California YIMBY

The Family Premium: America’s Missing Bedrooms

Young families are willing to pay a premium for apartments with more bedrooms, yet a significant share of developers are overlooking this profitable market in favor of smaller, one-bedroom homes, according to new research. In “Homes for Young Families Part…

Building Babies? Baby, Build

New research reveals that rising U.S. housing costs may be responsible for an 11% drop in children being born between 1990 and 2020, compared to a scenario in which rents had remained constant at 1990 levels. This decline, which accounts…

Duplexes? Doable. Triplexes? Trouble.

In pursuit of more affordable housing for young families and first-time homebuyers, cities across the US are legalizing “missing middle” housing. But the reforms passed in many cities often fail to produce new homes. A deep dive into a Memphis,…

The Affordability Agenda: Why Mobility Matters

Lower-income Americans spend over 30% of their after-tax income on transportation, a burden driven by states prioritizing highways over transit. New research argues the high cost of transport reflects a policy failure, but one that can be reversed and lead…

New Apartments Are Safer Than Detached Houses—And It’s Not Even Close

In 2023, four people died in apartment fires in buildings constructed since 2010, out of 8.3 million Americans in those buildings. That’s 0.5 deaths per million. Compare that to single-family homes: 7.6 per million, fifteen times higher. In “Modern Multifamily…

Building Up Beats Sprawling Out: Why Construction Wages Grew 2x Faster in Dense Cities

When Minneapolis converted an abandoned Ford auto plant into a dense neighborhood, it created thousands of union construction jobs while making housing more affordable. A 22-year analysis reveals that smart growth policies like these consistently produce more construction work, higher…

California Legalizes “Duplexes In My Historic Back Yard”

Local Abuse of Historic Preservation Rules Leads to Reform “We can build more homes and also preserve historic neighborhoods” SACRAMENTO – Today, California took a major step toward ending the abuse of historic preservation laws to block urgently-needed new housing,…