What cities have successfully financed housing at the local level? How does tax increment financing work? When should cities stop subsidizing large-scale housing projects? Strong Towns President Chuck Marohn answers all these questions and more in this episode of the Strong Towns Podcast. (Transcript included.)
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Many people think that increased efficiency and economies of scale in the housing market are the key to affordability. However, these benefits are not actually appearing. We do need innovation, but not in the form of new interest rate manipulations or complex securitization schemes.
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What do you do when your city is full of illegal backyard cottages that no one can live in but you really need more affordable housing options? If you’re a city official in Berkeley, California, you recognize that one problem can address the other.
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On this episode of the Strong Towns Podcast, Chuck answers housing questions submitted by Ohio State University students, covering topics from the history of the housing market to financing housing development.
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The U.S. is in a massive housing bubble fueled by widespread fraud. With banks incentivized to look away and Wall Street and Washington incentivized to keep housing prices artificially high, a bottom-up approach is the only hope for bringing sanity back to the housing market.
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The Federal Reserve just cut interest rates. Some people are celebrating the move as making housing more attainable, but it's really just reinforcing the housing trap. Need proof? Look no further than the 40-year mortgage.
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We can’t wait for big government housing programs to fix the housing affordability crisis — in fact, they can actually make things worse. But don't lose hope. Local governments have the power to tackle the housing crisis in ways that actually work.
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A financial bubble is, by definition, unsustainable. So, why have we recreated the 2000s housing bubble?
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And why a lot of people will remain unimpressed by it.
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Here’s how high-end shoes can help us understand why the housing market is in the state it’s currently in.
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A new survey asks: “If you were moving to a new home, would you be willing to spend more to live in a community where you could easily walk to parks, shops, and restaurants?” Here’s how people responded.
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The single least expensive way to produce a lot of new housing is to follow a template that was once used in virtually every city. Unfortunately, most North American cities effectively prohibit it today. Does yours?
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With many baby boomers wanting to downsize, the housing market is dominated by large, single-family homes…but that’s not the kind of housing that’s in demand, anymore. Here’s why this is bad news for all generations.
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This LA resident has gone viral after taking matters into his own hands to deal with the housing crisis.
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Airbnb owners have voiced concerns over plummeting bookings in the last few months. Are we witnessing the “Airbnbust,” and if so, what does this mean for the housing market, as a whole?
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If one thing’s clear about the housing market, it’s that it’s currently more sensitive to factors outside of your community—outside of your control—than anything within.
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Increasingly, for entire cities in the U.S., buying a starter home on a modest income is no longer an option.
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Are Wall Street-backed investors the reason you can’t afford a house? The truth is a bit more complicated than that.
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When you’re not allowed to build the kind of housing you want, sometimes you have to work with what’s already here.
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In Detroit's 48205 zip code, from 2014 to 2020, the number of vacant homes hardly budged, despite $25M spent demolishing 1,628 vacant homes. When the pandemic hit, vacant homes plummeted. What happened?
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