New today: The case for relegalizing single stair buildings above America's 3-story cap!. It's an intro to the reforms brought to the US by @holz_bau & popularized by @MarketUrbanism in 2021. Several US states have already acted. It's time to catch up with the developed world.

This is a huge challenge for Abundance in NY and @GovKathyHochul's agenda. The election is coming up: Will America's only truly featherbedded TWU local chapter lock in waste & abuse permanently?. Or will we follow global best practices to unleash automation-fueled wage gains?.

RT @GovKathyHochul: Six months in, congestion pricing is delivering:. ✅Traffic is down.✅ Business is booming.✅ Transit ridership is up.✅Cri….

When this happens multiple days in a month, it's running up a bill so big that it *will* hit ratepayers. Here's a writeup of the earlier peak near $3000/MWh

Another scorcher in NYC--and power prices on Long Island are hitting $2300/MWh 😬😬😬. Kudos to NYISO & the utilities for preventing blackouts, but this is absolutely unbelievably expensive. and is going to hit power bills next month

RT @mnolangray: California has invested billions in transit. But zoning rules often make it illegal to build housing near stations. This we….

RT @maxdubler: If we’re going to spend billions of dollars of public money building and maintaining these transit systems, we should change….

RT @PEWilliams_: Last week, California passed a landmark law exempting many infill housing developments from CEQA. Here’s how we can do the….

RT @Sam_Dumitriu: In 1937, London built 80,000 homes. Last year, it built less than half that. To find out why, I looked at two different….

RT @JoshuaTMcCabe: Our west coast friends aren't awake yet so I'll take a moment to highlight the other states where housing costs push up….

In low-income Left Behind regions, rent burdens can be high even where rents are low. That's a poverty problem YIMBYism can't fix. In expensive regions, by contrast, even a "modest" 15% drop in market rent has a big impact on poverty!. YIMBY🤝Antipoverty.

America's housing crisis contains two problems: Above-cost housing & low incomes. YIMBYism can cut rents down to construction costs, but it can't help poverty. Or can it?. Turns out an Austin-style 15% rent drop would cut Californian poverty by as much as the Child Tax Credit 👇

Modern regulations have turned "missing middle plexes" into a terrible economic proposition. IRC townhouses are a rock-solid choice. Then there's a very narrow corridor where small-plexes might pencil, but then the IBC trigger so often makes it worth switching to an IBC V-over-I.

Curious what the location is but this is common:. -IRC-regulated townhouses have lower hard costs than IBC apartments, so apts only pencil where land costs are high enough to justify density. -People really value fee simple ownership; @salimfurth and @ebwhamilton cover this well.

The TSA's fake shoe removal rule is finally ending!. Now they just have to stop pretending it's dangerous & illegal to bring spreadable toppings (like cream cheese for NYC holiday gift bagels 😡) on a short flight.

So impressed with this CRC. These are real, substantive reforms that significantly exceeded expectations for what this commission would accomplish.

I can't let go of Queens. Some of the last affordable, express-commutable neighborhoods in NYC. But also the food prices. I've had LA visitors fall to their knees in spanish Queens bc of the prices—prices they haven't seen for legit taquitos since they were in high school

RT @NiskanenCenter: The data is clear. It’s not harsher sentences but higher certainty of getting caught that deters crime. Shifting resou….

RT @arpitrage: Free buses become a lot more viable if you also lower the operating cost!. Will be curious if they develop a way to monitor….

It was an honor to brief the bipartisan Build America Caucus with @NiskanenCenter's housing & transport team!. We've been hard at work this spring supporting Congressional staff, navigating change at HUD, & supporting targeted state & local reforms in half a dozen places

RT @mattyglesias: People talk themselves into getting mad about stuff but what happened here is that about 100 very left-wing economists si….