Super reassuring to be prepping for trip to APPAM next week and see both IAD and Sea-Tac on the list of airports expected to reduce flights. No worries, right?

~70% of New Yorkers supporting creating a unified digital zoning map might restore my faith in humanity. 🤞

Who else is going to be chewing their fingernails over Yes on Affordable Housing? Can we get a special edition of the Needle?

NYC voters have a chance today to remove redundant veto points to housing production. Ballot questions 2-4 would revise NYC's charter to make it easier to approve affordable housing & small projects. Technical & wonky? Yes. Important to increase supply? Also yes. furmancenter.org/thestoop/ent...

Fall in a bowl: roasted butternut squash, maple pecans, turkey bacon, and kale salad.

Happy to contribute to @notusperspectives.bsky.social on ways to fix housing policy. My take: make it easier to build homes of all shapes & sizes in more communities by legalizing diverse structures & simplifying complex regulations. www.notus.org/perspectives...

Anecdata on DC economy: my hairstylist quietly asked if my job is ok. Lots of her regular clients are federal govt workers. Business has gotten very slow for the whole salon.

People who have extra bedrooms & badly need more income do, in fact, take on roommates who share the rent. But many people really value their privacy & prefer not to share space with non-family. That's why studios/1 BRs rent at a premium.

it’s honestly crazy how the New York City council, at the behest of speaker Adrienne Adams, is illegally spending millions of your taxpayer dollars on an unhinged NIMBY propaganda campaign if you live in NYC vote YES on measures 2-5 to make it easier to build affordable housing

New federal policy on historic preservation: better to ask forgiveness than permission?

Cities: how do we protect pedestrians from construction on the outside of buildings? NYC: create giant semi-permanent sidewalk sheds that disrupt walking and look hideous. Milan:

Very cool new job posting! Social Science Research Council is hiring a Program Director to help launch a new Abundance Academic Network -- terrific opportunity to bridge social science research with current policy debates. Details below: job-boards.greenhouse.io/socialscienc...

Even in the academic journal universe, where editors serve different functions, good editors add enormous value. @coulsoncommaed.bsky.social and Dan McMillan shaped the field of urban economics through thoughtfully curating and shepherding papers.

Pumpkin biscuits. Happy fall, friends!

Great example of how tariffs harm broad economic segments but benefit narrow niche interests: housing analysts + NAHB worry (rightly) that tariffs on cabinets will slow housing production. Who's happy? The American Kitchen Cabinet Alliance. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/02/b...

Panel on Western NC disaster recovery points out that federal programs aren’t structured to support renters. That’s a policy *choice*. The US consistently excludes renters from financial benefits that homeowners receive. It doesn’t have to the that way.

We need to address both housing supply & ensuring family-sized homes that aren't just suburban single-families. Legalizing single-stair (w/safe construction materials) can help with both. We shouldn't be re-inventing the wheel w/long commissions; learn from places like Seattle & get it implemented.

Raleigh is serious about its historic homes - but also has some lovely newer ones. Townhouse mews are a great land-efficient option. And hats off to NC realtors…y’all got good taste.

How *not* to alleviate the housing shortage: tax cabinets. Kitchens & bathrooms are already some of the largest cost drivers for housing prices. Renovations have a big multiplier effect on local jobs. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/27/r...

Tireless Mercatus team @salimfurth.bsky.social @ebwhamilton.bsky.social @charlescgardner.bsky.social just dropped 18 (!) strategies for state govts to increase housing supply. Love the ideas to limit "lawsuits of questionable merit" [ahem, Virginia]. www.mercatus.org/research/pol...

Hard agree with @jerusalem.bsky.social: the Abundance movement does *not* want an abundance of Town Meetings. So much less adorable in real life than in Gilmore Girls. Right, @salimfurth.bsky.social @jessekb.bsky.social ?

Damn. Look at Montana seriously trying to put roofs over a lotta people's heads, use land efficiently, and keep construction costs down. And preserve mountain views!

The key to staying semi-focused through an afternoon of back-to-back meetings: eat a piece of chocolate just before each meeting.

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.