California’s elected officials are delusional in thinking they can force insurance companies to insure the uninsurable. You can pass any law you want, but if a house is worth $750k and climate models predict it will almost certainly burn within 20 years what rates would YOU charge them?

Heard there were some new chairs at Buckingham Fountain. So you know I had to have that #FontanosAtTheFountain

I just kept on hitting more and more financing sources to close my gap, and I was like “wow am I really allowed to add all these?? This seems really complicated” Fortunately, a few years later I did successfully build my 100% affordable housing in Pilsen

By popular demand housing-developer-game.dhertz.workers.dev

CPED looking at the 2050 plan as a "minor policy update." Bernard: "We want to focus more on implementation this time around."

Regarding some discourse on the other app: Can we reconcile the ideas that 2008 was a housing bubble, vs. housing costs have been driven by long-run fundamentals? I think that we can!

"Eliminating minimum parking requirements" does not mean "eliminating parking." After Minneapolis removed parking minimums, citywide parking ratios dropped from 1.0 to 0.73 spaces per unit. Walkable areas often built little parking, while others built closer to prior levels.

Can’t believe they put a landlord special on the Schlitz logo

It's common to emphasize affordable housing development in higher-opportunity neighborhoods. This paper raises a nuanced tradeoff: in better n'hoods, LIHTC applicants that are (relatively) better off crowd out other tenants. Households with the highest need benefit less.

These flowering trees are amazing. Enjoy them while you can!

I don’t exactly know what this mural is saying about housing affordability. But I prefer to interpret it as a statement about how migration chains enable new housing to lower prices for homes across the price spectrum

The Loop’s modernist government buildings have been patriot-ified

In the last few years, Chicago has built a lot of new housing, often near transit, with less than 0.5 parking spaces per unit. Made possible by multiple reforms over the past decade-plus elevatedchicago.org/wp-content/u...

Picking up this book 75% because the cover art looks so good

BUILD plan fact of the day: lower income households benefit from new, market rate housing, even if they don’t live in that housing. New middle housing of the types that the plan would unban lowers housing costs for people who don’t live in that housing. 📑 pencillingout.substack.com/p/can-new-st...

You’d think they could figure out a better land use directly next to the red line

Life is flowing in Chicago

Most policymakers would be intrigued to hear about a costless way to make homeownership more affordable. That's minimum lot size reform! While Minneapolis is rightly seen as a zoning reform leader, it still has this low-hanging fruit. New @streets.mn post on the case for lot size reform.

It’s all just another day in paradise 😎

I’m actually starting to have a hard time reading this book. It’s insanely stressful, which is the last thing I want on the train ride home from work

Minneapolis needs to reduce minimum lot sizes: https://streets.mn/2026/05/19/minneapolis-needs-to-reduce-minimum-lot-sizes/ How a simple, well-tested zoning change can make homeownership more affordable in the city.

Continuing my Chicago reads: this book is incredible and propulsive, and one of those books where you can’t look away from the disasters unfolding no matter how terrible they are

Preapproved plans are most important for small projects and basic dwellings, where soft costs can mean the difference between a project that pencils or a lot that remains underutilized. 2/

Nicely-sliced data here on the types of households living in housing units with different bedroom counts in cities:

Cities have been losing families. We also know families strongly prefer housing with 3+ bedrooms. Would they still benefit if we built a bunch of new studios? I think so. In a new post, I review research on the connectedness of these housing submarkets. pencillingout.substack.com/p/can-new-st...

My lobby-maxxing tour of Chicago continues

First 2 sentences of this book: “On the morning of November 25, 1987, Harold Washington, Chicago's first African American mayor, broke ground for a new housing development in the North Kenwood-Oakland neighborhood. That afternoon, he died.”

That makes me smile. I miss Mac-Groveland!

Like @danielkayhertz.bsky.social has said: there's no way Ald. Quezada's zoning review process is intended to create less affordable housing. But when you favor the loudest voices against new housing, you risk getting 9 less affordable units (and 47 less total) blockclubchicago.org/2026/05/06/a...

Last week, @urbanistcomic.bsky.social and I wrote about why it's important — and safe — to allow taller single-staircase apartments in Chicago, making it more viable to add density on the city's many old, narrow lots. citythatworks.substack.com/p/small-lots...

Zoning minimums do exist, and I wrote about them — inspired by discourse about teardowns and deconversions in Chicago! I think that they *can* work if super well-calibrated, but that’s easy to do wrong and we should be cautious with such policies. pencillingout.substack.com/p/can-we-boo...

today I went on a little walk in the part of Chicago that's seen the biggest change in neighborhood character, where in 2013 the dominant land use was multifamily housing to 2023 when single-family housing was the dominant land use

CHICAGO BLUESKY: who can name where this sandwich is from?

As a quick note: the study the IML is quoting is not of Chicago, but a national review. It’s this one: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

As IL cities fight statewide upzoning for more housing, they've cited 1 study of a Chicago upzoning that found weak supply and affordability effects. But @rsday.bsky.social asked @yonahfreemark.com himself: He says their interpretation is wrong, and large-scale upzonings can indeed be beneficial!

“Six Luxurious New Construction Single Family Homes” in Avondale, near the Belmont Blue Line As always, there's a zoning angle...

Chicago wears the fog quite well

They don’t make real estate and insurance signs like this anymore

many are saying

New from me: www.governing.com/urban/parkin... We’ve seen more progress on parking reform than I ever imagined. And yet, some of the places that could benefit from it the most (eh hem, NYC) are still hanging on to parking mandates.

Rolling out the green carpet

I'm excited to say that I'll be moving to Madison this fall to start a PhD in Real Estate & Urban Economics at University of Wisconsin! I'll be sad to leave Chicago after this summer, but can't wait to work on research with some great people at UW.

Wow, according to Anthony Quezada’s newsletter, the 35th Ward (mostly Logan Square) has already received 8 ADU applications since the new ordinance on Wednesday

I want to start out by saying that at its core this is a very human and relatable story about losing a place that held a lot of memories, and everyone has experienced that feeling… BUT **BUT!** www.latimes.com/entertainmen...

Come for the vintage cartoons, stay for the discussions of the origins of zoning and height limits, downtown externalities, the empirical evidence on urban renewal's impacts, and more pencillingout.substack.com/p/when-ameri...

I wrote a long review of Fogelson's "Downtown," exploring downtowns' glory days and the start of their decline in the early 20th century. I also discuss the economic justifications for subsidizing downtowns, and whether we could have saved them at all. pencillingout.substack.com/p/when-ameri...

Something strange in the Feb. Georgetown Law "Abundance for Who" report: they barely mention that in 4 of the 6 high-growth metros they study, the number of housing units serving low income renters was *flat or growing* They focus so much on a declining share, but sometimes growth is positive-sum!

Alright, for all you sickos… the review is coming out tomorrow morning

Does it violate urbanist principles to say that I like the brickwork on the parking lot next to Second City

Absolutely lovely morning in the neighborhood. Many birds tweeting