Low-density housing typically refers to residential areas occupied primarily by single-family homes or buildings with a limited number of dwellings. There is no set definition, but one characteristic of such an area is that the inhabitants start complaining about any housing development that is too… Read More »Zoning Has Been Weaponized
To save itself, Los Angeles must return to its original hair color or, as they say, “its roots.” When my great-great-grandfather landed in Los Angeles in 1890, there were commuter trains. Downtown Los Angeles was an actual center city, not simply a name of one of over 400 neighborhoods. Los Angeles’ functional boundary currently has 400 neighborhoods whose names rarely denote anything more than a feeling from a particular time.
We subsidize advertising campaigns of multinational corporations. Every time we sit in our cars stuck in traffic on clogged arterial roads and forced to look at an ad for a Big Mac or Starbucks Coffee, we’re looking at an ad subsidized by our tax dollars.
The value of their advertisements is worth ten times what they pay, because of how US streets are designed. While the value of the land we build on is not something people think about, it is something corporations think deeply about and understand.
Housing as a human right has become a rallying cry across the United States and in many countries, especially in cities. More and more people are perplexed as to why housing is out of reach for all but the wealthy. Why have the needs of… Read More »Is COVID-19 spending fueling speculative vacancies?
Property taxes are the most important revenue source for most cities and towns in the U.S., providing funding for a variety of local services and infrastructure. Unfortunately, traditional property taxes’ emphasis on taxing the value of improvements – like homes and businesses – can produce… Read More »What are the on-the-ground effects of a land value tax? Lessons from the Pennsylvania experience.
This is the first in a series of articles discussing housing affordability, economic justice, and inequality in the United States. Afew months ago, I took the plunge and bought a home the traditional way, house and land packaged as one. Buying a home this way was… Read More »How Our Obsession with Owning the Land Beneath our Homes Is Driving the Housing Affordability Crisis (and What to Do about It)
The current conflict in Washington, dealing with the expenditure of hundreds of billions of dollars, is the much anticipated, frequently promised, but poorly defined ‘infrastructure bill’. As it stands, two versions are possible – one preferred by centrist Democrats and a few moderate Republicans that… Read More »Infrastructure Problems Exacerbated by a Poor System of Taxation
Cheap stick framing has led to a proliferation of blocky, forgettable mid-rises—and more than a few construction fires. Bloomberg Businessweek | Justin Fox These buildings are in almost every U.S. city. They range from three to seven stories tall and can stretch for blocks. They’re… Read More »Why America’s New Apartment Buildings All Look the Same
January 13, 20205:04 AM ET Heard on Morning Edition Eric Westervelt Charles Gibson pushes a shopping cart toward his soggy tent on a tenuous patch of a grassy drainage ditch along a bike trail in Santa Rosa, Calif. He’s one of nearly 200 people living… Read More »Sprawling Homeless Camps — Modern ‘Hoovervilles’ — Vex California
Photo: Baldwin, Fla., is surrounded by farm country, and in late October, local green beans, tomatoes, peanuts, cabbage and milk filled the shelves of the Baldwin Market, which is owned by the town. (Antonia Noori Farzan) By Antonia Noori Farzan November 22, 2019 at 5:03 a.m. EST… Read More »When a deep red town’s only grocery closed, city hall opened its own store. Just don’t call it ‘socialism.’
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