The vibes at YIMBYtown were amazing. More than any other conference I’m familiar with, most people at YT are doing meaningful work on the ground and attend because they want to become more effective. Pragmatic, optimistic and energetic—just what we need right now. Let’s build more homes, y’all!

Last morning of @yimbytown.bsky.social , Stephanie Pollock laying down truths about transportation systems. What we want in abundance is *not* transit. It’s getting people where they want to go. Some houses for people also need houses for cars - but not all of them.

ND Gov. Kelly Armstrong at @yimbytown.bsky.social : on any policy change, 20% of people will be cranky & loud against, 80% are supportive but busy living their lives & don’t speak up. Ignore the 20%. Turn off your social media. Find a compelling emotional hook to engage the silent 80%.

Good morning to the triple deckers of New Haven. May they be legal to build everywhere.

Tomorrow I’m moderating a panel at my 3rd @yimbytown.bsky.social , reflecting on a decade of pro-housing activism. During the 1st one (Boulder 2016), I was working for the Federal Reserve Board, which would *never* have sanctioned me attending such a subversive (in the best possible way) event.

Absolutely not.

Fittingly, the YIMBYtown express* leaves DC passing through NoMa, the YIMBYest neighborhood in the US. * not really, but that should be are train.

Today, the Center for Building published “Beyond Zoning” by John Zeanah, Memphis’s Chief of Development and Infrastructure. He chronicles the non-zoning barriers faced by Malone Commons, a low-rise multifam/mixed-use project, and how they worked through them www.centerforbuilding.org/publication/...

A reminder to email Governor Lamont and your legislators and let them know WE NEED MORE HOMES. This is an easy two click way to make your voice heard. ctneedshomes.org

I am shocked -- shocked! -- to learn that housing prices fell the most in metros where inventory of homes increased by a lot. via @harvard-jchs.bsky.social www.jchs.harvard.edu/blog/home-pr...

As we head into YIMBYtown (aka Super Bowl of housing supply), I've been reflecting on recent statewide policy wins & losses. One takeaway: which bills cross the finish line in a given year is kinda hard to predict. www.mercatus.org/research/pol...

Recurring theme of Abundance day 2: as long as a handful of cranky incumbent homeowners can convince one NIMBY judge to block zoning reforms, we will not be able to build enough homes of all shapes & sizes.

Reihan Salam at Abundance: “we need to break the extraction machine and rebuild the growth machine.”

“We need rampant and abundant housing…we need all of that.” Can someone good at sound editing overlay this with a choir singing amen?

Word of the day: Hayekian. I’ve never heard it used in a sentence before but Steve Teles dropped it maybe 3 times in 10 minutes.

🎉 It’s with great pleasure that we’re now announcing the recipients of the 2025 Donald Shoup Awards! Congratulations to the Austin Parking Reform Coalition, @citizen-cate.bsky.social, and @stephvigil.bsky.social !! parkingreform.org/2025-donald-...

Highest 2 Lowest is pure catnip for Gen Xers who love NY. Gorgeous scenery, from the Brooklyn Bridge to the penthouse apartment, and every carefully selected piece of clothing.

Housing markets rely heavily on access to capital (loans to build, acquire, upgrade, & sell property). So it's critical to have stable, well-functioning financial systems that operate under transparent, consistently enforced rules. Messing with central banks can have big ripple effects for housing.

Julia Moskin’s “best gazpacho.” To be honest, I’ve not sampled all the other gazpachos, but this one is pretty damn delicious. Cheers!

Undoing 100 years of bad land use planning won’t happen anytime overnight, but cities like Charlottesville are making good progress. Keep fighting, friends!

Violent mobs of roving butterflies attaching the flowers, another typical day in DC.

Very clear and even-keeled explainer from @emmbadger.bsky.social of the tension between Congress blaming DC's leaders for the District's (perceived) shortcomings while not allowing us to govern ourselves. Poor maintenance of NPS-owned spaces is a perennial gripe. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/14/u...

My neighborhood listserv today features a heated debate (many, many entries) over the "travesty" of DDOT not repairing a couple of potholes. It boggles my mind that this is the most pressing concern in people's daily lives, especially right now.

Some East Coast folks will go on at length about not liking LA, saying it's not a real city, etc. When you ask them which parts of LA they've hung out in, they'll say "Oh I changed planes at LAX once." Just thinking about that today for no particular reason.

Amazingly, I walked 4 blocks from my office in downtown DC to pick up lunch without running into any roving bands of violent criminals. If FBI and National Guard want to help out, they could ticket reckless drivers who speed, run red lights, & don't yield to pedestrians in crosswalks.

Also true in US. Subsidizing wealthy homeowners is both an inefficient use of public resources and highly regressive.

Mayors & city council members (or candidates) walking across their cities may be partly a shtick for social media, but its also a great way to road-test pedestrian infrastructure. Let’s hope this trend catches on in more places.

Legalizing corner stores in more neighborhoods would allow more people to buy groceries without needing to drive.

The spillovers of CA’s broken housing market onto the rest of the US are really important. And it’s great that CA legislators are testing new levers to unlock production. But the policy environment is so insanely complicated that I worry about the external validity of most research on CA reforms.

Florida built a detention center in the middle of the Everglades, on a site with no water or sewer, in a few months. In CA, it takes 10+ years to build apartments in infill locations with great infrastructure. US land use governance has gone terribly wrong. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/06/u...

Any suggestions for small, practical dorm-room enhancing gifts for my nephews?

Putting bus stops in the midpoint of a block or at intersections without crosswalks *of course* will lead to people scurrying across the street to catch the bus. Somehow DOTs haven’t figured this out.

Really pleased with the lamination on this batch of feta scallion biscuits.

Hobnob with other pro-housing folks and eat New Haven pizza! What's not to love about @yimbytown.bsky.social ??

Can @unlawfulentries.bsky.social and @jedkolko.bsky.social create a video series where they seek out delicious but oddball snacks and narrate their taste tests? Because that would be amazing.

If you think traffic congestion is bad now, wait until cities cut 30-45% of their current bus & rail service. (People who don't ride public transit still benefit enormously from its existence.)

4-flats are starter homes. Triple-deckers are starter homes. Duplexes and townhouses are starter homes. Condos are starter homes (yes, even “luxury” condos). Legalize them all, everywhere.

Yup. If more elected officials depended on public transit in their daily lives, we would have vastly more reliable & frequent transit service and better quality sidewalks. Plus shade at bus stops.

I'm hiring a Director of Housing!! Come help us develop creative approaches to increase housing supply. In my completely unbiased opinion, we're doing really exciting & impactful work on one of the most critical policy issues of our time. Join our team! www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/42...

In hindsight, the optimal mode choice for my commute home tonight would have been a kayak.

Conventional wisdom in pro-housing ecosystem is that ADUs are the gateway to more ambitious zoning reform (legalize ADUs first, sky doesn't fall, ramp up to 'plexes & larger apts). Has anyone looked at this for reasonable sample of cities (% that start w/ ADUs & progress to larger reforms)?

"Don't Malden my Marblehead" perfectly encapsulates so much of NIMBY sentiment. Also so very, very New England: if you don't know the names of these towns, you obviously don't belong here...not that you can afford it anyway.

There's a riveting documentary waiting to be made on the outsized (sorry not sorry) impact of fire trucks & garbage trucks on housing affordability. Also covering kludgy public procurement processes. Stay tuned!

Fantastic housing job posting!! @ternerhousing.bsky.social is hiring a Deputy Director of Policy. The Terner folks are doing frontier work on housing policy & connecting the research-policy dots. Plus, they're lovely humans to have as colleagues. Details below: ternercenter.berkeley.edu/careers/

💯

State & local govts (& unpaid civic groups) do a ton of heavy lifting on disaster planning & recovery, but they will always need backup (staff, $$, info, technical expertise) from the federal govt. by all means, let’s build more state & local capacity but not as a *substitute* for federal support.

Using local govt authority to bolster property values for affluent homeowners while blocking new rental housing is not, under any lens, redistributing power or resources to working class households.

Conversations around housing affordability could be better at distinguishing btwn lowering the cost of producing homes (eg per-unit development costs) and lowering consumption costs to households (mostly through subsidies). Complex financing schemes may do the latter but usually not the former.

As a UVA alum who grew up in Virginia, I'm used to the governor & legislature playing politics with the state's public universities. But this type of federal meddling is something else altogether.

The anti-abundance wing of the Democratic Party (CA unions and CT Gov Ned Lamont) having a depressingly strong week.