In housing construction, new homes are said to “pencil out” – or be financially feasible – when the expected rental income or sales price is high enough to cover construction costs plus a reasonable return on investment. A project that…
How Urban Housing Shortages Fuel Costly Climate Disasters
How do urban housing shortages caused by tight zoning and other land use regulations increase the risk of climate disaster? In Relational Geographies of Urban Unsustainability: The Entanglement of California’s Housing Crisis With WUI Growth and Climate Change, Miriam Greenberg,…
The Homework: July 25, 2024
Welcome to the July 25, 2024 Main edition of The Homework, the official newsletter of California YIMBY — legislative updates, news clips, housing research and analysis, and the latest writings from the California YIMBY team. News from Sacramento The Legislature…
Defective Condo Defect Laws: Ripe for Repair?
Since 2011, 97 percent of California’s new multifamily housing has been built for rent, not for ownership. While the state needs to continue to build hundreds of thousands of rentals – more supply will drive down housing costs, and stabilize…
Movin’ On Up? The Low Ceiling of North American Elevator Standards
Why do we have so many walk-up apartment buildings without elevators in North America, and why are buildings with elevators so expensive compared to the rest of the world? In a new report simply titled “Elevators”, Stephen Smith, from the…
Episode 23
Jessica Trounstine on Segregation Welcome to Abundance, a Metropolitan Abundance podcast where we chat with the academics, researchers, and practitioners who inspire and inform our work. Welcome back to the Abundance Podcast! In this episode, M. Nolan Gray and Ned Resnikoff chat with Jessica Trounstine.…
The Homework: July 8, 2024
Welcome to the July 8, 2024 Main edition of The Homework, the official newsletter of California YIMBY — legislative updates, news clips, housing research and analysis, and the latest writings from the California YIMBY team. News from Sacramento The legislature…
“Informal” Housing – It’s Not Just a Formality
California’s statewide accessory dwelling unit (ADU) reforms are an unambiguous housing policy win, enabling the permitting and construction of tens of thousands of new homes all across the state. However, legal ADU development is not the whole story: even with…
More Homes: Illegal in 96% of California
“How much of California’s residential land is zoned exclusively for single family homes?” is a fairly straightforward question that is surprisingly difficult to answer – because state-level data on zoning largely does not exist. Until now. In Single-Family Zoning in…
Episode 22
Impact Fees in California Welcome to Abundance, a Metropolitan Abundance podcast where we chat with the academics, researchers, and practitioners who inspire and inform our work. Welcome back to the Abundance Podcast! In this episode, M. Nolan Gray chats with William Steichen and…