalized on Dec. 5 by county registrars, show voters slammed local taxpayers with around $2.3 billion in new direct tax increases. Plus $47.1 billion in new bond debt, which ...
Read the latest from PRI's Free Cities Center
Can cities keep up as California steps up housing lawsuits?
Housing Element parameters are determined by the state, guiding cities and counties to produce sufficient inventory to accommodate community needs. While Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA) numbers get updated every eight years, what is planned for – and what is actually built – have long differed. The state this year ...
Read the latest from PRI's Free Cities Center
BOOK REVIEW: ‘Key to the City” – or the key to more control?
She is a “Mexican-American architect, attorney, professor and policymaker whose interdisciplinary work focuses on how law and policy can foster more equitable, sustainable, well-designed and connected places.” The author grew up in Houston, served for seven years as the head of Hartford, Conn.’s planning and zoning commission (her ex-husband was ...
Despite latest defense, zoning is just government coercion
Despite latest defense, zoning is just government coercion By Kerry Jackson | November 22, 2024 Central planning never goes out of style on the political left. On occasion, though, it gets special attention. That’s the case with a new book written by, according to Governing magazine, “an architect and zoning ...
Read the latest about California's high speed rail boondoggle
Despite the promises, bullet train is lesson in ‘sunk costs’
Unfortunately, California officials pay no attention to sunk costs, which are reflected in the spending for the California High Speed Rail System. If there is a classic lesson regarding “sunk costs,” the ongoing project of building a bullet train from San Francisco to Los Angeles is the poster child. Yet, ...
Market innovations can make our cities energy independent
Market innovations can make our cities energy independent By Edward Ring | November 15, 2024 A revolution in urban planning is well under way, driven by advances in wastewater recycling and runoff harvesting, along with waste-to-energy technologies and indoor agriculture. But perhaps the biggest and most unheralded breakthrough is the ...
Beyond rate cuts: Revived housing requires zoning reform
Recent reports by USC researchers and market analysts suggest that California’s already pricey housing stock requires far more than an interest rate cut to balance out, meaning an onrush of moderately priced units aren’t likely in the near term. But there has been further legislation from Sacramento this past session ...
