How can affordable housing help minimize, rather than perpetuate, income segregation? At City Observatory, we’ve long focused on the challenge of concentrated poverty, starting with our first report Lost in Place, in 2014. American metropolitan areas have become more segregated…
A fundamental contradiction lies beneath most of our housing policy debates At City Observatory, we’ve frequently made the case that promoting homeownership as an investment strategy is a risky proposition. No financial advisor would recommend going into debt in order to…
Build expensive new “luxury” apartments, and wait a few decades One of the most common refrains the the affordable housing discussion is “developers are targeting the high end of the market” and new apartments are just unaffordable. Left to its…
Distrust and empowering everyone to equally be a NIMBY is a recipe for perpetual housing problems The recent defeat of SB 827–California State Senator Scott Wiener’s bill that would have legalized apartment construction in area’s well served by transit–was the…
A powerful federal agency can override local laws limiting access to TV. But housing? Nope. Local control. It’s the bedrock principle of land use planning. Cities and neighborhoods should have absolute control over the kinds of buildings that get built…