News and Commentary
Leah Brooks, Genevieve Denoeux, and Jenny Schuetz write in a post for the Brookings Institution blog The Avenue about the Washington, D.C. region’s need for more housing and how satellite mapping technology can help inform where to build.
Christian Britschigi writes in Reason about how the California Judicial Council’s decision to extend deadlines for filing civil actions to 90 days after the end of the state’s COVID-19 emergency declaration has held up housing projects in the state. Britschigi explains that opponents of additional housing often use civil actions demanding additional environmental reviews as a way of stymieing new construction projects. By effectively creating an open-ended window for NIMBYs to file lawsuits against new construction, the Judicial Council has inadvertently shuttered new construction statewide.
An article by Nicole Karlis in Salon finds that Oakland, California is likely facing a boom in homelessness once the pandemic is over. Karlis writes that Oakland, like many other cities in the U.S., has a temporary eviction moratorium due to the COVID-19 pandemic and recession. However, since Oakland has high rent costs and requires tenants to back-pay rent to landlords once the pandemic is over, there is likely to be a large spike in individuals experiencing homelessness after the pandemic is over.
Joe Cortright writes in an article for City Observatory that the racial and economic segregation of a metropolitan area seems to be strongly correlated with the prevalence of COVID-19. This disputes the common assertion that population density is a more salient factor for COVID-19 prevalence.
The Cato Institute held a live, online policy forum on ways to address the urban housing crisis in the U.S. and whether the solution is to build up or build out. The event, moderated by Vanessa Brown Calder of the Joint Economic Committee, featured Market Urbanism’s Scott Beyer and Cato’s Randal O’Toole & Scott Lincicome.
New Research
Rob Warnock writes in a report for Apartment List, an online marketplace for landlords and renters, about homeownership rates by generation. The report finds that millennials are the largest generation in the nation’s housing market, despite having lower homeownership rates than other generations. Nevertheless, there remains a chance that millenials could eclipse Generation X in homeownership, becoming the first generation since the Silent Generation to have a higher homeownership rate than their preceding generation.
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