Only 5 to 10 % of all single-family homeowners in the US have the right to add an apartment to her home. Why isn’t it higher in blue progressive states that claim to care about the working class?

FIX LAND USE! Land use is the dominant structural factor for the world’s highest bike-mode-share places. They are are mostly compact, mixed-use and connected with excellent density. Flatness is also a hard physical filter for reaching the very top tier.

It’s all about land use

Slowest growth states

The state housing in America archive.ph/B3IlB

Only 5 to 10 % of all single-family homeowners in the US have the right to add an apartment to her home. Why isn’t it higher in blue progressive states that claim to care about the working class?

The rise in fatalities was more pronounced in cars equipped with Apple CarPlay. www.vice.com/en/article/p...

Dutch bike networks evolved. Designers watched behavior and chosen routes, and then formalized them.

Legal scarcity is not an accident. It’s a policy choice.The equity windfall for incumbents is financed by higher rents and higher purchase prices for young families. Some states leaders are starting to change the rules. They must stop enforcing the scarcity premium instead of the American Dream.

Housing should never be a discretionary gift. It should be a fundamental right. #BackTo3 @mayor.nyc.gov @kimdriscollma.bsky.social @samseder.bsky.social @davidsirota.com

Even under Reagan and Clinton, leaders who claimed to favor markets , we didn’t legalize market housing growth, instead choosing to subsidize scarcity. Why? Rising home values made scarcity politically popular. Incumbent property owners benefited and talked only of character and traffic.

We moved from building public housing to funding ongoing rent subsidies and developer tax credits. Spending rose. Supply didn’t match. That’s not a free market, it’s permanent subsidy layered on top of constrained zoning to protect distorted equity growth.

Since the 1970s, federal low-income housing subsidies (rental aid + LIHTC) have risen over 4× per capita in real terms. We didn’t deregulate. We subsidized around scarcity instead of legalizing enough homes to keep them affordable.

Allow the housing market to work. substack.com/@danmurphy67...

Only 5 to 10 % of all single-family homeowners in the US have the right to add an apartment to their home. Why isn’t it higher in blue progressive states that claim to care about the working class?

Right on. How are you going to lower my housing costs…?? Talk about nothing else. youtube.com/shorts/g3uQs...

What prevents any state from making the duplex the by right base unit, giving any single family owner the right to add an apartment ?

"Single family zoning is a subsidy to homeowners. It's a subsidy that's paid by renters by making housing in the area less affordable. And given that the average homeowner has 40 times the net worth of the average renter, it means that this is a subsidy to the rich from the poor."

Arterials are not overloaded because engineers failed. They’re overloaded because: The metro system forces cross-municipal travel Local zoning suppresses proximity. State funding reinforces hierarchy Engineers are managing symptoms of a land-use geometry problem.

Should state safety funding be conditional on zoning reform? Should planning approvals require quantified exposure modeling? Should severe injury risk per capita be tied to housing allocation?

Safe Systems manage kinetic energy and exposure. Zoning determines exposure before a single stripe is painted.

Land use and network design set exposure, the prevailing speed environment, trip length, and congestion/queue conditions that drive risky behaviors often before an engineer is asked to provide comment. A key part of #safesystems

Are high multipliers legal modern redlining?

Universal daylighting debate nyc.streetsblog.org/2025/11/10/b...

The 20th century’s Original Sin www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Densify sprawl. ADUs by right. Allow mixed commercial. SFH conversions by right … it adds up to better density and more demand for transit and AAA bike

#BackTo3 = Homes cost ~3× local median income (again like in 1970)

This is the path #BackTo3 that will unlock true middle class growth again www.ucpress.edu/books/the-mi...

New NBER paper finds that US crash deaths rise by ~15% on dates of major album releases. Distraction from smartphones is a likely culprit. www.nber.org/papers/w34866

The 20th century’s Original Sin www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Parking minimums and scarcity zoning are the same instrument: state control of private land use. The difference is who benefits. Parking mins subsidize drivers. Scarcity zoning subsidizes incumbents. Both transfer value. Are regulations preventing harm or manufacturing scarcity?

I had a great time chatting with @theoverheadwire.com in our annual conversation about the year in transit. Check out the first part of our podcast:

Density is safer. streetlight data

When housing is treated as an investment moat, politics blocks supply. That pushes growth outward, increases trip lengths, and makes arterials deadly. Then agencies try to retrofit safety on a system that’s still manufacturing car dependence.

Insane snow totals! RI and SE Mass clobbered

Massachusetts is a Home Rule state, but: The Legislature retains supremacy Zoning authority exists because the state granted it (MGL c.40A) The Legislature could amend or repeal c.40A It could mandate duplexes statewide It could abolish single-family zoning It could centralize zoning entirely

You simply cannot separate road safety from land use.

US zoning and land use creates the conditions where induced demand is bigger, faster, and more persistent. It’s much stronger in the U.S. because the entire land use, pricing, governance system amplifies it.

Revised National Parks Webpage Describes Harriet Tubman As Human Trafficker https://theonion.com/revised-national-parks-webpage-describes-harriet-tubman-as-human-trafficker/

100 years bit.ly/4kOphLq

Any state could make duplexes the base unit statewide. It wouldn’t conflict with the Euclid decision which held: Zoning is a valid exercise of state police power under the 14th Amendment. It did not require single-family zoning but simply said it is constitutionally permissible.

Parking minimums and scarcity zoning are the same instrument: state control of private land use. The difference is who benefits. Parking mins subsidize drivers. Scarcity zoning subsidizes incumbents. Both transfer value. Is the regulation is preventing harm or manufacturing scarcity.

Breaking News: The Trump administration is releasing the funds it had frozen for a $16 billion rail tunnel between New York City and New Jersey, government lawyers told a judge.

The most expensive housing in cities came pre zoning. Why do we zone again?

Did these these car-lite places mostly come from pre-zoning urban form? Yes, overwhelmingly!

I’m in. Bluesky it is. We need more of this!

Mandatory read! “In a poll, a plurality of Massachusetts residents (47.2%) agreed with the statement that “Migrants are taking up affordable housing that should go to Americans first.”” www.theargumentmag.com/p/how-scarci...

The move to SUVs was inevitable and consumer based given all the driving and desire to protect our families in our cars. We force car growth through land use that places premium on excellent walkability. The key is fixing land use - working #BackTo3 to lower car demand itself. bit.ly/4kz1wHc

What’s going on here. The higher the multiplier, the less affordable it is to live or ever buy a house.