Housing
Blog
Corporate home buyers are not ‘plundering’ U.S. neighborhoods
Tucker Carlson, for one, has been for years carping about corporations buying single-family homes. In 2021, when he still had a show on Fox News, Carlson objected to “private-equity firms like BlackRock” buying “entire neighborhoods of single-family homes and turning them into rentals.” His guest that evening was Chronicles Magazine’s Pedro Gonzalez, ...
Blog
Is Declining Homeownership Driving Support for Democratic Socialism?
My previous post “On young Americans and their Growing Acceptance of Socialism” connected the popularity of democratic socialism among Americans aged 18 – 39 to inequality. Inequality concerns are not the only factor driving Gen Z’s embrace of democratic socialism. Gen Z’s growing support for democratic socialism is occurring along ...
Blog
Read the latest from PRI's Free Cities Center
Seattle’s public-housing experiment is heading toward disaster
It’s long been obvious that America’s history with government-run housing projects has been an unmitigated disaster. They were quite the rage when I grew up around Philadelphia in the 1960s and 1970s, but these public-housing projects always ended up as dangerous, poorly designed, soulless and racially segregated – places that ...
Blog
If you build it, they will socialize? Public spaces and loneliness
If you build it, they will socialize? Public spaces and loneliness By D. Dowd Muska | October 17, 2025 Urbanists have a new item for cities’ to-do lists: Fix America’s loneliness crisis. And their preferred tool? Public spaces. The William Penn Foundation’s Shawn McCaney is typical. He believes the nation’s ...
Blog
Read about San José's transformation under Mayor Mahan
San José Mayor Shows Market-Based Ideas Can Improve Urban Quality of Life
Major cities in California have decayed in recent years as elected officials and city bureaucrats have doubled down on a mix of government mandates, excessive regulations, high fees and lax enforcement of public safety laws that have created an unattractive quality of life driving away businesses, jobs, tax revenue and ...
Blog
Yes In God’s Back Yard: YIGBYs fight for more housing
Yes In God’s Back Yard: YIGBYs fight for more housing by D. Dowd Muska | October 3, 2025 When it’s time to thwart an unwanted land use, NIMBYs (Not In My Back Yarders) consult a list of hardy perennials. Parking. Traffic. Crime. Noise. Property values. “Preserving the character of the ...
Blog
California loosens housing regs, but they still slow construction
California loosens housing regs, but they still slow construction By Sarah Downey | September 26, 2025 As the rate of homeownership declines in California, it’s raising more questions about the bureaucratic costs that make housing development in the Golden State much slower than other parts of the country. New data ...
Blog
YIMBYs win political victories, but where are the new houses?
Gov. Gavin Newsom even held up passage of the state budget until lawmakers approved two reforms to the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). Assembly Bill 130 exempts a broader number of environmentally friendly infill housing projects from CEQA. Senate Bill 131 exempts nine types of projects from CEQA. These include ...
Blog
Mayor Daniel Lurie slashes red tape in San Francisco
Mayor Daniel Lurie slashes red tape in San Francisco By Sal Rodriguez | September 15, 2025 Since taking office in January, San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie has made streamlining his city’s notoriously challenging regulatory processes a top priority. In February, Lurie established PermitSF, a multi-agency effort tasked with speeding up ...
Blog
Read the latest from PRI's Free Cities Center
You have rights to your property, not to control others
Everything in this world does seem nonsensical, especially as we consider the issue of land-use regulation and California’s efforts (led by progressives) to jump-start housing construction by—yes, you heard this right—reducing the role of government in dictating what we can do with our property. Meanwhile, many conservatives have dug in ...
Corporate home buyers are not ‘plundering’ U.S. neighborhoods
Tucker Carlson, for one, has been for years carping about corporations buying single-family homes. In 2021, when he still had a show on Fox News, Carlson objected to “private-equity firms like BlackRock” buying “entire neighborhoods of single-family homes and turning them into rentals.” His guest that evening was Chronicles Magazine’s Pedro Gonzalez, ...
Is Declining Homeownership Driving Support for Democratic Socialism?
My previous post “On young Americans and their Growing Acceptance of Socialism” connected the popularity of democratic socialism among Americans aged 18 – 39 to inequality. Inequality concerns are not the only factor driving Gen Z’s embrace of democratic socialism. Gen Z’s growing support for democratic socialism is occurring along ...
Read the latest from PRI's Free Cities Center
Seattle’s public-housing experiment is heading toward disaster
It’s long been obvious that America’s history with government-run housing projects has been an unmitigated disaster. They were quite the rage when I grew up around Philadelphia in the 1960s and 1970s, but these public-housing projects always ended up as dangerous, poorly designed, soulless and racially segregated – places that ...
If you build it, they will socialize? Public spaces and loneliness
If you build it, they will socialize? Public spaces and loneliness By D. Dowd Muska | October 17, 2025 Urbanists have a new item for cities’ to-do lists: Fix America’s loneliness crisis. And their preferred tool? Public spaces. The William Penn Foundation’s Shawn McCaney is typical. He believes the nation’s ...
Read about San José's transformation under Mayor Mahan
San José Mayor Shows Market-Based Ideas Can Improve Urban Quality of Life
Major cities in California have decayed in recent years as elected officials and city bureaucrats have doubled down on a mix of government mandates, excessive regulations, high fees and lax enforcement of public safety laws that have created an unattractive quality of life driving away businesses, jobs, tax revenue and ...
Yes In God’s Back Yard: YIGBYs fight for more housing
Yes In God’s Back Yard: YIGBYs fight for more housing by D. Dowd Muska | October 3, 2025 When it’s time to thwart an unwanted land use, NIMBYs (Not In My Back Yarders) consult a list of hardy perennials. Parking. Traffic. Crime. Noise. Property values. “Preserving the character of the ...
California loosens housing regs, but they still slow construction
California loosens housing regs, but they still slow construction By Sarah Downey | September 26, 2025 As the rate of homeownership declines in California, it’s raising more questions about the bureaucratic costs that make housing development in the Golden State much slower than other parts of the country. New data ...
YIMBYs win political victories, but where are the new houses?
Gov. Gavin Newsom even held up passage of the state budget until lawmakers approved two reforms to the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). Assembly Bill 130 exempts a broader number of environmentally friendly infill housing projects from CEQA. Senate Bill 131 exempts nine types of projects from CEQA. These include ...
Mayor Daniel Lurie slashes red tape in San Francisco
Mayor Daniel Lurie slashes red tape in San Francisco By Sal Rodriguez | September 15, 2025 Since taking office in January, San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie has made streamlining his city’s notoriously challenging regulatory processes a top priority. In February, Lurie established PermitSF, a multi-agency effort tasked with speeding up ...
Read the latest from PRI's Free Cities Center
You have rights to your property, not to control others
Everything in this world does seem nonsensical, especially as we consider the issue of land-use regulation and California’s efforts (led by progressives) to jump-start housing construction by—yes, you heard this right—reducing the role of government in dictating what we can do with our property. Meanwhile, many conservatives have dug in ...
