Podcasts about YIMBY

Julius Nyanda is the Founder and CEO of HouseKeys, unlocking housing opportunity for cities, developers, homeowners, and renters. HouseKeys is a civic tech platform that helps local governments manage affordable and mixed-income housing programs across ownership, rental, and finance. Through its Program Marketplace, Julius and his team streamline administration and expand access to community-driven housing solutions, supporting cities like Beverly Hills, Morgan Hill, and San Francisco in delivering scalable, equitable outcomes.(03:22) - Challenges in Affordable Housing Development(06:10) - Housing policy incentives for Investors(10:46) - HouseKeys Marketplace approach(13:04) - The Economics of Affordable Housing(14:10) - GovTech & VC Opportunities & Challenges(22:37) - Feature: Blueprint 2025: The Future of Real Estate - Register now (23:23) - California's New YIMBY Bills(26:29) - AI & the Future of Housing Solutions(37:07) - Collaboration Superpower: Robert F. Smith (CEO at Vista Equity Partners) & Jack Ma (Founder of Alibaba)

Is biking downtown a dream or nightmare? Could Ezra Klein's “Abundance Agenda” work in Denver? Where do local liberals really stand on President Trump's immigration crackdown? We've been getting tons of texts, voicemails, and emails about recent episodes of the podcast, so today host Bree Davies and producer Paul Karolyi are dipping into the mailbag to discuss these topics and more! Do you have a question for us about Denver? We would love to know what you're wondering. Text or leave us a voicemail with your name and neighborhood, and you might hear it on the show: 720-500-5418 For even more news from around the city, subscribe to our morning newsletter Hey Denver at denver.citycast.fm. Follow us on Instagram: @citycastdenver Chat with other listeners on reddit: r/CityCastDenver Support City Cast Denver by becoming a member: membership.citycast.fm Learn more about the sponsors of this April 9th episode: Visit Port Aransas Denver Urban Gardens PineMelon - Use code CITYCAST for 75% off! Looking to advertise on City Cast Denver? Check out our options for podcast and newsletter ads at citycast.fm/advertise Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Send us a question/idea/opinion direct via text message!This week Nick and Kelvin discuss the latest trends in the property market, including improvements in CoreLogic value tracking (splitting suburb measures by property type), the impact of affordability on property values, and insights from the (relatively) new Hedonic Home Value Index (HVI). This includes a refreshed and upgraded version of mapping the market as well as a weekly back series for the HVI.They also explore lending trends, particularly focusing on debt-to-income ratios and interest-only lending, as well as recent government reforms aimed at increasing housing supply via big changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA).Sign up for news and insights or contact on LinkedIn, Twitter @NickGoodall_CL or @KDavidson_CL and email nick.goodall@corelogic.co.nz or kelvin.davidson@corelogic.co.nz

Labour promises to take the brakes off building with its new Planning and Infrastructure Bill. Will the downgrading of rights to object on environmental, local and procedural grounds anger voters more than new homes will mollify them? Has the government created the right incentives to get its mythical 1.5m new homes built? And have the YIMBYs really defeated the NIMBYs? A special roundtable with Hugh Ellis, Director of Policy at the Town and Country Planning Association; Housing & Residential Property Journalist of the Year Hannah Fearn; and NIMBY-Hunter General Jonn Elledge. • Support us on Patreon for early episodes and more. • We are sponsored by Indeed. Go to indeed.com/bunker to get your £100 sponsored credit.   Written and presented by Andrew Harrison. Audio production by Tom Taylor. Music by Kenny Dickinson. Managing Editor Jacob Jarvis. Group Editor Andrew Harrison. THE BUNKER is a Podmasters Production www.podmasters.co.uk Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

For more on the future of the Built Environment, subscribe to Most Podern on:Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/3zYvX2lRZOpHcZW41WGVrpApple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/most-podern-podcast/id1725756164Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/@MostPodernInstagram - https://www.instagram.com/most.podernLinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/most-podernSummaryAmerica was once a land of movement—both physical and economic. But today, we're stuck. In this episode of Most Podern, Alex Yuen, Minkoo Kang, and Libo Li sit down with historian and The Atlantic's deputy executive editor Yoni Appelbaum to discuss his new book, Stuck: How the Privileged and the Property Broke the Engine of American Opportunity. They explore how America's once-thriving culture of geographic and economic mobility has been stifled by restrictive zoning laws, exclusionary policies, and fear of change—making it harder for people to move and prosper. Yoni traces the history of zoning, from its origins to its role in today's housing crisis, and outlines three key solutions: standardizing zoning laws, legalizing diverse housing types, and embracing housing abundance. The conversation dives into the broader societal consequences of stagnation and why restoring mobility is crucial for a more America's future.LinksRead “Stuck”https://www.yoniappelbaum.com/https://x.com/YAppelbaumKeywordsUrban mobility, Housing crisis, Zoning laws, Single-family zoning, Affordable housing, Yoni Appelbaum, Stuck book, The Atlantic, Urban development, Housing policy, Economic mobility, Social mobility, NIMBY vs YIMBY, Housing affordability, Zoning reform, Urban planning, Gentrification, Real estate policy, Progressive housing policy, American citiesChapters00:00 The American Dream and Housing Ideals17:37 Generational Perspectives on Community Engagement20:12 The Impact of Mobility on Society22:57 Community Concerns vs. Housing Needs25:43 Mobility as a Fundamental Right28:16 Balancing Individual Agency and Community30:43 Proposed Solutions for Housing Challenges34:47 The Challenge of Change36:37 Learning from Global Examples38:40 The Role of Local Communities43:06 Shifting Mindsets on Growth47:35 The Importance of Mobility53:09 Reflections on the Current Era

In this episode I'm joined by Annemarie Gray and Felicity Maxwell to discuss how the YIMBY movement is finally cracking the code on housing reform in major American cities. We examine the recent groundbreaking victories in New York City and Austin, exploring how pro-housing groups are learning from each other through networks like Welcoming Neighbors Network, and wrestle with the challenge of increasing housing supply while protecting existing communities. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.volts.wtf/subscribe

Here's your local news for Tuesday, February 4, 2025:We learn how a federal funding freeze could jeopardize violence prevention efforts in Wisconsin,Find out why nature's pest control workers are in peril,Sit down with a self-described "YIMBY" running for city council,Explore the potential consequences of Trump's tariff plans,Ask an immigration attorney to outline your rights,Explain how birds are able to stay warm in the winter,And much more.

In this episode of IEA Briefing, we explore why a 37-year-old paper on UK housing remains shockingly relevant today. Dr. Kristian Niemietz joins us to discuss the republishing of "No Room! No Room!" - Professor Alan Evans' 1988 analysis of Britain's housing crisis. Despite being written when multiplex cinemas were new and the Berlin Wall still stood, the paper's diagnosis of the UK's housing problems feels like it could have been written last week. The discussion dives into Evans' key insights about land prices, planning permission, and local authority incentives - issues that have only gotten worse since the 1980s. Dr. Niemietz explains how the paper identified core problems like NIMBYism (before the term even existed in British English) and the green belt's impact on housing development. They also explore how the planning system's effect on land costs leads to compromises in building quality and design. The conversation concludes by examining how the housing crisis has intensified, with current UK housing affordability ratios over 8 times median income in England and over 12 in some areas. While new factors like immigration now affect housing demand, the fundamental problems Evans identified in 1988 remain at the root of today's crisis. The discussion ends with a look at the growing YIMBY movement and whether there's hope for meaningful change in housing policy. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit insider.iea.org.uk/subscribe

The Building Culture Podcast explores holistic solutions to crafting a more beautiful, resilient and thriving world through the built environment. Its host, Austin Tunnell, recently invited Strong Towns President Charles Marohn and California YIMBY's Nolan Gray onto the show to debate the housing crisis. It was a great conversation that explores how these movements align and differ in their approaches to housing. ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES The Building Culture Podcast. Nolan Gray (Twitter/X). Chuck Marohn (Twitter/X).

Michael kicks off the hour breaking down the big rezoning decision in LA with guest M. Nolan Gray from California YIMBY, exploring its impact on housing, equity, and the city's future. Plus, an update on the Malibu fire containment efforts and a dive into the most cringe-worthy Christmas songs—do they make your list? All this and more on a full moon Saturday night in LA.

As the need for affordable housing grows, so does the classic conflict of NIMBY vs YIMBY, a.k.a. “Not in my backyard” or “Yes, in my backyard”. And all of this affects developers and their business plans.

YIMBY movement in local government? Housing Developments is joined by Josh Schoemann, county executive for Washington County, Wis., to discuss his Next Generation Housing Initiative to help builders build entry-level homes and increase housing opportunity.

In this episode, I sit down with Chuck Marohn from Strong Towns and Nolan Gray from California YIMBY to tackle one of the most pressing issues of our time: the housing crisis in America.  It started with an exchange on X (Twitter) where I saw Nolan and Chuck disagreeing. Surprised, I asked them on the podcast to discuss areas of overlap and disagreement between the YIMBY movement and Strong Towns. They were kind enough to agree. In this episode we discuss the complex web of factors driving housing unaffordability, from financialization and zoning laws to the ripple effects of inflation and outdated building codes. We dive into the historical context of these challenges and debate the influence of investors, policymakers, and local governments in shaping the future of housing. Along the way, we uncover where the Strong Towns and YIMBY movements align—and where they diverge—especially on the role of financialization in housing supply. TAKEAWAYS Financialization of housing has created a feedback loop driving up prices, turning homes into investment assets rather than places to live. Zoning and building codes play a critical role in either enabling or hindering the ability to increase housing supply. There is significant overlap between Strong Towns and YIMBY movements, particularly in their shared focus on practical, community-oriented solutions to housing challenges. Local governments can play a crucial role in financing housing development and supporting small builders to create a more diverse housing market. Accessory dwelling units (ADUs) offer quick, scalable housing solutions that align with incremental development strategies. Policy changes are essential to create a more flexible and affordable housing market that meets the needs of diverse communities. CHAPTERS 00:00 Understanding Housing Affordability and Supply Chain Dynamics 02:46 Introduction to the Debate: Strong Towns vs. YIMBY 06:29 Exploring the Financialization of Housing 12:32 The Role of Financialization in Housing Crisis 19:11 Historical Context: Financialization and Housing Policy 24:07 The Impact of Institutional Investors on Housing 29:15 Navigating the Future of Housing Affordability 31:03 The Impact of Financialization on Housing Supply 34:46 Addressing the Affordability Crisis 39:57 The Role of Local Governments in Housing Development 43:42 Zoning, Financing, and the Housing Market 50:56 Inflation and Its Effects on Construction Costs 57:51 Balancing Incremental Development with Market Needs 01:02:36 Addressing the Affordable Housing Crisis 01:11:01 The Role of Incremental Change in Housing 01:19:19 Financing Solutions for Accessory Dwelling Units 01:27:40 Debating Tax Increment Financing (TIF) Strategies 01:30:17 The Future of Housing Movements CONTACT NOLAN & MENTIONED RESOURCES: X: https://x.com/mnolangray?lang=en  Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/mnolangray/?hl=en  Website YIMBY:https://cayimby.org/author/nolangray/  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mnolangray  Book:https://islandpress.org/books/arbitrary-lines#desc  CONTACT CHUCK & MENTIONED RESOURCES: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/charlesmarohn/?hl=en  Strong Towns Website:https://www.strongtowns.org/  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/charlesmarohn  Books:https://www.strongtowns.org/book  Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/marohn/  Strong Towns Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/strong_towns/?hl=en CONNECT WITH AUSTIN TUNNELL Newsletter: https://playbook.buildingculture.com/ https://www.instagram.com/austintunnell/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/austin-tunnell-2a41894a/ https://twitter.com/AustinTunnell CONNECT WITH BUILDING CULTURE https://www.buildingculture.com/ https://www.instagram.com/buildingculture/ https://twitter.com/build_culture https://www.facebook.com/BuildCulture/ SPONSORS Thank you so much to the sponsors of The Building Culture Podcast! Sierra Pacific Windows: https://www.sierrapacificwindows.com/ One Source Windows: https://onesourcewindows.com/

In Episode 95 of The TBD Podcast, Garrett talks with Nolan Gray, the research director at California YIMBY and the author of Arbitrary Lines. Nolan explains the roots of zoning in the U.S., how it affects housing and cities today, and what steps can improve these challenges. They cover topics like the influence of cars on urban planning, why housing has become so expensive, and how better rules can make cities more livable for everyone. This conversation gives you a clear understanding of how zoning impacts your life and what can change for the better. 0:00:00 - Nolan Gray introduction 0:01:31 - Why cities fascinated Nolan 0:02:13 - Housing affordability challenges 0:03:12 - YIMBY movement origins 0:05:10 - Suburban vs. urban development 0:05:47 - Inspiration for Arbitrary Lines 0:07:42 - Federal involvement in housing 0:08:56 - Suburbanization of America explained 0:09:35 - Evolution of zoning rules 0:11:18 - Effects of land-use segregation 0:13:39 - Cars' role in zoning history 0:19:00 - Local entrepreneurship restrictions 0:21:39 - Race and zoning after WWI 0:27:30 - Housing affordability affecting middle-class 0:29:56 - Suburbs, cars, and urban form 0:32:40 - Managing parking for better cities 0:37:56 - Observing cities to plan better 0:43:20 - Preserving walkability in cities 0:47:11 - Rural vs. urban voting challenges 0:51:10 - Future of housing and demographics

Sydney's first government telephone exchange was established in 1882. By 1891 there was a petition that unleashed hell.

Housing in the United States has come to be known as a panacea problem. Gone are the days when tossing the graduation cap meant picking up the keys to a front door, and the ripple effects of unaffordable housing stretch across society: poor social mobility, smaller families, worse retirement-readiness, just to name a few.Today on Faster, Please — The Podcast, I talk to Bryan Caplan about the seemingly obvious culprit, government regulation, and the growing movement to combat it.Caplan is a professor of economics atGeorge Mason University. His essays have been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and TIME Magazine. He is editor and chief writer of theBet On It Substack, and is the author of several books, including Build, Baby, Build: The Science and Ethics of Housing Regulation.In This Episode* America's evolving relationship with housing (1:31)* The impact of regulation (3:53)* Different regulations for different folks (8:47)* The YIMBY movement (11:01)* Homeowners and public opinion (13:56)* Generating momentum (17:15)* Building new cities (23:10)Below is a lightly edited transcript of our conversation. (Note: This was recorded just before the presidential election.)America's evolving relationship with housing (1:31)The main thing that changed is that we've seen a long-run runup of housing prices. Pethokoukis: What was going on with housing prices and housing affordability from the war to the 1970s? Was it kind of flattish? People were recovering from the Great Depression; what was going on then?Caplan: Yeah, it was quite flat, so there were decades where we had rapidly expanding population, the Baby Boom, and markets were working the way that markets normally do: You get demand going up, raises prices in the short run, but then that means the prices are above the cost of production, and so you get entry, and you build more until prices come back down to the cost of production. That's the way markets are supposed to work!I don't know how people thought about their homes in the late '40s, '50s, and '60s, but did they view them as, “This is our primary investment,” or did they view them more as a place to live? Were there any expectations that this was their retirement plan?I honestly don't know. I don't remember reading anything about that. I grew up in Los Angeles where in the '70s and '80s people already had some sense of, “Your home is an important retirement vessel,” but it is plausible that when you are going back to earlier decades, people did have a different view.I've often heard Americans say that Japanese don't think about their homes as retirement vessels, but I've never talked to anyone in Japan to assure me this is so, so I don't know.But that scenario changed.It did.How did it change and are we confident we know why it changed?The main thing that changed is that we've seen a long-run runup of housing prices. Depending upon what series you're looking at, the runup might be starting in the early '70s or the early '80s, but in any case, there was what economists would call a structural break where a series that was generally flat over the long term started rising over the long term. There have been a few times when prices fell back down, like after the Great Recession, but now, inflation adjusted, we are higher than the peak right before the Great Recession.Now, is that the same as affordability? Because I assume incomes could be going up, so has it outpaced median income over that period?Probably not, although it's in the right ballpark, and maybe.One thing you can say is, well, there's regulation before, there's regulation after, so how can you go and blame the rise on the regulation?The impact of regulation (3:53)I would like to blame regulation. Intuitively, that makes sense to me, but I suppose we need more than intuition here.. . . there's a lot of regulation almost everywhere a lot of people live.I would say that we do have very good evidence that regulation is indeed to blame. If you look at it very quickly, you might say, “Well, there was regulation before; it didn't seem to matter that much.” The answer to this really was death by a thousand cuts, where we just piled regulation on regulation, but also where regulations that have been interpreted mildly before started being interpreted strictly afterwards.How do we know that it really is regulation? The easiest thing to do is just to look at the strictness of regulation in different parts of the country, and you can see that there are some places that are crazy strict and the prices are crazy high. There's other places where the regulation is a lot lighter and even though they're getting plenty of population increase, they nevertheless do not have these long-run rises.So the contrast between the Bay Area and the Texas Triangle is very strong. So these are both areas that, in some sense, they are growth areas, a lot of tech there, but the Bay Area has seen very little rise in the amount of housing and massive increase in prices, whereas Texas has, in contrast, seen a large rise in the number of houses and very low rises in the price of housing.The main method that economists have used in order to disentangle all this is it really starts with trying to figure out: What is land that you are not allowed to build anything on worth? So just think about whatever your excess land is in a single-family area, you're not allowed to put another structure there, you can put a volleyball court or something like that. So you just find out, well, what is land where you can't build anything worth? And usually, even in a good area, that land is not worth much. If you can't build on it, it's like, I guess we can put some grass, but that's not that good. Then the next step is to just go to a construction manual and to see what the cost of construction is in a given area and then compare it to the price. This is a quite reasonable approach and it has gotten better over time because data has gotten better.The main thing is that Joe Gyourko, who's been working on this for about 20 years, in his last big paper, he got data on actual vacant lots, and so you can see, this is a vacant lot, usually because you just can't build anything on it, can't get the permission, and as a result of this, he's also able to find out, how bad does the regulation get as you move away from the city center. We've got details like Los Angeles looks like it's regulated out to the horizon. You've got 50 miles away from downtown LA and it's still pretty bad regulation. On the other end, a city like Chicago is very regulated in the downtown, but 30 miles out, then there's not that much effect anymore.The punchline of all this work is that there's a lot of regulation almost everywhere a lot of people live. If you want to go and build a skyscraper in the middle of nowhere in Kansas, you could probably do it, but you wouldn't want to build a skyscraper in the middle of nowhere in Kansas, that defeats the whole purpose of building a skyscraper.That leads to two questions: The first question is, just to be clear, when we're talking about regulation, is it single-family homes versus multifamily? Is it also the coding, what the home has to be made out of? Do the walls have to be so thick, or the windows? What are we talking about?The honest answer is that most economists' estimates are just giving you an estimate of all regulation combined with a considerable agnosticism about what actually are the specific regulations that matter. There are other papers that look at specific kinds of regulation and come up with at least very credible claims that this is a big part of the puzzle.The main things that matter a lot in the US: We've got height restrictions — those matter in your biggest, most expensive cities; you can just look at a place like Central Park or get a helicopter shot of San Francisco and say, don't tell me you can't build more stuff here. There's endless room to build more stuff here as long as you can go vertically.It's also very standard to say that you are only allowed to have single-family homes in most residential land in the US, it's just zoned single family only, so you just are not legally allowed to squeeze in a larger number of dwellings.Then you've got, even with single-family regulation, it's very standard to have minimum lot sizes, which just says that you've got to have at least like an acre of land per house, which, whenever I'm speaking in metric countries, I'm always telling, what is that . . .? It's a lot. It's a lot of land, and the amount of land that's normally required has gone up a lot. One-acre zoning in the past would've seemed crazy. Now plenty of places have five-acre zoning. You could obviously just squeeze way more houses in that space. And what is clear is that builders normally build the absolute maximum number they're allowed to build. Anytime someone is going up to the very border of a rule, that is a strong sign the rule is changing behavior.Different regulations for different folks (8:47)Very rarely did someone sit around saying, “You know what's great about Texas? Our lack of housing regulation.”Why are these rules different in different places? That may be a dumb question. Obviously San Francisco is very different from Texas. Is the answer just: different places, different people, different preferences? Do we have any idea why that is?Matt Kahn, who is based in Los Angeles, he's been I think at UCLA and USC, he's got a very good paper showing, at least in California, it's the most progressive left-wing places that have the worst regulation, and it just seemed to be very philosophical. On the other hand, I spent a lot of time during Covid in Texas. Very rarely did someone sit around saying, “You know what's great about Texas? Our lack of housing regulation.” It's not so much that they are opposed to what's going on in California, it just doesn't occur to them they could be California.In a way, you might actually get them to be proud about what they're doing if you could remind them, “Oh, it's really different in California,” and just take them on a tour, then they might come back and say, “God bless Texas.” But it's more of, there's the places where people have an ideological commitment to regulation, and then the rest of the country is more pragmatic and so builders are able to get a lot more done because there just aren't fanatics that are trying to stop them from providing the second most basic necessity for human beings.Now, this is all striking because the YIMBY [Yes In My Backyard] movement, and my book Build, Baby, Build — I definitely think of that as a YIMBY book. My goal is to make it the Bible of YIMBY, and it's in comic book form, so it's a Bible that can be read by people starting at age five.In any case, the YIMBY movement is definitely left-coded. People that are in that movement, they think of themselves as progressives, usually, and yet they are just a small piece of a much broader progressive coalition that is generally totally hostile to what they're doing. They are punching above weight and I want to give them a lot of credit for what they've been able to accomplish, and yet, the idea that YIMBYs tend to be left-wing and therefore they are the main people that are responsible for allowing housing is just not true. Most places in the country basically don't have a lot of pro- or anti-housing activism. They just have apathy combined with a construction industry that tries to go and build stuff, and if no one stops them, they do their job.The YIMBY movement (11:01)Who the hell decided that was a good idea that everybody should have an acre of land?I want to talk a bit more about the economic harms and benefits of deregulation, but if I was a center-left YIMBY, I would think, “Oh, I have all kinds of potential allies on the right. Conservatives, they hate regulation.” I wonder how true that is, at least recently, it seems to me that when I hear a lot of conservatives talking about this issue of density, they don't like density either. It sounds like they're very worried that someone's going to put up an apartment building next to their suburban home, YIMBY people want every place to look [the same] — What's the home planet in Star Wars?Coruscant.Yeah Coruscant, that that's what the YIMBYs want, they want an entire planet to look like a city where there's hundreds of levels, and I'm not sure there's the level of potential allyship on the right that center-left YIMBYs would want. Is that a phenomenon that you've noticed?I actually I have a whole chapter in Build, Baby, Build where I try to go and say we can sell these policies to very different people in their own language, and if they actually believe their official philosophy, then they should all be coming down to very similar conclusions.I think the main issue of center-left YIMBYs talking to people who are right wing or conservative, it's much more about polarization and mutual antipathy than it is about the people on the right would actually object to what they're hearing. What I say there is there are certain kinds of housing regulation that I think the conservatives are going to be sympathetic to. In particular, not liking multifamily housing in suburbs, but I don't really think there is any conservative objection to just allowing a lot more skyscrapers in cities where they don't even go. There's not going to be much objection there and it's like, “Yeah, why don't we go and allow lots of multifamily in the left-wing parts of the country?”But I think the other thing is I don't think it's really that hard to convince conservatives that you shouldn't need to have an acre of land to go and have a house. That one, I think, is just so crazy, and just unfair, and anti-family, you just go and list all the negative adjectives about it. Did you grow up in a house on a one-acre lot? I didn't! Who the hell decided that was a good idea that everybody should have an acre of land? Wouldn't you like your kids to be able to walk to their friends' houses?A lot of it seems to be that government is just preventing the development of something that people would actually want to live in. I remember when my daughter finally made a friend within walking distance, I wanted to light a candle, hallelujah! A child can walk to be friends with a child! This has not happened in all my years! But that was the normal way things were when you'd be on a quarter-acre or a third of acre when I was growing up.Homeowners and public opinion (13:56)People generally favor government policies because they believe . . . the policies are good for society.If someone owns a house, they like when that price goes up, and they might see what you're saying as lowering the price of homes. If we were to have sort of nationwide deregulation, maybe deregulation where the whole country kind of looks like wherever the lightest-regulated place is. People are going to say, “That's bad for me! I own a home. Why would I want that?”Lots of people think this, and especially economists like this idea of, of course we have all this regulation because it's great for homeowners; homeowners are the main wants to participate in local government. Sounds likely, but when we actually look at public opinion, we see that tenants are strong advocates regulation too, and it's like, gee, that really doesn't make any sense at all. They're the ones that are paying for all this stuff.But it does make sense if you switch to a much simpler theory of what's going on, which fits the facts, and that is: People generally favor government policies because they believe —underscore believe — the policies are good for society. So many people from the earlier decades say, “Oh, all those Republicans, they just want tax cuts.” Now we're finally at the level where Republicans are poorer than Democrats. It's like, “Yeah, I guess it's getting a little bit hard to say that people become Republicans to get tax cuts when they're the ones paying lower taxes.” How about there's an actual disagreement about what policies are good for society, which explains why people belong to different parties, support different policies.So most of what I'm doing in Build, Baby, Build is trying to convince people, look, I'm not impugning your motives, I don't think that you're just favoring whatever policies are selfishly best for you. I think that whatever policies you're into are ones that you think are genuinely good for your community, or your area, or your country, but we are not thinking very well about everything that's going on.So part of it is that a lot of the complaints are just overblown or wrong, but another thing is that generally we base a regulation purely on complaints without any thought of any good thing that we might be losing. I make a big deal in the book about how, if you don't want to have noise, and traffic, and pollution, it's really easy — just move to some remote part of the country and you solve all those problems; yet hardly anybody wants to do that.Why are people staying in congested areas with all these problems and paying a lot of extra money for them? Many of these people now have telework jobs, they don't even have a job reason to stay there. And the answer's got to be, there's just a bunch of really good things about living near other people that we hardly ever talk about and which have no political voice. There's almost no one's going to show up in a meeting and [say], “I favor this because I want there to be more commercial opportunities. I favor this because I want there to be more social opportunities, more cultural opportunities, more economic opportunities,” and yet these are all the reasons why people want to live near other people. So we have a set of regulation just based upon complaints: complaints which are generally out of context, not quantified. So we just see that people are willing to pay a lot of money for the package of living in an area with a bunch of other people, so that's got to mean that the good of other people exceeds the bad of the other people; otherwise, why aren't you living out in the middle of nowhere?Generating momentum (17:15)The sad truth is that symbolic issues are much more likely to get people excited, but this is something that determines the quality of life for most people in this country.When I read the book, and I read a really good New York Times essay —Would that be my essay, Jim?I think it is your essay! In fact, it was, I should have been clearer on the author of that essay. The brilliant Bryan Caplan was the author of that essay.If you look at the potential benefits on inequality, there's environmental impact, maybe people are really worried about birth rates, it really seems like housing really is sort of the “everything problem.”Panacea problem, or the “housing theory of everything.”It really does. I think the current election season, it's probably the most I've heard it talked about, and not really talked about very much.And thoughtlessly. Spoken of thoughtlessly.To me there seems to be a lot more — I'll use a nice think tank word — there's been a lot more ideation about the issue in recent years, and maybe it's only now kind of breaking through that filter where politicians start talking about it, but boy, when you look through what you've written about it, it seems like it should be a top three issue that politicians talk about.The sad truth is that symbolic issues are much more likely to get people excited, but this is something that determines the quality of life for most people in this country. It's the difference between: Are you going to keep living with your parents until you're 30, or are you going to be able to afford to get your own place, start your own family? And again, it's one where older people remember how things used to be, and the idea of, well, why can't things just be like that? Why can't it be that a person who gets out of college can go and immediately afford to get a pretty good house?At AEI, Mark Perry, for example, who is one of your colleagues, I think probably a remote colleague, he has done stuff on how new houses are better and so on, and that's also true, so I don't want to go and act like there's been no progress at all. But still, of course a lot of people are not moving into those new houses, they're moving into old houses, which are the same as they were in the past, but just way more expensive if you want to go and live in that areaThe other thing that is worth pointing out is that it's really temping to say, well, of course housing naturally gets more expensive as population rises. The period after World War II that we were mentioning, that's the Baby Boom era, population was rising at a much faster rate then than it did now, even counting immigration, and yet prices were much flatter because we were able to just go and legally build way more stuff.I feel like you feel like you need to drive home the point about demand not being met by supply for this artificial reason: regulation. Even though, to me, it seems utterly natural and a classic case, people struggle to come up with alternative reasons that it's really not that. That it's because of . . . there's private equity firms buying up all the homes, or the reason apartment rents go up is because there's a cabal of apartment owners . . . They look for these other reasons, and I don't quite get that when there seems to be a pretty obvious reason that we theoretically know how to fix.Some of these other stories, they are half-truths, but they're not helpful. So the thing of, “Gee, if we just shut down tourism and letting foreign buyers buy stuff here, then demand will be lower, and prices will be lower, and we won't need to build anything new.” And it's like, do you realize what you're saying? You're basically saying that you want to destroy one of your best export industries.If people around the world want to go and buy houses in your area, why do you want to turn them away instead of saying, cha-ching, let's capitalize on this by building a ton of housing for them? If there's a lot of tourists that want to go and rent a place in your area, why is it you want to go and strangle the market, which obviously it's a great industry — Build stuff and rent it to people, and it's not like there's some fixed amount unless the law says it must be fixed.One benefit I didn't mention was social mobility where we need people, if they want to be able to move towards high-wage, high-productivity cities, to find good jobs, and then not have the wages of those good jobs mostly gobbled up by housing costs. That kind of circulation system, if that's the right phrase.Certainly in some parts of the country, that has just been stopped and that has been a traditional way people move up the ladder.We've got very good data on this. In earlier periods of US history, there was basically a foolproof way for someone in a low-income part of the country to get a big raise, and that was just to move. Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath not withstanding, this almost always works. It wasn't normally the case that you starve to death on your way to California from Oklahoma. Instead, normally, it's just a simple thing: You move from a low-wage area to a high-wage area and you get a lot more money, and you get a much higher take-home salary. But then in those days, there was not much difference in housing prices between different areas of the country, and therefore you would actually have a rise in not just your paycheck, but your standard living.Now it's still true that you can get a rise in your paycheck by moving to the Bay Area. The problem is your standard of living, if you're coming from Mississippi, will generally crash because the housing cost eats up much more than 100 percent of the raise.I remember I had a colleague who had a son who was an investment banker in the Bay Area. He and his wife were sharing a small apartment with two roommates, and it's like investment bankers can't afford apartments! Things have gotten out of hand, I think we can say with great confidence now.Building new cities (23:10). . . politics is an area where there's a lot of ideas where it's like no one's trying it, it must be because it wouldn't work if tried, and then someone tries it with a little panache, or a little twist, and it catches on, and you're like, alright, maybe that's the real story.Should we be building new cities somewhere? I think former President Trump has talked about this idea that we, is that something you've thought about at all?Yes. I didn't put it into the book, but when I was writing up some follow-up posts on things that I wished I would've talked about, or just more speculative things, I do have some friends who are involved in that project to go and build a new city in the Bay Area. I hope it works.There is always the problem of there's almost always going to be some existing people where you want to build your new city, and then what do you do about them? You can try buying them out. There is this holdout problem, a few people are going to stay there and say, “I'm not going to sell.” Or you could just go and do what happened in the movie Up: We'll buy everybody around you, and if you don't like it, too bad.But on the other hand, it may be that activists will put a stop to your plan before you can get it off the ground. So in that case, it was going and selling off empty federal or state land, which we have in abundance. If I remember, I think that 23 percent of the land of the United States is owned by the federal government. Another 10 percent is owned by state governments. And even if you subtract out Alaska, there's still a ton. If you look at the map, it's really cool because you might think, “Oh, it's just that the government owns land no one in the right mind would want.” Not true.Desert land in Nevada next to Area 51 or something.Virtually all of Texas, even those western deserts, are privately owned. I've driven through them. Have you ever driven through West Texas?I have.Alright, so you're there and you're like, “Who wants to own this stuff?” And it's like, well, somebody at whatever the market price is considers this worth owning, and as to whether it's for mineral extraction, or for speculation on one day it'll be worth something when the population of Texas is greater, or they're going to do ranching there, I don't know. But it is at a price someone is willing to go and own almost every piece of land.What the map really shows is it was ideology that led all this land to be held by the government. It's basically the ideology of conservation that we hear about. You get John Muir and Teddy Roosevelt, and as a result, they didn't just wind up protecting a few really beautiful national parks, they wind up putting millions of square miles of land off-limits for most human use.Again, when the population of the country is lower, maybe it didn't even matter that much, but now it's like, “Hey, how about you go and sell me a hundred square miles so I can put a new city here?” The idea that an Elon or Zuckerberg couldn't go and just say, “I'm putting a pile of money into this. I'm going to build a new city and have a decent chance of it working.” Maybe it would be just a disaster and they waste their money. Then more likely I think it's going to be like Seward's Folly where it's like, “What's the point of buying Alaska?” Oh, actually it was fantastic. We got a great bargain on Alaska and now it is an incredible, in hindsight, investment.As we were talking, I started thinking about Andrew Yang who ran for president, I think that was in 2020, and he had one issue, really: Universal Basic Income. He thought that he had found an issue that was going to take him to the White House. It did not.I kind of think if you were going to have a candidate focus a lot on one issue, this would not be a bad issue, given how it touches all these concerns of modern American society.As an economist, I always hesitate to say that anyone who is a specialist in an area and is putting all their resources into it is just royally screwing up. At the same time, politics is an area where there's a lot of ideas where it's like no one's trying it, it must be because it wouldn't work if tried, and then someone tries it with a little panache, or a little twist, and it catches on, and you're like, alright, maybe that's the real story.Just to give Trump credit where credit is due, there's just a lot of things that he said that you would think would've just destroyed his candidacy, and instead it seemed like he came out and he was more popular than ever. Maybe he just saw that there were some ideas that are popular that other people didn't realize would be popular.Now I'm not optimistic about what he's going to do about housing, although anytime he says one good thing, it's like, I don't know, maybe he'll just get fixated on that, but more likely ADHD will kick in, unfortunately.But just to go and allow one new laissez-faire city to be built on federal land in some non-crummy area of the country — just as a demonstration project, the value of that would be enormous, just to see, hey, there's no reason why you can't have spacious, cheap homes in a really nice area that is not that remote from the rest of the country. Just imagine the airport you could build there, too — before all the noise complaints. You probably know about the noise complaints against Reagan Airport and how one single guy filed over half the complaints. It's like, how are we going to build anything? Let's build it all before that guy shows up!On sale everywhere The Conservative Futurist: How To Create the Sci-Fi World We Were PromisedMicro Reads▶ Economics* Trump Could Win the Contest With China Once and for All - NYT Opinion▶ Business* Nvidia's message to global chipmakers - FT Opinion* The Great American Microchip Mobilization - Wired* ASML Sticks to Long-Term Growth Targets Amid AI Frenzy - WSJ▶ Policy/Politics* Trump and the future of AI regulation - FT* Silicon Valley eyes a windfall from Trump's plans to gut regulation - Wapo* Environmental Policy Act Ruling Casts Doubt On White House Authority - Forbes* How Elon Musk could disrupt Washington - Politico* Semiconductors and Modern Industrial Policy - Journal of Economic Perspectives▶ AI/Digital* Google DeepMind has a new way to look inside an AI's “mind” - MIT▶ Biotech/Health* Why we now think the myopia epidemic can be slowed – or even reversed - NS* Canada Detects Its First Human Case of Bird Flu - NYT▶ Clean Energy/Climate* Climate Summit, in Early Days, Is Already on a ‘Knife Edge' - NYT▶ Robotics/AVs* Nvidia Readies Jetson Thor Computers for Humanoid Robots in 2025 - WSJ▶ Space/Transportation* Former Officials Warn Lawmakers of Alleged Secret UAP Programs Operating Beyond Congressional Oversight - The Debrief▶ Up Wing/Down Wing* Stand-Up, Drama and Spambots: The Creative World Takes On A.I. - NYT* Is Europe running out of chemistry teachers? - C&EN▶ Substacks/Newsletters* Here's What I Think We Should Do - Hyperdimensional* What is OpenAI's Operator and Blueprint? History and Tips of Prompt Engineering from 2020 to 2025 - AI Supremacy* People want competence, seemingly over everything else - Strange Loop CanonPlease check out the website or Substack app for the latest Up Wing economic, business, and tech news in this edition of the newsletter.Faster, Please! is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit fasterplease.substack.com/subscribe

Harris lost and we have a lot to process, so we turned to some help from housing expert, NIMBEE, and his keeper, Eric Saul of the Takoma Torch. Plus we all sort out how we feel about a second Trump term, and Chip loses his shit. Tez has hope, Bryan is ready to follow Chip to the "let them eat coal" side, and Patrick has nuance. Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/chipchat--2780807/support.

In this episode of Care More Be Better, host Corinna Bellizzi dives deep into local politics and community activism with John Lewis, a city council candidate in Scotts Valley, California. John shares his vision for the future of Scotts Valley, touching on pressing local issues like rising housing costs, the need for a town center, and the importance of personal agency in shaping our communities. This conversation is packed with insights on the challenges and rewards of running for office and what it means to be a “YIMBY” (Yes In My Backyard) advocate.Key Topics Covered:[00:00:26] Introduction to Care More Be Better and guest John Lewis.[00:00:46] John's background: Engineering expertise and community issues in Scotts Valley.[00:02:21] Community engagement and motivation to run for city council.[00:03:48] The need for a town center in Scotts Valley and why previous efforts stalled.[00:06:37] Environmental and infrastructural challenges: From airport to town center.[00:10:12] Essential traits and qualifications for running for local office.[00:13:00] How city council can directly impact community well-being.[00:18:55] Defining NIMBY vs. YIMBY and John's endorsement from Santa Cruz YIMBY.[00:26:04] Why John isn't accepting political donations.[00:28:42] The importance of local elections and civic engagement.Call to Action: If you're a Scotts Valley resident, consider voting for John Lewis to support local development that fosters community and sustainability. For resources on how to get involved, visit our website at CircleB.co.Connect with John Lewis: website: https://www.johnlewissvcity.com/linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-lewis-44784516/facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JohnLewisSVCity

Today, Jonathan and Sy speak with author and housing advocate Kevin Nye about the Church and homelessness. We get into:-        The ineffective housing policies Christians often promote-        The bad theology behind those policies-        A run-in Kevin had with institutional resistance to his view that governments shouldn't criminalize homelessness-        How churches can get things right in ministries to unhoused people-        Plus, hear our thoughts on the interview,-        A discussion of how we are resisting the negative ways the election is trying to shape us mentally and spiritually-        And our thoughts on all the discourse around Ta-Nehisi Coates' controversial new bookMentioned in the episode:-        Kevin's article on Christians mistakenly rejecting housing-first policies-        Josiah Haken's book, Neighbors with No Doors-        Kevin's article on Christianity Today's coverage of homelessness-        His article in RNS about a Supreme Court case on unhoused people's constitutional rights-        His book, Grace Can Lead Us Home: A Christian Call to End Homelessness-        His Substack, Who Is My Neighbor?-        Ta-Nehisi Coates' new book, The Message-        Our newsletter with links to a couple of Coates' interviewsCredits-            Follow KTF Press on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. Subscribe to get our bonus episodes and other benefits at KTFPress.com.-        Follow host Jonathan Walton on Facebook Instagram, and Threads.-        Follow host Sy Hoekstra on Mastodon.-        Our theme song is “Citizens” by Jon Guerra – listen to the whole song on Spotify.-        Our podcast art is by Robyn Burgess – follow her and see her other work on Instagram.-        Editing by Multitude Productions-        Transcripts by Joyce Ambale and Sy Hoekstra.-        Production by Sy Hoekstra and our incredible subscribersTranscript[An acoustic guitar softly plays six notes in a major scale, the first three ascending and the last three descending, with a keyboard pad playing the tonic in the background. Both fade out as Jonathan Walton says “This is a KTF Press podcast.”]Kevin Nye: If you're an average middle class American Christian and you want to become wealthy, have a private jet, a mansion, here's your spiritual steps. Get closer to Jesus, you'll be rewarded with physical wealth. Well, if that's true, the opposite of that would be true, which is that if you are in deep dire poverty, it must mean that you're that much farther from Jesus.[The song “Citizens” by Jon Guerra fades in. Lyrics: “I need to know there is justice/ That it will roll in abundance/ And that you're building a city/ Where we arrive as immigrants/ And you call us citizens/ And you welcome us as children home.” The song fades out.]Intro and HousekeepingJonathan Walton: Welcome to Shake the Dust, seeking Jesus, confronting injustice. I'm Jonathan Walton.Sy Hoekstra: And I am Sy Hoekstra, today is gonna be a great one for you. We have a conversation that we're gonna have before we get into our interview, kind of about the election. A little bit of a catch up, since this is actually going to be our last show before the presidential election, which now that I say it into a microphone, is a little bit scary [laughter]. We're gonna be having a conversation today with author, theologian and housing activist Kevin Nye. I've been looking forward to this one for a long time. Basically, the church is extremely involved in housing policy in America, and we are often going about it the wrong way, and that's often because of a lot of bad theology and some falsehoods that we believe about unhoused people, and so Kevin will help us get deep into that.He's a great resource and a great person to talk about it with, as well as some of the more systemic issues of why we have such an entrenched way of thinking about unhoused people. You'll be able to hear Jonathan and my thoughts about the interview afterwards, and we will get into our segment Which Tab Is Still Open, where we go a little bit deeper into one of the recommendations from our newsletter. This week we're talking all about Ta-Nehisi Coates and his new book, The Message and some of the discussions that have been happening around it. Also, one quick note. My voice might sound a little groggy, because about 12 hours ago, I was at game one of the American League Championship Series [laughter] and I screamed my face off.Is that a wise thing for a podcaster to do before recording? Maybe not, but I trust that you all will forgive me [laughs].Jonathan Walton: Yes, and for the uninitiated, we're talking about baseball [laughs].Sy Hoekstra: Yes, that's a good point. American League Championship Series, that's a baseball series [laughter].Jonathan Walton: But before we get into all that, please friends, remember to go to KTFPress.com and become a paid subscriber to support this show and everything we do here at KTF Press. We've been creating media that centers personal and informed discussions on faith, politics and culture, and that helps you seek Jesus and confront injustice. You've been listening for a while or the first time, you need to know we're resisting the idols of the American church by elevating marginalized voices and taking the entirety of Jesus' gospel more seriously than those who narrow it to sin and salvation. The two of us have [laughs] a lot of experience doing this, have been practicing this in community for a while, and as Maya Angelou would say, we're always practicing Christianity.So if you wanna do that, you could do that with us. We'd love for you to become a paid subscriber. You get all the bonus episodes of this show, access to our monthly subscriber Zoom chats, and you can comment on posts and more. So again, go to KTFPress.com to join us and become a paid subscriber.Sy Hoekstra: A couple of quick announcements before we get into everything. In two weeks there will not be an episode. That's just a couple days after the election. We're gonna let things settle a little bit.Jonathan Walton: Hopefully so.Sy Hoekstra: I mean, hopefully settle a little bit before [laughter] we have our sort of clean, edited podcast discussion about the election. However, we are going to do something a little bit different the day after the election. So that'll be Wednesday, November 6th at 1 pm. We are going to be having a Substack live conversation. So that means basically, if you have the Substack app, you will be able to watch us just have a live conversation about the election, what happened the night before, what we're thinking, how we can move forward faithfully now that the voting is done, and all of the potential chaos that comes after that. If you don't have the app, you can download it on the App Store or the Google Play Store. Anybody who's on our email list will get an email notification or a push notification from the app when we start.So if you're not on our email list, go to KTFPress.com and sign up. Even just the free email list, you'll get that notification. The email will have a link to download the app if you don't have it. So Substack live Wednesday, November 6th, at 1 pm to talk about the election. A little bit more raw, unfiltered, that sort of thing [laughter]. And then we'll have a finale episode, we'll announce the date later once we have that set. You'll be able to comment in the chat of the Substack live, so you can put your comments and your questions there. So come prepared to dialog a little bit. We're excited to try this new feature that Substack has rolled out. Also our next Zoom chat for subscribers will be this upcoming Tuesday, October 29th at 1 pm.So if you want to join in on that, please become a paid subscriber. If you already are a paid subscriber, then the link to register for that is in your email already. Go back to your emails from us and check for it, submit your questions. We have had some really great conversations at the four or five of these that we've done so far, and we look forward to another one this Tuesday.How Has the Election Been Shaping Us? And How Are We Resisting?Sy Hoekstra: Alright Jonathan, before the interview, we're gonna start off with an election question that will kind of let us give some of our final thoughts going into actual voting day. This is a question that you came up with, and I like it a lot, actually. Jonathan, how has this election been trying to shape you and how have you been resisting it?Jonathan Walton: Yeah. I think just hanging out in this space of formation, like we're impacted by things around us, and it's literally making us into new people or different kinds of people. I have an injury in my hip, and it's like, I ran marathons and did lots of sports and work, and so my hip is shaped differently because of the pressure that I put on it.Our Political Culture Tries to Instill Fear, but Jesus Doesn'tJonathan Walton: And so I think that culture is trying to shape me into an anxious, fearful person, because violent crime can be down in the United States, but my fears about my daughter getting older and going to the train, I'm terrified.Sy Hoekstra: Really?Jonathan Walton: Oh yeah. It's terrible. It's terrible.Sy Hoekstra: Interesting.Jonathan Walton: People are like, “Oh yeah, my kid walked to the train,” I'm like, clutch my pearls.Sy Hoekstra: [laughs] Oh, you're one of those New York City parents.Jonathan Walton: Yeah. And some of its familiarity, I never did that. That just wasn't my reality. I think it's more that than all of the fears that people have. It's just unfamiliar to me. And so I think that the Democrats would love for me to fear the apocalypse, and the Republicans would love for me to fear the apocalypse [laughter].Sy Hoekstra: Different apocalypses.Jonathan Walton: Yeah, different apocalyptic visions for the state of this country and the world. And that is a very effective fundraising tactic. It's a very effective way to get people out to vote, because having people be motivated by fear rather than love is better for the prince of the power of the air. It's better for the wills within us that are not submitted to God and trusting him for our well being and the well being of those around us, and leaning into that. And so I think that I want to reject the gospel of self reliance. I want to reject the gospel that I have to control everything and hold it all close and accumulate more and protect that which I accumulate, like all that I got. I just have to say no to that, because I don't wanna be afraid all the time and then make all the people around me more afraid. I don't think Jesus made people afraid.He made demons afraid, but off the top of my head, I cannot… like Judas wasn't even afraid of Jesus. The fear and reverence of the Lord and all of those kinds of things where the angels and the Father say, “Don't be afraid,” Jesus speaking to people did not instill fear in them. I don't think I need to be motivated or driven or attracted or tempted towards fear about anything.Sy Hoekstra: I mean, there are people who seemed kind of afraid of him, but they were all powerful and largely oppressive people.Jonathan Walton: [laughs] That's true.Sy Hoekstra: Herod seemed pretty afraid of Jesus [laughs].Jonathan Walton: Herod was terrified. Yeah, that's true. I don't think that Jesus' goal in conversation dialog was for someone to be afraid.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah, that's correct.Jonathan Walton: And then for them to be compelled to follow him because they were scared. Like that… it is literally the opposite of a fire and brimstone call to faith. It's not congruent with the Christ of scripture.Resisting Cynicism by Choosing Where to Place Our HopeJonathan Walton: So what about you? How do you think our current political [laughs] realities, would love for you to be in the world?Sy Hoekstra: It feels like they would love for me to be a cynic. I don't know, someone who's just a real downer. Because I would say, if you'd asked this eight years ago, I would have said they would want me to be depressed. Because at that time, Trump just felt so dark and foreboding in a way that was deeply sad to me. Not exactly scary, but just really, really depressing. I think now I'm actually thinking more about the Democrats when I say that, because as we are recording, the Biden administration has said some very tentative things about a maybe possible weapons embargo if some undefined humanitarian crisis in Gaza is not vetted in the next month. So we'll see how that works out over the next week and a half until this publishes.But basically, up until now, it's kind of been you've got to toe the party line. You got to be effectively totally pro Israel to be in line with the Biden administration and also with the Harris campaign. That could lose them Michigan maybe or whatever, but ultimately coming out for a ceasefire or something else they must have done the calculus is gonna lose them more.Jonathan Walton: Right.Sy Hoekstra: The reason that that makes me cynical is just so much in politics, it's just about that. It's just about, are you gonna get elected or not? I think Jonathan, and I've been convinced for a long time, it is pretty impossible to be a politician and follow Jesus, because if you follow Jesus you're not gonna be a politician anymore [laughter]. Because the whole point is you got to get reelected, and you got to do whatever it takes to do that. You've got to change your mind on issues, you've got to spend money, you've got to be a hypocrite. Doesn't matter, you've just got to get reelected. There are probably certain scenarios, like certain places that you could be elected and have integrity for smaller offices than the President [laughs], that would lead me to some amount of cynicism about the whole system and despair if my faith was in the system. If I was looking to who the next president is to determine my hope for the world.And it's kind of a cheesy Christian thing maybe to say, but my hope is in Jesus. But I think it's actually, even honestly, if your hope was not in Jesus, if it was just in something other than what's happening in our current politics, that's a very powerful thing. You know what I mean? It is a very powerful thing to genuinely have your emotional steadiness in something other than whatever's happening in politics. And for me, that's Jesus. But you know, so that's where I'm trying to sit, and that's why I'm trying to resist the way that the election is trying to make me a cynic.Can Christians Be Politicians Faithfully?Sy Hoekstra: You keep taking breaths like you have something that you wanna say immediately [laughs] [unclear 00:11:14].Jonathan Walton: I'm thinking, if I heard you right you were like, you believe it may be impossible to follow Jesus and be a politician?Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.Jonathan Walton: And I was thinking about that because I think it's like, we would have to define follower of Jesus and define politician.Sy Hoekstra: Sure.Jonathan Walton: But it's interesting to me that it is impossible to be a servant of empire and follow Jesus. Like it's possible, because Jesus calls them out to be a non-Christian religious person. It is possible for Cornelius to be in the military and be faithful to God.Sy Hoekstra: I see what you're saying.Jonathan Walton: Yeah, but what you're getting at is the incoherence of that reality that we try to assert. So for example, I think it's possible to be a Christian politician. It is impossible to make politics Christian.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. And if you want to be a Christian politician, you're gonna have to recognize that your job is going to be constantly, ceaselessly trying to pull you away from Jesus [laughs].Jonathan Walton: Yeah. It is impossible to follow Jesus and be a politician, if a politician is what you are trying to be.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. I got you.Jonathan Walton: It is possible to follow Jesus and hold elected office, you know what I mean? But there are some people whose complete identity, which is what you're talking about, “I'm only here to get reelected. I wanna accumulate power, I wanna do that,” like it is impossible to be a politician.Sy Hoekstra: I think it's a little bit harder than that though, because it's not just about your identity if you're a politician, your job is to get reelected. That's what everyone is looking for you to do. That's what your party's looking for you to do, all people who work for you, obviously, that's what they're looking for you to do [laughter].Jonathan Walton: Right.Sy Hoekstra: Literally, if you don't get reelected, you can't do the job anymore. So it's like it is an integral part of the job description itself. It's not even just an issue of where your identity lies. You know what I mean?Jonathan Walton: That's true. Listen, if you're listening to this, I would love to hear what you think.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.Jonathan Walton: Love to hear what you think. Unfortunately, the philosophical argument, the dominoes could start to fall around lots of professions. It's interesting. We're probably gonna talk about this as a subscriber chat now. So there we go [laughter].Sy Hoekstra: There we go.Jonathan Walton: Cool.Sy Hoekstra: Cool. Thanks for that little brief discussion as we go into the voting booths, which is in like a week and a half from when you're listening to this, if it's the day it comes out. And as we continue to behave politically after the voting happens, which I hope everyone listening to this show is doing [laughs], let's try and be shrewd. Innocent and shrewd, right?Jonathan Walton: Yes.Sy Hoekstra: That's what Jesus wants us to be.Jonathan Walton: [laughs].Sy Hoekstra: And let's continue to think hard about that. I appreciate that discussion. Let's try to find a way to continue it. We are gonna get into our interview now before we come back and talk about our thoughts on the interview and some stuff about Ta-Nehisi Coates [laughter] in Which Tab Is Still Open.Interview with Kevin NyeOur guest today, as I said, is Kevin Nye. He is a writer and advocate working to end homelessness through engaging best practices. He has written on the intersections of homelessness and faith for Religion News Service, Sojourners, Red Letter Christians and more. He has presented at national conferences on the topic of homelessness. His first book released in August of 2022 and it was called Grace Can Lead Us Home: A Christian Call to End Homelessness. Kevin currently lives with his wife and son in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where he works as the housing director for an organization addressing youth homelessness.Jonathan Walton: Let's get into our interview.[The intro piano music from “Citizens” by Jon Guerra plays briefly and then fades out.]Sy Hoekstra: Kevin Nye, thank you so much for joining us on Shake the Dust today.Kevin Nye: Absolutely. It's a pleasure to be here.The Effective ‘Housing-First' Policies Evangelicals Often RejectSy Hoekstra: You and I met about a year ago at the Evolving Faith conference, just after you had published what I thought was a really great article for Sojourners about kind of the difference between treatment-first housing policy and housing-first housing policy, which can, they can sound a bit wonky to people. But you talked about how it's a really important distinction, and how a lot of times Christians are making the wrong choice in choosing the treatment-first policy and favoring those types of policies. And so because I think this distinction will actually help us get at a lot of underlying kind of spiritual and theological issues when it comes to housing policy, can you tell us what these two different approaches are and why you think a lot of conservative Christians are picking the wrong one?Kevin Nye: Absolutely. So the treatment-first methodology, it's kind of the one that we've been using for almost 100 years in response to homelessness, but it also sort of infects a lot of our thinking about many different things. And it essentially says that if you are in poverty, if you are in homelessness, that you have to sort of prove your worthiness of getting out of that. So if you are experiencing homelessness, we know that ultimately the destination that you're hoping for is to be in housing of some kind, an apartment, a house, what have you. But that in order to get there under the treatment-first model, it suggests that you have to sort of check a bunch of boxes. And those boxes have looked different, according to the program, and according to the time that it's been implemented, but they usually include some level of sobriety.So if drugs or alcohol are part of your life, they have to stop. If you struggle with your mental health or even your physical health, that you have to ascribe to a particular treatment plan, and demonstrate your willingness to do that and to stay on it to then achieve whatever objective is set for you by some institution, which often is a shelter or a government program or a Christian institution, like a Rescue Mission. And then depending on which avenue you're going or which institution is involved, that can include a lot of other more arbitrary types of rules, like that if you demonstrate your worthiness or your dedication by applying for a certain number of jobs per week, or attaining employment first, or attending Bible study every day at the Rescue Mission. There's sort of all of these expectations to demonstrate that you are sort of good enough, worthy enough to invest in with this long-term opportunity.That is opposed to the housing-first idea, which we've known and understood for closer to like 30 years and have been studying and practicing ever since, which suggests that rather than do or accomplish all of these things to prove that you deserve housing, housing being sort of the end destination, we lead with the housing because we recognize that housing is the stabilizing force that makes so many of those other things possible. And then we don't just plop you in housing and say, “Good luck,” but we put you in housing and then ask you, “Okay, now, what do you wanna work on?” Now that you have this baseline of stability, of safety, a literal home base, what's next? Let's tackle it together. Now that you can get a good night's sleep. Now that you can charge your phone in an outlet overnight.Now that your documents and your medications are safe. Now that you can buy food to store it in a fridge, rather than go to whatever dinner is available for free for you across the community, or save up enough to get fast food just to fill your belly. All these things that we sort of take for granted that a home with four walls, a roof and a door provide for us are those things that we actually need to be successful. One's ability to stabilize a physical or mental health condition is really difficult if you don't have a safe place to go every night, like where you can store your medication safely, where you can eat a healthy diet, where you can have a normal routine. And even something like drug use and alcohol use, we understand are things that are responsive to a chaotic situation.That if you are living on the streets every day, you are more likely to seek out the soothing effects [laughs] of alcohol, the numbing effects of substances, or the energizing effects of other types of substances, in order to try to get things done that you need to get done. But that even folks who are deep in the throes of those kind of problematic relationships with drugs and alcohol do so much better with housing-first, rather than saying, “Hey, you need to fix all of these things before we even help you feel safe and stable.”Sy Hoekstra: It also strikes me all three of our mutual friend, Josiah Haken, wrote a book where he talked about kind of myths about homelessness. And one of them was the myth that, basically, homeless people are dangerous.Kevin Nye: Yeah.Sy Hoekstra: And he was like, the real reality of being homeless is that you're actually in more danger than everybody else constantly. You are the one who's the most likely to be the victim who's most likely gonna be robbed, have your stuff taken. And that stuff that's on you, like you said, is all your documents [laughs], it's all of your medicines that you need to remain in your sound mind or whatever. And just having a place to not be worried about that as much feels like an enormous burden lifted off people too, in addition to all the other enormous burdens lifted off people that you just mentioned.Kevin Nye: Absolutely. Yeah, Josiah is great, and his book is really good, too. Neighbors with No Doors, for your listeners to go check that one out.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah, yeah for sure.Christianity Today, and Why the Church Doesn't Address Homelessness WellJonathan Walton: This is something that I'm very passionate about. Like Sy said, I've known Josiah for years. I spent a good part of my formative young adult years on the streets with friends. And so a few months ago, you wrote a post on your Substack about an article of yours that Christianity Today was like, “Yep,” and then said, “No.”Kevin Nye: Yeah.Jonathan Walton: [laughs] So can you tell us about that story, why you decided to go public, and the difference between knowledge and opposition. Because I think some people that are listening to this might think, “Oh, well, if we just know better, then we'll do better.” And I don't think that's true. So could you tell us about your journey writing, then having it get rejected, and then that difference between knowledge about something and opposition. Could you break that down?Kevin Nye: Sure. Yeah, the Christianity Today thing was interesting. When you're a writer on a particular topic and that topic sort of starts to get national attention, which is what was happening, at the time there was a Supreme Court case that was gonna be heard, since then has been heard, Johnson versus Grants Pass, Oregon.Sy Hoekstra: Right.Kevin Nye: We could talk forever about that, but essentially, whether or not municipalities have the right to criminalize homelessness was sort of being decided at the national level. And I wanted to write something about the faith perspective of that. And I have my own Substack and outlets where I can do that, but I thought that this being such a national issue, and my take on it wasn't particularly edgy or controversial. It was just, “Hey, maybe we shouldn't criminalize poor people for being poor.” [laughter]Jonathan Walton: Maybe. Let's try that.Kevin Nye: I thought that that was something… and actually part of what I was writing was not, “Hey, this is what I think.” It was, “Hey, this is what a bunch of churches and faith groups are thinking.” And part of my article was actually about how churches were rallying to support unhoused people in this case and writing into the Supreme Court. So it was almost like, it's kind of pro-church [laughs]. And so I thought given all of that, this would be a pretty good pitch for Christianity Today who is a more conservative publication who I hadn't published with before. I'm more likely to publish with Sojourners, which is less obviously conservative or Religious News Service, which is a little bit more like they're reporting news about religion, not religious news.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.Kevin Nye: But I thought this was the right pitch for CT. They had expressed interest in me writing for them before, and it was just about finding the right thing, and I thought this one was it. So I sent it in, and I got a really good response. They agreed. They said, “Hey, this seems like the one. We definitely wanna work with you on it.” And I was pretty upfront from the beginning about what my stance on it was. And they seemed willing along the way, and even a couple times in the process, I just said, “Hey, I just wanna be super clear, this is where I'm going with it. It may be a little different than what you guys are used to publishing on homelessness,” and I just kept getting thumbs up along the way until it was time, essentially to publish it.I had sent it in, it had gotten the final edit, and they had said, “Hey, we're probably gonna publish this on Friday.” And then two hours later, I got an email that just said, “Hey, hold that thought. Just came from a meeting. We might be going in a different direction.” And then I didn't hear anything for 24 hours, and then it was, “Yeah, we are going in a different direction for our coverage.”Jonathan Walton: But did they pay you for it?Kevin Nye: They did. They paid me a kill fee, which…Sy Hoekstra: Which is not the whole thing.Kevin Nye: Yeah. And part of me was like, I wanna be like, “I don't want your money,” [laughter] but then I was like, “I'll take your money and I'll use it for something good.”Jonathan Walton: I can deposit this. Yeah. Right [laughs].Kevin Nye: Yeah. And so I ended up just then sending it to Religion News Service, and said, “Hey, sorry that this is coming late.” Because the deadline was that the Supreme Court was hearing it that week, and so it was sort of a timely piece. And I sent it over there, said, “Hey, I'm sorry this is such short notice, but do you guys want this because another publication didn't want it?” And they ran it. I sat on that for a while deciding whether or not I wanted to say anything about it, because I never want to, I don't wanna stir up trouble just for the sake of trouble. And I don't wanna trash this publication for no reason, even though they've given us some pretty good reasons over the years.Sy Hoekstra: [laughs].Kevin Nye: But I was like, I don't wanna pick a fight just to pick a fight. And part of that is a professional consideration. As a writer I have the potential to burn a bridge there. So I just sort of said, I'm gonna wait to see what they meant by our coverage is going in a different direction, because it does imply they're gonna publish something, right?Sy Hoekstra: Right.Kevin Nye: And for all I know it could have meant, “Hey, we actually got someone really, super, more qualified than you to write this.” Or, “One of the lawyers who's on the case wanted to write something for us.” And I'd be like, “Well, yeah, of course.” I suspected that wasn't what it meant, [laughs] but I'm gonna withhold judgment, at least publicly for a bit [laughter]. And so I sat on it, and then a couple months later, the Supreme Court ruling came out. So it was supposed to publish when they heard it, and then they had a couple months to deliver a ruling. They delivered a ruling, and Christianity Today had still not published anything, not even about homelessness, period. And so then I thought, “Okay, the ruling just happened.” It also came out the same day that they ruled on presidential immunity.Jonathan Walton: Yes.Kevin Nye: So it was like, okay, there's a lot of competing things to talk about right now so I'm gonna give them a week, two weeks, to see if they put out anything. And then when they didn't, that's when I sort of decided that I wanted to write about not being published, and again, not personal, but write about the fact that nothing was being published about this when it is such a significant ruling about what I would argue is one of the top five most significant issues on everybody's mind, which is housing and homelessness. And sort of how that feeds an ignorance and a lack of Christian conversation about this topic. And again, it wasn't, “How dare they not publish me.” It was sort of like, “How could they not publish anything, especially when they had something to publish, and they chose not to?”Jonathan Walton: Why do you think they killed it and didn't write about it?Kevin Nye: My guess is that ultimately, there is a pretty powerful voice that is Christian and institutionalized in the form of the Gospel Rescue Mission. And those who have supported it have worked in it, worked around it, worked adjacent to it, that does genuinely believe that we should make homelessness harder so that A, either people stop choosing it, which is ludicrous, but more so B, will drive people into institutional settings, like shelters, like Christian shelters, where evangelism can happen, sort of Christian teaching can happen. And the reason I believe that is because there was only one faith perspective that wrote into the Supreme Court in favor of criminalizing, and it was the Grants Pass Gospel Rescue Mission.Criminalizing Homelessness to Force People into Religious SheltersAnd they actually wrote in that publicly available letter that they felt that since it had been ruled at a lower court that they couldn't criminalize, the numbers at their shelter had been declining. Now they failed to mention that this happened at the same time as COVID, and might be another reason that people didn't wanna come into a public shared space type of shelter setting, but that because the city could not use criminalization to compel people into the Rescue Mission, that people were not getting services that they needed. But if you dig into the Gospel Rescue Mission over there, which I did extensively, you learn that they have some of the most egregious rules and expectations of people, and have a very poor reputation among the unhoused community there for how they treat people.And so what then truly is at stake here is in a town like Grants Pass where the only shelter is a Gospel Rescue Mission, can the government criminalize homelessness and force people into a religious setting where they are being taught against their will Christianity in the form of chapel and required Bible studies on a daily basis? And now I don't think Christianity Today thinks that we should institutionalize all unhoused people and scream the Bible at them, but I think that Christianity Today is reluctant to anger the voices who are pretty large and hold a lot of power that defend that institution.The theology behind Misguided Christian Housing ProgramsSy Hoekstra: Can we get a little bit at what some of the reasons are underneath all this stuff? I mean, aside from the [laughs] opportunity to evangelize, forcing people into your program to evangelize them, because that's just your whole end goal as a Christian or whatever, is to convert people, and so the means by which you convert them doesn't matter. Which is, I'm putting it that way because I'm just kind of processing that, because it's gross. It's in line with manipulating people into Christianity by scaring them about hell.Kevin Nye: Yeah.Sy Hoekstra: Like why not just scare them about prison or anything else?Jonathan Walton: Yeah, right. I'll put you outside.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah, exactly [laughs]. But I wonder what other… you've dug into the theology of this, you've dug into people's reasoning for supporting this kind of programming and the powers that be supporting this kind of programming. What are the other motivations, theological reasons that you see behind treating vulnerable people this way?Kevin Nye: Yeah. Well, I mean, the way I framed it obviously, is sort of the most insidious version of it, but I think that most folks who… I mean, especially your frontline workers in a place that, genuinely believe that Jesus is the solution to homelessness. That people who are experiencing homelessness are doing so because of a personal failure, a moral failure, and that if they commit their lives to Jesus, that that will allow them to leave behind the life that led them into the situation that they're in and propel them towards a new life. That's the nice way of understanding what's happening, which I genuinely believe a lot of folks in these settings are operating it from that more positive version.Even what you described as scaring people with hell to get people to accept Jesus, I know people that are in my family who they genuinely believe that the people that they love and care about are gonna go to hell if they don't. And there is this motivation that, again, because they have this belief that is toxic, that the way… if you are committed to that belief, to then address this problem can be very problematic. My experience by and large, has not been that people who experience homelessness are not religious or are not even committed Christians.Sy Hoekstra: Seriously.Jonathan Walton: Exactly.Sy Hoekstra: Right.Kevin Nye: And on top of that, an informed understanding of what causes homelessness is not moral personal failure, but very measurable and understandable social issues like the cost of housing, like our mental health systems, like the stagnation of wages, so that housing is more expensive and people aren't making any more money. So one plus one equals two, fewer people can access housing.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah, there's so much to say there, but things I wanna highlight, you're basically saying that Jesus is the answer to homelessness, allows you to avoid asking systemic questions, allows you to avoid talking about systems that need to change. It also kind of turns Jesus into something that he never said that he was. He never said he was the answer to homelessness. He also never even said, “If you state a belief in me and read the Bible and pray and x, y and z, then you will automatically start making significantly better moral decisions.”Kevin Nye: Yeah.Sy Hoekstra: That's not even true about Jesus. He also didn't say, “If you believe in me, all of a sudden you won't be addicted to meth,” or whatever. You know what I mean?Kevin Nye: Right.Sy Hoekstra: None of this is true. There's a real powerful underlying fundamentalist current in that perspective. In a just don't worry about the politics, don't worry about basically any real earthly concerns, just Jesus, everything else will fall in line after that.Kevin Nye: Yeah, and it's, I think a lot about how it's just an extension of prosperity gospel. That it's the same idea that says if you're an average middle-class American Christian, and you want to become wealthy, have a private jet, a mansion, here's your spiritual steps. Get closer to Jesus, you'll be rewarded with physical wealth. Well, if that's true, the opposite of that would be true, which is that if you are in deep, dire poverty, it must mean that you're that much farther from Jesus.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.Jonathan Walton: Right.Kevin Nye: And I think even people who would reject the Joel Osteen prosperity rich end of that gospel, still believe a lot of that same stuff, but on the poverty end.Jonathan Walton: Yeah.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. That's so true.Jonathan Walton: The connection for me happens, is yes, the prosperity gospel, but then also the plantation spirituality.Kevin Nye: Yeah.Jonathan Walton: The people who are rich are obedient, the people who are poor are disobedient. And what disobedient people actually need is supervision and discipline.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.Kevin Nye: Yes.Jonathan Walton: And so the housing-first, the entire mentality that you are flipping over is saying you don't actually have to be good or better or on the right side of things to receive, which is the opposite of the plantation, which is the opposite of Capitalism, which is the opposite…Sy Hoekstra: You might even call it grace, Jonathan [laughter].Jonathan Walton: I mean, I was gonna get to the title of the book at the end, but like…[laughs].Kevin Nye: And not even just to receive, but to receive in a way that allows freedom and choice. Because that is one of the biggest differences between these two models. And I think, a lot of why it's we need to hold housing back until we've programmed into a person what they should be acting like and being like then we give them housing, because once they have housing, they're free to make their own decisions, and we're afraid of what that looks like. Versus that housing-first model that, baked into housing-first is choice and options and autonomy. And even in the process of getting into housing, it's not just, “Hey, here's the apartment that you get,” although that is how a lot of systems end up working, just because of scarcity of housing.But in a good housing-first model it's, “Here's all the types of housing that are accessible to you. These ones are subsidized this way, these ones are this way. This is in this part of town, this one is connected to these types of services. What works for you?” And then after that choice comes more choices like, “Hey, what's the thing that you wanna work on first?” Which is the treatment-first model says, you got to get sober before you do anything else. And that is just not true. I think that's a big piece of it too, is how much the treatment-first system allows us, whether we're government or religious, to exert social control over people.Jonathan Walton: All that to say, there are people and systems and structures, institutions in place that keep this ideology enforced.Kevin Nye: Yes.Jonathan Walton: It is moving forward. Something, harking back, we had an interview with Lisa Sharon Harper, who I believe you know.Kevin Nye: Yeah.Jonathan Walton: And one of the things she said was, the hope is in the work. As we do the work, we will find hope, because we're close and we see progress, we build relationships, that's the fruit of being in the work. And so as people are, what we were just talking about, these institutions, these individuals are reluctant to this evidence-based policy actually being rolled out in the church, where do you see good work being done inside and outside of the church, where you can find that intersection of hope and work?Kevin Nye: Yeah.Jonathan Walton: As people do start to say yes to Matthew 25.Kevin Nye: I mean, I think that my… so my book came out two years ago now, and when I wrote it, I sort of hoped that it would be revelatory for people. That a lot of Christians would be like, “Oh, this is new information. This is a new way of looking at it.” And there was a good amount of that. But what really surprised me, and gave me a lot of hope, was how much response I got that said, “Yes, this is what we over here already believe, and we've been doing.”Sy Hoekstra: Oh.Kevin Nye: Sometimes like, “We didn't know it had a name. We didn't know there were other people thinking and talking about this.” And so in those two years, as I've gotten to travel around and do some speaking and stuff like that, I've gotten to see and hear about a bunch of programs, churches that are merging this sort of faith-based and evidence-based. And, yeah, it's just been, it's filled me with a ton of hope. And where they're, I think the next growth is for them to get organized together, because right now the Rescue Missions are organized. They have a centralized network, and so they can speak together with one voice in opposition to these best practices.But there's not sort of a focal point or a voice box for all these other ones that are doing, like you said, the hope is in the work, they're doing it in their small, local ways, but don't have a collective together to speak to each other and on behalf of one another and on behalf of the things that they believe in. And so that's part of the project I'm working on right now. My next book project is to sort of give voice and awareness to a lot of these ideas that are being implemented in different places that people don't really know about outside of those local communities, and sort of name what is working and why, and hopefully inspire responses from faith communities and individuals that align with best practices and align with their faith.Jonathan Walton: One, I wanna dive into your book, because I actually haven't read it yet, so I'm looking forward to grabbing it. And I'm glad to hear that you have another one. What would you say is the bridge from the one you wrote to this one?Kevin Nye: A lot of different things, but to make it very black and white, it's the first book is about how to think differently about homelessness, and this book is about how you actually go and do that, and how those change beliefs get worked out in things as nitty gritty as program design.Jonathan Walton: Yes.Sy Hoekstra: Totally.Kevin Nye: Without being boring, hopefully.Sy Hoekstra: [laughs] That's great. Where can people find you or your work?Kevin Nye: So I'm on most social media. I'm not too hard to find there, but my handle is a little different everywhere you go. The best sort of landing spot is my Substack. So that's Kevinmnye.substack.com. And so any new thing that I'm writing, whether it's there or I publish with Sojourners, or I'm speaking somewhere, I always put that out in my newsletter there. And hopefully as some more news comes out about this new book project, I'll be able to make announcements about that there.Sy Hoekstra: That's awesome. We will definitely link to that. Kevin Nye, we so much appreciate having you on the show today. Thank you so much for being here.Kevin Nye: Yeah, absolutely. It was a blast.[The intro piano music from “Citizens” by Jon Guerra plays briefly and then fades out.]Our Thoughts after the InterviewSy Hoekstra: Jonathan, I loved that conversation. Tell me what you are thinking about coming out of it.The Church Is Actively Contributing to the Problem of HomelessnessJonathan Walton: There's a lot. I think that the thing that frustrates me the most, and I think this is true about a lot of just injustices that I'm thinking about right now, is that the church is actively contributing to the continuing…Sy Hoekstra: To the problem.Jonathan Walton: Yeah. When we're literally supposed to not do that. Like, the whole Grants Pass amicus brief, I'm just like, “Really guys?” That takes energy. That takes effort, that takes meetings, that takes emails, takes drafts. It takes time to do that. You can't just like, “Hey, I'm gonna write an amicus brief,” and just submit it. There's an effort that goes into sustaining injustice, and that to me I think is concerning and exhausting.Societies with Colonial Roots Won't Provide “Unearned” BenefitsJonathan Walton: The other thing I think about is, I mean, I would say White American folk religion, talk about a plantation mentality, but it even stretches into addressing injustice. I was having a conversation with Maya yesterday.Sy Hoekstra: Your seven-year-old.Jonathan Walton: Yes. No, she's eight. She's eight.Sy Hoekstra: Oh. I forgot.Jonathan Walton: Yeah. But we were talking about the difference between fairness and justice. And she said, “Baba, is it better to give someone what they need or give someone what they ask for?”Sy Hoekstra: You have the deepest child [laughter].Jonathan Walton: She literally asked me that. And I was like, “Ooh.”Sy Hoekstra: Does Maya wanna be on this podcast [laughter]?Jonathan Walton: No, but she was reading a book. I have a discussion or something at school, and this is what she asked me. So I started talking about the vineyard. I said, “Maya, who gets to decide what is needed? Who are the different people?” And she goes, “Well, someone outside is deciding.” And I was like, “Oh, okay, well, then let's go read the story about Jesus in the vineyard.” Like the kingdom of God is like a vineyard.Sy Hoekstra: You're talking about the parable where he pays all the workers the same, no matter how long they worked, and the ones who worked the longest get angry [laughs].Jonathan Walton: Exactly. And then we went and read… she had only read the first half of the parable about the two sons. She hadn't read the second half. So then we talked about the similarities between the father who runs out to meet the prodigal son, and then how the person in charge gets to decide how grace or resources or whatever are distributed. And I was like, it would seem to me that that person gets to define what is just and what is fair, and what is equitable. And we didn't get to talk about power, but that was ultimately what I was thinking about.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.Jonathan Walton: And I don't know how to explain it to an eight year old. But she said everybody should get what they need. But she's like, “How can we do that?” And I said, “Maya, that right there is the fundamental question that we try to put together.” There are people who think and believe and will work tooth and nail for people not to get what they don't think they deserve. “I don't think that person deserves a home. I don't think that person deserves to live where I live. I think they should, quote- unquote, wait in line,” if we're talking about immigration. “I played by the rules. Don't pay off that debt. I worked at a job…” We're constantly doing that. There's a Hawaiian activist, her name escapes me right now, but she said, “You got to remember you live in a colony.”Like the United States is a colony. That's what it is. Another Peruvian scholar is like, coloniality is a real thing. And so in a colony, you cannot have people get things that they quote- unquote, didn't work for. The kingdom of God should literally break the brains of imperialists, which it does [laughs], because it just, it blows up everything. So all that to say, I hope, and we'll pray and will work in the influence that I have to say, “Hey, can we do what Kevin was talking about, like housing-first, resources first, hugs first, communication first?” All that.For Evangelicals, Grace Is Not TangibleSy Hoekstra: Yeah, totally. I had kind of similar thoughts. I was gonna talk about how the moralism underlying all of the policy, like the treatment-first policy like, “You have to earn this, and we are suspicious of you, and we have all these stereotypes going in that we're just not going to question and we're gonna follow. And until you prove yourself worthy of our generosity, we're not gonna give it to you.” And so it's sort of like, we can talk about grace and generosity and all of that all day long, but we're not gonna put our money where our mouth is, especially not government money [laughs].Jonathan Walton: Yeah. Right, exactly.Sy Hoekstra: That's kind of the other side of the coin of the coin of what you were talking about, which is so there's this lack of grace generosity, but I think yours is actually a step further, which is if you're denying grace and generosity, you're going to have to take active steps to reinforce the frankly, evil way of doing things [laughs].Jonathan Walton: Yeah.Sy Hoekstra: And that's the amicus briefs and everything else. What I was just saying, that kind of moralism, it really is connected to the more fundamentalist side of evangelicalism about how, basically, grace is a spiritual thing. It's not a tangible thing. It's not a material thing. It's not something you practice outside of forgiving someone for wronging you. It's not something you do with your money and your resources. It just doesn't really have any business in the public square, or in public policy, which is not a distinction the Bible draws.Jonathan Walton: Right.Sy Hoekstra: The best you can argue is maybe it's a distinction that under your theology you think the Bible implies. It's definitely not explicit [laughter]. You can look at Leviticus, where there are so so many different provisions where God is requiring people to use the fruits of their own labor to provide for the poor in their neighborhood, and not in particularly efficient ways [laughter]. And Jesus is obviously, or John the Baptist is telling people, “If you have two coats, give one away.” There's the spirit, the direction where everything's going with the kingdom of God is so opposed to that way of thinking, in my view, that it's incredibly frustrating that we have to… Kevin, in particular. I'm frustrated for him, for advocates, and then for most of all, for the actual people who aren't getting housing, who are literally out on the streets. Some of them are freezing to death or starving to death because of our insistence on this moralism.Jonathan Walton: Right. The fundamental thing is at the end of the day, moralism is an argument that you need to earn the stuff, like you were just saying. And then it's like, I'm gonna create an entire ecosystem that justifies your poverty and my comfort.Christians Should Actively Invite Unhoused People into Our NeighborhoodsSy Hoekstra: My other thought was around markets, and a lot of how some of the intractability of housing policy is that so many people just have decided that when you put out public housing or low income housing somewhere, that that lowers the value of the property around it.Jonathan Walton: Yes.Sy Hoekstra: Which is by economists, the way they speak, it's an inevitability. It's just the way things are, and it can't be changed. But that is ultimately because the potential buyers of that property are bigots toward poor people [laughter].Jonathan Walton: Yeah. No, it's true. Right.Sy Hoekstra: It's such widespread, systemic bigotry that it changes the value of homes and buildings and land. And that's a choice. It is a choice that I will grant you most societies have made [laughs]. Like most societies, rich people want to cordon themselves off from everybody else and to use their money to try and escape the things about this world that are difficult and make us sad and uncomfortable and hurt. But that doesn't mean that it's not still a choice for which God absolutely holds us accountable. Go and read Amos, or whatever [laughter]. There's no question, it does not make God happy, and that we have a different way to go. But what we would need is something that seems kind of impossible at the moment, which is a… you've heard of a NIMBY?Jonathan Walton: Yes.Sy Hoekstra: NIMBY people, like Not In My Back Yard. So that means, “Don't put that new methadone clinic, don't put that new housing project anywhere near me.” We would need a YIMBY movement.Jonathan Walton: Yes.Sy Hoekstra: You actually have to have people who say, “Yes. I want poor people around. I want people who are trying to recover from drugs around. I want people who have mental health issues around. Because of my positive value for human life and communal flourishing.” And that truly feels impossible to me. I don't think it is, again, I think it's a choice. And one thing that I'm trying to do, I have narrow influence in the world. One person over whom I have a lot of influence is my two year old. I walk around New York City with her all the time. I take her to daycare, other places. And I'm trying to make a point that, we're not going to be afraid of the person who's having the mental health crisis, because the actual reality is, in that mental health crisis, they are in more danger than we are. They are the ones at risk, we are not.Most of them are not violent. A lot of us want to be violent towards them. Aka Jordan Neely, who was killed on the subway because he was having a mental health crisis, and people were sufficiently afraid of him. And so if I'm on the subway platform with my daughter and someone's having a mental health crisis, and they're not that far away from us, and people will move away from that person because they're afraid, I will stay there. And that has never been a problem, not once. You can tell me that that's dangerous or risky, and I don't care, because I know you're wrong, and I'm going to teach the person that I have the ability to teach that you're wrong [laughs]. And we're gonna stay there, and we're gonna be completely fine. I've been here for 16 years now. I've lived in New York City, and I've been around people having, I've worked with even my clients as a lawyer.These are not alien, weird people having scary freakouts to me. These are real people, who by the way, are fully conscious when they're having their mental health crises, and they can see everyone walking away from them, and they know how afraid everybody is of them, and that affects them deeply.Jonathan Walton: Yeah.Sy Hoekstra: And I'm not gonna be part of it. I will be the yes in my backyard person, even if nobody else is. There are other people who are. I'm not saying it's me against the world, but that is something that we need to insist on it.Jonathan Walton: Yeah, and honestly I think that ties literally perfectly into Which Tab Is Still Open.Which Tab Is Still Open? — Ta-Nehisi CoatesSy Hoekstra: Oh, yeah. Let's get into it. So this is Which Tab Is Still Open. This is the segment where we dive a little bit deeper into one of the recommendations from our newsletter, which you can get by joining the free mailing list at KTFPress.com. You'll get resources articles, podcasts, books, everything, recommendations from Jonathan and I on ways to grow in your discipleship and in your political education. So go to KTFPress.com, sign up for that free mailing list. Jonathan, we're talking about Ta-Nehisi Coates today. Why don't you tell us what we're talking about exactly?Jonathan Walton: Yes. So Ta-Nehisi Coates has a new book, it's called The Message. A very significant portion of it is about his trip to Israel and Palestine, occupied West Bank, Hebron, places like that. Some important points he makes are that when you see how Palestinians are treated up close, it's not really that hard to see it as apartheid or Jim Crow or any other exploitative, discriminatory system that has been set up. And he took a trip to the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem, and found it profoundly moving as well, but just couldn't shake that the lesson Zionists took from the Holocaust was that, “We have to obtain our own power at all costs to prevent this from happening again.” He's had some really fascinating media appearances while promoting the book that we'll link to in the show notes.One of them, you mentioned the newsletter, was a great interview with The Daily Show. The interview that instigated a lot of this fervor and dialog and will probably help him sell a lot of books, which he's also said [laughter], was with CBS because he was basically ambushed by Tony Dokoupil, and was called an extremist in asking him pretty nonsensical questions for people who are against genocide, totally normal for people who are for Zionism. And the question he asked that many people ask is, “Does Israel have the right to exist?” And it's a rhetorical question, which Ta-Nehisi Coates actually answered when he said that countries don't have the right to exist, they exist by power. Just that turn was really great.But about the interview, there was controversy, because it came out that the interviewer went around CBS's editorial process and just went off on his own without telling anybody what he was doing. So Sy, what are your thoughts?The Power of Clarity and Focus in Prophetic Truth-TellingSy Hoekstra: I am so happy that Ta-Nehisi Coates is back writing nonfiction [laughter]. That's my main and primary thought. Everything he wrote in the 2010s is very formative for a lot of my thinking. I just love his approach to writing and journalism. He said many times he just, he writes to learn. He really appreciates the power of writing, and he has an incredible amount of moral clarity, a really impressive inability of everyone who's trying to distract him, to distract him. Like he's very focused. Like that question that you just brought up was a good example of it. Somebody says, “Does Israel have the right to exist?” He says, “Israel exists. States don't have the right to exist, they just do. They establish themselves with power. And now I'm gonna talk about, because Israel does exist, how does it exist, and why is that a problem?”It's just, I'm going to acknowledge your question. I'm going to say very quickly why it doesn't make any sense, and then I'm gonna get back to the point that matters [laughs].Jonathan Walton: Yes.Sy Hoekstra: And that is something I want to emulate in the way that I go about my writing and my commentary and all that. I mean, those are kind of my… [laughs] I'm not sure I have a lot of substantive thoughts about what you just said, I'm just happy he's back. He took a long path down the fiction road and was writing comic books and all kinds of other stuff, which is also very cool. And he also did that because he was like, “That's the challenge for me as a writer right now. I've never done this. I'm a little bit scared of it. I think being nervous is good as a writer. And I'm gonna go do this thing that makes me sort of uncomfortable, instead of just continuing to churn out bestsellers about whatever.” You know what I mean?Jonathan Walton: [laughter]. Right. Let me go and be challenged. Right right right.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah, which I really respect that too, even though it means there were several years where I didn't get his commentary on stuff that I would have appreciated [laughter]. That's what I have been thinking as I've been watching him. But how about you, and you said you were gonna connect it back to what we were talking about before?Jonathan Walton: Yes. So one, amen, I'm glad he's writing nonfiction as well.Sy Hoekstra: [laughs].Jonathan Walton: It's really powerful to me what truth telling does. He is stewarding a platform. He is leveraging his voice. He is doing what I would hope followers of Jesus would do in the ways that we can and the lives that we live every day. You're leveraging your platform with your daughter. You are her biggest influence. You and Gabrielle. The stewardship of his power and platform to elevate and center the most marginalized voice in the media landscape over the last 65 years, people from the Middle East. That we say the Middle East, because we're the center of the world.Sy Hoekstra: [laughs].Jonathan Walton: And so that reality comes from… I've listened to so many interviews. I listened to his one with The Daily Show, MSNBC, Zeteo with Mehdi Hassan. I listened to the one with Trevor Noah. I'm gonna listen to the one for Democracy Now!, I'm gonna listen to the one with The Gray Area, because I need to be reminded every day that there are people willing and able to say the hard things, not be distracted or dissuaded from what they're trying to say, and be willing to communicate that they would risk their own injury. He said, “It doesn't matter what someone else has done to me or how evil someone is, we should not kill them.” Over and over again. There is no world where it's, “Oh, it's complex. Oh, it's complicated.”No, no, no, it's not. It's not complicated. It becomes complicated if you don't think about it. Everything's complicated if we don't think about it. But if you actually sit down and think about what it would mean to be Palestinian and what it would mean to be a Jewish person post Holocaust, post multiple pogroms, I would love for us to arrive at the point where we're like, “I don't want to perpetuate that against anyone else, because it was perpetrated against me,” which is love your neighbor as yourself.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.Jonathan Walton: Which he's not a follower of Jesus, but where we have instead landed is where he is willing to wrestle, he talked about this with Trevor Noah, he would hope that he would not become someone who would commit acts of violence to keep acts of violence from happening to him. That, I think is a rub. Like Nat Turner's rebellion and what happened on October the seventh when the quote- unquote, Hamas escaped. Even the words we use to describe the attack that happened, it literally is described like a breakout a lot of the times, in Zionist literature and communication. All of these things frame the Lebanese, or frame now the Iranians as not people. And what Ta-Nehisi Coates is trying to do is actually say they are people.And that gets back to what you're talking about with, yes in my backyard. This is a person. Jordan Neely is a person. The person on the street having the mental health crisis, the person who's going through a messy divorce and doesn't have anywhere to go, the folks that are unemployed or bust up here from Texas, these are individuals made in the image of God, who do not deserve harm. That is the thing that draws me back to Coates' interviews, because he's not avoiding the hard questions, but what he is doing is communicating a truth that the people asking hard questions don't like. We are no better than the person that we're shooting or bombing or killing. We're just not. And so why are we doing that to someone who is literally just like us?And so I will keep watching, I will keep listening, keep reading. I hope that there is a shift happening. I'm not optimistic. I'm grateful for him and driving the conversation, because it feels something has broken through that I hope continues, because that was a conversation on CBS Morning Show. That was a conversation on progressive, liberal, conservative. Like people are talking about the book, even if you're critiquing it, you got to talk about it. I'm glad that that's happening, and I hope that this is taking the trajectory of what happened in South Africa, that's the best case scenario.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.Jonathan Walton: It's not the best case scenario, but politically in the limits that we have, it's the best case scenario.Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. And I think he thinks that way. Like when he talks about the power of writing, he's not talking about the power of my book to end the war, he's talking about the power of my book to influence some people who so

Subscribe to Bad Faith on Patreon to instantly unlock our full premium episode library: http://patreon.com/badfaithpodcast Political economist David Fields joins Bad Faith for a conversation that goes beyond housing policy to unpack the very roots of why the Democratic Party seems unable to provide basic improvements for working people -- even when they're in power. He clarifies the YIMBY vs. NIMBY debate, how YIMBYism has been appropriated by corporate developers, and how false economic narratives (e.g. the supply/demand curve) have been weaponized to justify real-estate lobby-approved solutions to the housing crisis. Subscribe to Bad Faith on YouTube for video of this episode. Find Bad Faith on Twitter (@badfaithpod) and Instagram (@badfaithpod). Produced by Armand Aviram. Theme by Nick Thorburn (@nickfromislands).

With three weeks to go and early voting reaching record numbers, the campaigns are circling around their drastically disparate final pitches to voters. This week, MSNBC political analyst Elise Jordan joins former Senator Claire McCaskill to highlightTrump's stark vision of the “enemies from within”, while Harris speaks to the center- and a combative Bret Baier on Fox News. Then, Senator Brian Schatz of Hawaii lays out the vice president's framework to ease the housing crisis, what it means to go from NIMBY to YIMBY, and the importance of creating generational wealth for the next era of homebuyers. And lastly, Claire and Elise get to the heart of who to trust in the era of foreign interference, deepfakes and Trumpery.Further Reading: Here is the Washington Post piece Claire and Elise spoke about that shares how to spot deepfakes as the election nears: AI is spawning a flood of fake Trump and Harris voices. Here's how to tell what's real.Want to listen to this show without ads? Sign up for MSNBC Premium on Apple Podcasts. As a subscriber you'll also be able to get occasional bonus content from this and other shows.

If NIMBY is the classist rejection of affordable housing ("Not in my back yard”), then YIMBY is sold as the progressive counter to it: “Yes, in my back yard; because I believe affordable housing should be widely available, even in my own neighborhood.” But of course, housing development has nothing to do with the needs of the poor or the working class. It has nothing to do with the public purpose. Steve's guest, political economist David Fields, explains: “YIMBY is yes to housing in my backyard, but housing for developers to extract profit from land value. So build as much as possible within a given area and, in the end, extract as much as possible through rent extraction and land value appreciation. It's not, in my view, yes to actual affordable housing in my backyard to house working class folks. No, it's yes to luxury skyscrapers, luxury this, luxury that. Build as cheaply as possible for vested interests to maximize gain.” YIMBY's want us to believe that sheer quantity will bring prices down, because that's how the market works. Those who object are accused of NIMBYism. In addition, “They're economically illiterate, they're economically stupid, they don't know, they don't pay attention, and they're not letting the magic do its magic. Which, anybody who knows a modicum of economics and knows that supply and demand is institutionally configurated - not natural - should be flabbergasted and say, how did this get to be so popular, so celebrated? Well, there are vested interests involved.” The episode explores the misleading narratives of YIMBYism and compares the market-driven approach to housing to trickle-down economics, emphasizing the constructed scarcity and profit motives behind urban planning. David points out the misuse of economic models like the Marshallian Cross, highlighting flaws in the market logic often used to justify YIMBY policies. David and Steve talk about the broader neoliberal agenda of privatization and deregulation, and its stranglehold on government policies. Awareness and organization are needed to combat systemic class inequality in housing and beyond. David Fields is from a critical realist and genetic structuralist ontology and epistemology. His work centers on the intricacies concerning the interactions of foreign exchanges and capital flows, with economic growth, fiscal and monetary policy and distribution, whereby critical attention is paid to the notion of endogenous money. He also delves into the political economy of regional development to study patterns with respect to the nature of housing, social stratification, and community planning. @ProfDavidFields on Twitter

Owning a home is the cornerstone of the American dream, but an affordability crisis is making it a distant fantasy for many. The presidential candidates are taking notice. Sonja Trauss is a key activist in the YIMBY movement (“Yes in My Backyard”), and says the solution is pretty simple: Build more homes. Getting that done isn't so easy. Audie sits down with Trauss in Southern California — ground zero for the housing shortage — to talk about the origins of the problem and potential solutions.  Watch a version of our conversation here.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We read the papers so you don't have to, now every Monday and Friday. Today: Elon Musk joins Donald Trump at a rally and all of the papers are cringing. Jonn tries to explain why The Daily Mail is so obsessed with Sue Gray's employment status. The Guardian shares some rizz-free sex advice that prompts Jan to recite some of her own fiery frissons. And finally – Miranda is troubled by the nation's butler shortage as highlighted in The Telegraph. This used to be a country! Miranda Sawyer is joined by YIMBY journalist Jonn Elledge and queen of impressions Jan Ravens. Come and see us LIVE at the Cheerful Earful podcast festival on 12 Oct. Tickets here! Support Paper Cuts and get mugs, t-shirts and extended ad-free editions: back.papercutsshow.com Follow Paper Cuts: • Twitter: https://twitter.com/papercutsshow • Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/papercutsshow • TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@papercutsshow • Threads: https://www.threads.net/@papercutsshow Illustrations by Modern Toss https://moderntoss.com  Written and presented by Miranda Sawyer. Audio production: Jade Bailey. Production. Liam Tait. Design: James Parrett. Music: Simon Williams. Managing Editor: Jacob Jarvis. Exec Producer: Martin Bojtos. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. PAPER CUTS is a Podmasters Production Podmasters.co.uk Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We're exploring how zoning, regulations, and NIMBYism have impacted America's cities in this episode featuring M. Nolan Gray, Senior Director at California YIMBY and author of Arbitrary Lines. Topics covered include: Why are housing costs skyrocketing across the country? How have zoning laws broken American cities, and what reforms could fix them? How should the YIMBY movement engage with communities resistant to new development? What are the best policy solutions for addressing the housing affordability crisis? How has YIMBYism gained traction within the Democratic Party?Join Project Liberal founder Joshua Eakle and steering committee member Shawn Huckabay as they engage in a timely conversation with Nolan Gray on the future of housing policy.Follow Nolan at https://x.com/mnolangray

The plan to facilitate housing development in New York City has come to the Brooklyn neighborhood of Windsor Terrace, and a dispute over a proposed pair of 13-story towers has ensured. David Brand, housing reporter for WNYC and Gothamist, reports on the debate and its implications for Eric Adams's City of Yes housing plan. 

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.politix.fmThis week, Brian takes a much needed vacation and Matt is joined by The Atlantic's Jerusalem Demsas to talk about housing and the 2024 campaign. * Barack Obama's striking and unexpected embrace of the YIMBY diagnosis of the housing issue at the Democratic National Convention. * Kamala Harris' more equivocal embrace of the same formula along with some other …

Americans are struggling to stay afloat due to high housing prices caused by our nation's housing shortage. Fortunately, there is a growing number of voices advocating for pro-housing policy solutions. Up For Growth is a national, cross-sector member network committed to solving the housing shortage and affordability crisis. While many advocates focus on solutions to the housing shortage at the local and state levels, Up For Growth supports federal policies that will increase the number of homes throughout the country. On this episode of the Infill podcast, you'll hear from our Executive Director Laura Foote and Up For Growth's National Policy Director David Garcia about what the federal government's current attitude is on pro-housing policies, how we can inspire more bold policy solutions, and why it is critical to have bipartisan support for pro-housing legislation. In particular, one federal bill that Up For Growth and YIMBY Action are supporting is the YIMBY Act. In this episode you will learn more about what the YIMBY Act does to promote pro-housing solutions and housing affordability, as well as why we need to tell our congress members to act NOW to bring the YIMBY Act to a vote before the year ends. You can email your congress members to support the YIMBY Act using our online tool below! Email Your Congress Members About the YIMBY Act: https://actionnetwork.org/letters/tell-your-representative-bring-the-yimby-act-to-a-voteLearn More about YIMBY Action: https://new.yimbyaction.org/Follow YIMBY Action on X: https://x.com/yimbyactionFollow YIMBY Action on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yimbyaction/Follow YIMBY Action on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/yimbyactionLearn more about Up For Growth: https://upforgrowth.org/

My guest today is Joel Meadows, a phenomenal human who happens to be a permaculture teacher, rocket oven engineer, energy geek, green tech sceptic, sculptor, illustrator, musician and composting ninja.This is one epic episode that encompasses:

Local housing politics have found their way into the race for president and it reflects a shift in the Democratic Party to embrace the term YIMBY. In other news, state law limits how much landlords can raise the rent on most tenants, and in San Diego County increases cannot exceed 8.6%. We hear what happens when tenants have few resources available to fight back when landlords raise the rate higher. Plus, a local nonprofit furnishes homes for people emerging from homelessness.

Ravi kicks off the show by reflecting on the final day of the DNC convention, how the past four days could impact Democrats' chances against Trump in November, and the implications of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s pending withdrawal from the race. Ravi then welcomes New York Times housing reporter Conor Dougherty to the show to discuss the current state of the housing crisis, how political dynamics influence progress, and why Obama may have decided to use his speech at the DNC to advocate for reform within the outdated housing market. Finally, Ravi and Conor delve into Silicon Valley billionaires' efforts to create a new city in California. Time Stamps: Grading the DNC - 0:01 Kamala's Risks - 6:14 YIMBY - 9:00 Billionaire City - 27:15 Leave us a voicemail with your thoughts on the show! 321-200-0570 Subscribe to our feed on Spotify: http://bitly.ws/zC9K Subscribe to our Substack: https://thelostdebate.substack.com/ Follow The Branch on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thebranchmedia/ Follow The Branch on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thebranchmedia Follow The Branch on Twitter: https://twitter.com/thebranchmedia The Branch website: http://thebranchmedia.org/ The Branch channel: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/channel/the-branch/id6483055204  Lost Debate is also available on the following platforms:  Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-lost-debate/id1591300785 Google: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vTERJNTc1ODE3Mzk3Nw  iHeart: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/269-the-lost-debate-88330217/ Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/752ca262-2801-466d-9654-2024de72bd1f/the-lost-debate

The Bright Side shines a light on stories of hope and problem-solving people around Australia.

The Bright Side shines a light on stories of hope and problem-solving people around Australia.

The Bright Side shines a light on stories of hope and problem-solving people around Australia.

The Bright Side shines a light on stories of hope and problem-solving people around Australia.

Research Director for California YIMBY, professional city planner and author of Arbitrary Lines, Nolan Gray, joins us to discuss how zoning impacts our communities, affordability of retail and commercial real estate. Zoning laws contributing to the affordable housing crisis and what we can do about it. Shifting from NIMBY to YIMBY mindset requires understanding benefits of growth. How zoning laws prevent new development, causing housing shortages and limiting entrepreneurship. California's statewide legalization of accessory dwelling units can be seen as a successful zoning reform example. We discuss how cities like Austin and Minneapolis have seen price stabilization by allowing for more mid-rise multi-family housing near transit and job-rich areas. Learn how to connect with local policymakers and planners to advocate for policy changes that encourage more housing supply. Resources mentioned: Show Notes: GetRichEducation.com/514 You can follow Nolan on X @mnolangray For access to properties or free help with a GRE Investment Coach, start here: GREmarketplace.com Get mortgage loans for investment property: RidgeLendingGroup.com or call 855-74-RIDGE  or e-mail: info@RidgeLendingGroup.com Invest with Freedom Family Investments.  You get paid first: Text FAMILY to 66866 For advertising inquiries, visit: GetRichEducation.com/ad Will you please leave a review for the show? I'd be grateful. Search “how to leave an Apple Podcasts review”  GRE Free Investment Coaching: GREmarketplace.com/Coach Best Financial Education: GetRichEducation.com Get our wealth-building newsletter free— text ‘GRE' to 66866 Our YouTube Channel: www.youtube.com/c/GetRichEducation Follow us on Instagram: @getricheducation Complete episode transcript:   Automatically Transcribed With Otter.ai   Keith Weinhold  00:00 Welcome to GRE. I'm your host. Keith Weinhold, if you don't take the right action, inflation will make you poorer. Then the affordable housing crisis keeps your tenant as your tenant is zoning. What's ruining American cities in keeping starter homes unaffordable or just plain extinct in some areas, how do we get more apartments and more density built today on Get Rich Education. When you want the best real estate and finance info, the modern Internet experience limits your free articles access, and it's replete with paywalls and you've got pop ups and push notifications and cookies disclaimers. Ugh. At no other time in history has it been more vital to place nice, clean, free content into your hands that actually adds no hype value to your life. See, this is the golden age of quality newsletters, and I write every word of ours myself. It's got a dash of humor, and it's to the point to get the letter. It couldn't be more simple text, GRE to 66866, and when you start the free newsletter, you'll also get my one hour fast real estate course, completely free. It's called the Don't Quit Your Daydream Letter, and it wires your mind for wealth. Make sure you read it. Text GRE to 66866, text GRE to 66866.   Corey Coates  01:38 You're listening to the show that has created more financial freedom than nearly any show in the world. This is Get Rich Education.   Keith Weinhold  01:54 Welcome to GRE from Calgary, Alberta to Tirana Albania and across 188 nations worldwide. I'm Keith Weinhold, and you are listening to get rich education. When most investors think about inflation, they get it mostly wrong. Their strategy is inflation hedging. And you know, even if you successfully hedge inflation, you are really missing out. You've really got to get fired up about beating inflation. When did you get your first job? Like your first real job in your life? Let's say you did that when you were age 18. Well, that work that you did when you were 18, that created value for somebody else. And you could have done anything with your valuable youth, but instead, you chose to provide value by focusing your time and your energy to sweep floors or enter data into a spreadsheet for somebody else. You were paid for that work that you did. You were paid in dollars, well, if you just tried to store your finite energy that you expended for that employer into dollars, you will lose. Your value will be coerced away from you by your government that just incessantly and relentlessly debases the dollar that you earned at age 18, because they just keep printing more of them. Well, that money printer, which creates the inflation is then an extraction of your resources. Yeah, they extracted your resources, of your time, energy and ingenuity away from you when you were 18, and even the work that you do today, its value will get extracted away from you too. If you say, store dollars under your mattress, if you instead invest it so that its growth rate keeps up with inflation, well, then all you've done is hedge inflation. My point is, get upset about how the system extracts resources from you. And my other point is, don't hedge. Hedge just means that you're treading water. Position yourself to win instead, because you can when you buy income producing property with a loan, you don't just hedge against the inflation. You win three ways at the same time. You probably know that's called the inflation Triple Crown, a concept that I coined. You can watch the three part video series on net, free. It's now easier than ever to access, learn how to actually profit from inflation, not just hedge yourself against it. You can watch that, and it's friction free. There's no email address to leave or anything. Simply watch learn and maybe even be amazed at how you can do this. Those three videos are available. At getricheducation.com/inflationtriplecrown, that's sort of long, so you can also get there with getricheducation.com/itc. Again, that's getricheducation.com/itc. Before we talk with our guests about how zoning is making the affordable housing crisis, even worse, housing values and rents are really looking stable in today's environment. CoreLogic tells us that single family rents are up 3.2% annually. That's the highest rate in a year. And when it comes to prices, the NAR tells us that existing single family home prices hit a record high of $426,900 and that is an all time high. And note that that's existing homes, not new. So median existing homes are basically 427k now. And what does that really mean? Well, that is up 4.1% year over year, the real estate market continues to be it's sort of this tale of the equity rich versus the affordability challenged. Are you equity rich or are you affordability challenged? Well, the more property that you own, the more equity rich you are feeling, that you're going to feel, and oftentimes you're renting out property to the affordably challenged. Of course, the big buzz and a potential really turning point in the economy here or not, it really began about 10 days ago. That's when America reported weak jobs numbers, and that set the unemployment rate from 4.1% up to 4.3%. Citigroup and JP Morgan are now predicting half point Fed rate cuts in both September and November, not just quarter point cuts anymore. I mean, gosh, if there's one thing that we really know, it's that nobody really knows anything. Starting about two years ago, everyone thought a recession was eminent. Bloomberg even said there was a 100% chance that we'd have one by last year. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Everyone thought there would be six or seven Fed rate cuts this year. Wrong, wrong, wrong. You can't even completely count out of rate cut at the next meeting. I mean, sheesh, before that time, we still have two new CPI reports to come out and another jobs report. So, you know, over the long term, this is just how people act. They tend to get ahead of themselves and overreact, and that's really more of a stock market investor sort of thing. And yeah, despite the volatility, you know, us real estate investors are here more chill than Snoop Dogg was at the Olympics. All this fear, what it does is it pushes money into bonds. And when money goes into bonds, it makes mortgage rates go down, and they recently hit 16 month lows near 6.4% and if rates stay low, millions of additional Americans will be able to qualify to buy property that couldn't before, and that could really put more upward pressure on property prices, more than this 4.1% year over year appreciation that we're currently seeing. We know that lots of investors are buying properties like you, getting equity rich and serving the affordability challenge. In fact, 60% of Home Builders indicated that they sold homes to investors from February through April, while 40% reported that they didn't sell to investors. And investors now represent wholly 25% of both new and resale residential transactions and among builders that sold to investors in the past 90 days, 69% of them sold to mom and pop investors. Mom and pop investors, they're loosely defined as those that own one to 10 rental units. They may very well be you. Institutional investors, those that own 10 plus investment properties in this home builders definition here. Well, those institutional investors, they accounted for just 4% of investor sales nationally. So again, more home builders are selling to small real estate investors, those that own one to 10 units. Well, now in almost 10 years of doing the show here, we've never had a full discussion about zoning, and really this is the time. Okay, this ends today because we describe how it's contributing to the affordable housing crisis and what we can do about it. I mean, anymore you really can't find a brand new build 250k starter home anymore, unless maybe it's a tiny home, which then really isn't a full home, and you sacrifice your lifestyle. Well, zoning is a big reason why the Supreme Court decision that deemed zoning constitutional that occurred in 1926. Yes, that's going to turn 100 in the year 2026 that Supreme Court decision that infamously referred to apartments as parasites. Wow. But yet is some zoning good? I mean, say that you and your family have your nice, quiet, single family home on an idyllic half acre lot. Well, if that's the case, should it be allowed that Bitcoin mining facility with its loud cooling fans is built right next to you I'll ask our guest expert about that, and what about say less offensive transgressions, like a condo board that says that you can't rent your unit out. How much zoning is too much or too little? I mean, is someone just being overly sensitive if a duplex is built next to their single family home and they complain about that? So we'll get into all of that. And it really comes down to limiting this McMansionization risk type of nimbyism, not in my backyardism. That's what it is. Again, you can watch the three free videos on how you can substantially and actionably profit from inflation, not hedge, but profit from inflation. It's the inflation triple crown. Be sure to check out those three videos at getricheducation.com/itc. I learned about this week's guest through reason.com we met in person at last month's Freedom Fest in Las Vegas. He is the research director for California Yimby, yes. Yimby, not NIMBY, that is yes in my backyard. And he's a professional city planner. He's the author of the book Arbitrary Lines, how zoning broke the American city and how to fix it. Welcome to GRE. Nolan Gray,   Nolan Gray  12:24 thanks so much, Keith. It's a pleasure to be with you, Nolan,   Keith Weinhold  12:26 you wrote one article for reason.com with such an interesting title, five words, Abolish Zoning-All of it, you're pretty emphatic there at what you'd like to have happen before we discuss that, why don't you tell us in your words what zoning is?   Nolan Gray  12:44 So for the past 100 years, America's cities have been running a grand experiment and how they're governed. Essentially, what we've done, beginning in the 1920s is we said for every single parcel in the city, we're going to assign an allowed use. So most people, if you've played Sim City, you know this might be residential, commercial, industrial, but it goes into so much more detail than that. Different types of residential might be allowed in different parts of the city, commercial, etc, and the vast majority of most American cities, the only form of residential that's allowed is a detached, single family home, right? So that's one half of it, the second half of what zoning is doing, it's placing arbitrary density limits. So the amount of actual housing or amount of floor area that you can build on any particular lot. And it's important to distinguish this from other forms of land use regulation, because in many cases, these rules aren't actually based on any health or safety concerns, but instead a sort of social project of engineering what a correct city should look like. And as I argue in the book and we can discuss over the course of this conversation, is I argue that these rules have actually had incredible harms for our cities and are at the root of our current housing affordability crisis.   Keith Weinhold  13:45 I think zoning initially, it began in New York City about 100 years ago.   Nolan Gray  13:50 Yeah, so New York City adopted one of the first modern zoning ordinances in 1916 a handful of other cities did so as well. So I'm coming to you from California, Berkeley, California also adopted zoning in this year. And essentially, what happened after New York City adopted it was the federal government put together what's called the standard zoning Enabling Act. They mailed that out to every single state in the country and started putting a lot of pressure on states to adopt zoning and allow local governments to adopt zoning. And then, with the rise of the Federal financial system, as part of the New Deal, housing programs. In many cases, local governments were required or strongly, strongly incentivized to adopt the zoning codes to be eligible for certain federal benefits.   Keith Weinhold  14:29 You know, maybe philosophically, one might think, Nolan, well, America stands for freedom, and I should get to do what I want with my plot of land. But if everyone can do whatever they want with their plot of land. I mean, does that mean that my neighbor then could start a sloppy hog farm, or the neighbor on the other side of me could start a battery factory with smoke stacks? So do those sort of things help make the case for zoning?   Nolan Gray  14:57  Yeah, that's a great question, you know. So before the rise of zoning. And we actually had a lot of rules for these classic nuisances, these classic externalities, things like smoke, smells, noise, or even just lots and lots of traffic generation. We had rules to say, Hey, if you want to operate certain types of uses, you need to be in a certain designated area where we're going to tolerate a much higher level of externalities. Zoning does that, but it also does so much more. And it's those other aspects that I think are ill conceived. So for example, of course, we don't want a slaughterhouse next to a single family home, but zoning might also say, Oh, by the way, you're not allowed to have a duplex next to a single family home. You're not allowed to start a home based business. You're not allowed to operate certain commercial uses out of certain strip malls in certain parts of the city. You're not allowed to build anything unless you have a certain amount of number of off street number of off street parking spaces, which can make adaptive reuse of historic properties very difficult. So I think absolutely there's a core of land use regulation that makes sense, that's focused on neighbors, not imposing costs on each other, but our current system goes so much further than that, in many ways, imposes new and unconceived costs, including increasing housing prices, limiting housing options in many of our neighborhoods, making it harder to start a business or to have neighborhoods serving retail in many of our neighborhoods.   Keith Weinhold  16:09 So perhaps zoning has just simply gone too far, and you touched on it earlier. It seems to me that about three quarters of the area of most cities have zoning restricted only to single family home building, for example, and they ban apartments completely. So maybe, as we try to find the right balance of how much zoning is right, tell us more about really the thesis of your book and why we should ban zoning completely.   Nolan Gray  16:38 Of course, we need certain regulations for externalities and nuisances, and to certain extent that can be resolved through litigation, but ideally you look for it and you say, okay, look, there are certain areas where we're going to tolerate certain nuisances and other places where we will not. But beyond that, I think so much of what our land use regulations do is actually causing harm. It's preventing property owners from using their property in ways that are not in any meaningful sense, harmful to their neighbors. It's created this context where now if you want to build just about anything in the typical American city, you have to go through multiple public hearings, you have to do an environmental report in some states, you have to get the permission of local elected officials, you have to undertake all these actions that heavily politicize every new development. And so what we get is so many of our neighborhoods and so many of our cities are locked in amber. And this is partly why, over the last few years, where we've seen a huge amount of demand flow into housing, we've simply had these extreme shortages because markets could not respond with the supply that many of our communities needed. So for example, a starter home in many US cities today might be a townhouse, it might be a two bedroom condo, it might be a single family home on a 2500 square foot lot, but those are precisely the forms of housing that in many cases, our zoning codes make illegal to build. So we're essentially saying if you can't afford at least a certain level of housing, you're not allowed to live in many parts of the community, if in the community altogether, or the same with businesses, if you want to start a small business that might not necessarily have any impact on your neighbors, you might require a special permit. You might require a hearing. You might require to attend a hearing where your competitors are going to show up and oppose your project, purely on a cynical basis. So what it's done is it's created this incredibly disruptive system that's prevented our cities from being entrepreneurial and adaptive, and I think this is the root of a lot of the problems that we're facing today.   Keith Weinhold  18:17 Oh, you really surface some good points there Nolan, when I think of over zoning, and we talk about how a lot of times you can't build anything more than a single family home, that certainly creates a lot of problems. Gentrification is sort of a bad word, kind of sprucing up community so much, raising the value so much, that one problem is that familial bonds decay when children that grew up in, say, Southern California, can no longer afford to live there, so they have to move to lower cost Las Vegas, a four to five hour drive away. Excessive gentrification. You touch that, it also harms mobility. If you want to move from Atlanta to Boston for a tech job but you can't find housing, you're not going to move there, so therefore, talent doesn't get matched up with opportunity.   Nolan Gray  19:07 That's exactly right. I mean, this is a at the national scale. This is an important piece of the puzzle, which is we've made it hardest to actually move to some of our most productive places. So as you mentioned, places like Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston, New York City, for all their problems, these are incredibly productive places where folks can move to and get high paying jobs and other good educational opportunities, but in many cases, these are the most expensive cities in our country, and it's in no small part because of the many rules and regulations that make it so hard to build housing in those contexts. So you're exactly right. Folks actually turn down higher paying jobs or better opportunities and move to places simply because the housing is more affordable, and you pick up on a really important piece of this, which is in many cases, this is breaking apart families. So a lot of folks who are born and raised in a place like California, their parents might have been able to buy their home in the 70s or 80s or 90s, but they can't afford a home. They have no long term path to actually staying in the community. And so what you're actually seeing is neighborhoods and communities being ripped apart. If the situation in places like California has actually got to be so bad that many of the people who are in a certain sense, beneficiaries of the status quo, maybe they own their home and they're seeing the value go up and up and up. They're also saying, Oh, my children can't afford to live near me. I don't ever get to see my grandkids. The person who serves me at the hospital or at the supermarket can't afford to live here, and we're having trouble keeping folks on. The crisis got to be so bad in certain places like California that we're starting to see tremors of reform. But one of the things I like to say is, if you want to fall into a California style housing crisis, most parts of the country don't need to do anything the rules you have on the books have you moving in that trajectory, right? But if you want to remain a place where we can build more housing, where folks can buy their own home or buy small apartment buildings and start to build wealth, you have to allow for more supply to come online.   Keith Weinhold  20:42 Sure, zoning so that you can't build anything other than single family homes compounds the affordability crisis. There really just isn't any such thing as a 250k starter home anymore, anywhere.  You represent California, yimby and you live there in the state where people think of ground zero for excessive regulation and taxation and zoning too. I do read more about some zoning being relaxed in California, allowing for the building of an adu on a property, for example, to help build the density. But before you talk about some of the cracks that are actually starting to help break this down. Can you give any bad examples that are especially problematic there in your home state, Nolan?   Nolan Gray  21:27 For the past 50 or 60 years, California, has been stuck under a NIMBY paradigm, not in my backyard, right? Every single new project is politically contentious, has to undertake an environmental report, has to undergo multiple public reviews, it takes years and years to get a permit, and that's if the housing is legal to build at all. As you know, in so many parts of California, there's very little to no new construction happening, and that's because of the rules on the books that make it so hard to build. To the extent that we allow new housing to be built, we have a whole bunch of mandates that force the housing to be a lot more expensive, and even if all that pencils again, it can take two years to get fully entitled in a permit. And so of course, the only housing that actually ends up getting built is quite expensive. And some folks say, Well, if we allow new housing to be built in California, it's all expensive. Well, yes, if you only allow a trickle of new housing in a very expensive context, of course the new housing is going to be expensive. But if you look to places like Texas and Florida, for example, that build lots and lots of new housing and don't have all of these costly mandates, they actually can build a lot of new housing, and actually can keep prices relatively under control and create that new supply of what we call missing middle, low rise housing. So as you mentioned, the tide, I think, is turning in California. The silver lining of things getting so bad is that the culture is shifting. And what we've seen is the emergence of this new yimby movement, or yes, in my backyard. And these are folks are saying, hey, not only is not building more, not this horrible threat to my community, but it's actually this enriching opportunity. It's good to have a growing, healthy, affordable community where folks are building, folks are able to move to high opportunity jobs, and folks are able to have choice in the neighborhood they live in.   Keith Weinhold  22:55 We're talking about zoning and how that's made the affordable housing crisis worse in the United States with California, yimbys, Nolan, gray Nolan. Tell us more about just the exact sorts of codes that are problematic. We touched on apartment building bans, but I think we're also looking at things like off street parking requirements. You need to have so many off street parking spaces before you can build. Otherwise you can't build. You need to have a minimum lot size of a half acre or a quarter acre in order to build here. So can you talk more specifically about just some of those exact problems on the tactical level that are compounding here?   Nolan Gray  23:34 Yeah, that's exactly right. So where are the housings illegal to build altogether. In many cases, there are a whole bunch of rules that increase the price of that housing. So in urban context, for example, where you might want to be building apartments, many cases, you might have parking requirements that say, Well, you have to have two parking spaces per unit or one parking space per bedroom. In many cases, that's what consumers might demand, and you would have to build that to lease out those units or to sell those condos. But if you're building in a context where you might be near a transit line, or you might be near a university campus, or you might be near a major job center, many of your renters might say, hey, actually, I would prefer to have a more affordable rental or a more affordable condo, because we know that there's no such thing as free parking. You know, if it requires a structure or excavation work, parking can easily add $50,000 to the price of a new unit, and so some consumers might want to pay for that, eat that cost, have a parking space. But many consumers, when we relax these rules and say, Hey, developers, you have the incentives and the local knowledge needed to decide how much parking to build. In many cases, we find that they share parking with other uses, so commercial during the day and residential at night, or they allow renters to opt into parking and to pay for parking, but what you get for many households is a cheaper unit. Now another rule that you mentioned, which is very important, is minimum loss size rules. This is certainly a lot more relevant. More relevant and suburban and rural context. But what we say is, if you want to be able to have a single family home, you have to be able to afford at least a certain amount of land. Now, when if you have a context where you don't have water and sewer installed, and you're operating on septic and well water, you do need larger lots as a matter of public health, but in most suburban context, these rules essentially serve no function except to increase the price of housing and the ability to determine what type of housing can be built where is the ability to determine who gets to live where. So if we say, well, you're not allowed to live in this neighborhood unless you can afford a 10,000 square foot lot or a 20,000 square foot lot, what we're essentially doing in 2024 where land is a major factor in affordability, is we're saying that a whole bunch of middle working class households are not allowed to live in these neighborhoods, or they're not allowed to ever become homeowners and start building wealth in the same way that past generations did. And you look at places like Houston, for example, where they don't have zoning, but they have a lot of zoning-like rules. In 1998 they reduced their minimum lot sizes from 5000 square feet citywide to 1400 square feet citywide. And what this did was this kicked off a townhouse and small lot single family home building boom that has helped to keep cities like Houston affordable a whole new supply of starter homes that again, offered that first step on the ladder of home ownership and wealth building.   Keith Weinhold  25:52 Over the decades, home prices have outpaced incomes. There are a few reasons for that. One of them is inflation, with wages not keeping up with the real rate of inflation, but the other are barriers to development. We're talking more about that with Nolan gray. When we come back, you're listening to Get Rich Education. I'm your host, Keith Weinhold. Hey, you can get your mortgage loans at the same place where I get mine at Ridge Lending Group NMLS, 42056, they provided our listeners with more loans than any provider in the entire nation because they specialize in income properties. 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Earn 8% hundreds of others are text FAMILY to 66866, learn more about Freedom Family Investments, Liquidity Fund, on your journey to financial freedom through passive income. Text, FAMILY to 66866.     Robert Kiyosaki  27:50 This is our Rich Dad, Poor Dad author, Robert Kiyosaki. Listen to Get Rich Education with Keith Weinhold, and the reason I respect Keith, he's a very strong, smart, bright young man.   Keith Weinhold  28:14 Welcome back to Get Rich Education . We're talking with California, yimbys Nolan gray about zoning and how these barriers to development are compounding the affordable housing crisis, and there sure are a number of barriers to multi family production. I really think that's what wild it comes down to. You touched on it earlier, and it's something that I spoke about with our audience a month or two ago. Nolan, and that is, mmm, multi families, missing middle these two to four unit properties, duplexes to fourplexes, where they're only constructing about 40% as many of those here in recent years than they did 20 to 30 years ago. The way I think of it is when you lift barriers to multifamily production, of course, you incentivize builders. If a developer buys an acre of land for, say, $90,000 and they had planned to build one unit on that All right? Well, there's one set of inputs in income that a developer can look at. But instead, if you allow them to go from building one unit on this plot of land to two units on it, it increases their profit potential, and it incentivizes developers from that side as well.   Nolan Gray  29:23 Yeah, absolutely. I mean, so there's been some great work by some friends over at the American Enterprise Institute. What they've done is they've created a nationwide map of mcmassionization risk. So when we have these conversations, we say, hey, let's allow for a range of housing typologies in more neighborhoods, duplexes, triplexes, small, low rise, multi family buildings, townhouses, the types of things that were commonly built in a range of neighborhoods before the rise of zoning. Every city in America has a neighborhood like this. That's a mixture of housing typologies. It would be illegal to build that today, but in many cases, we subject it to preservation requirements because we value it so much that we want to keep it. In any case, what happens when you don't allow that type of gradual incremental infill that keeps our communities affordable. What you get instead is the existing single family homes are converted into much larger, much more expensive single family homes. Now, again, there's nothing wrong with that. Many people might want to buy a smaller 19 fizzies bungalow and turn it into a much larger, 2500 square foot single family home, and God bless them if they want to do it. But what we have is rules on the books that say housing can only get more expensive, it can never get more affordable, or you can never unlock the wealth that's tied up in your land by building an adu or by building a duplex, or by creating more housing options for a range of households. And so that's really, really key. You know, the choice is not between, do we want our communities to change or not? The question is, do we want our communities to remain affordable and maybe change and have some more buildings built and more growth and more development. Or do we want our communities to change in the sense of they become more expensive? Folks retire and they move away, the neighborhood gradually becomes significantly more exclusionary, and young folks who moved grew up in the community can no longer afford to stay. That's the option facing many of our communities. And I think the yimby response to this is more housing construction is good and it's healthy and it's part of a thriving community.   Keith Weinhold  31:02 Yeah, Nolan, when we come at this from the familial perspective, like I brought up earlier, it seems like the more zoning there is, the more it benefits seniors and incumbents, the more it benefits the silent generation, the baby boomer generation, and maybe Gen Xers, and it disadvantages millennials and Gen Zers that really don't have their place yet.   Nolan Gray  31:24 Yeah, you know, it's tough. I would say it even hurts seniors, right? I mean, if they want their young adult children to be able to live near them, or, many cases, seniors like the option to be able to build an accessory dwelling unit in their backyard and maybe rent that out to friends or family, or maybe even you move into the adu and allow young adult children to move into the primary residence, or even just rent it out and have an additional source of income to supplement fixed incomes. There's reasons why folks, I think, at all different stages of their life, benefit for more flexibility in the rules that govern what can be built.   Keith Weinhold  31:52  Psychologically,  how do we turn one's mindset from a NIMBY mindset to a yimby mindset? I mean, if someone's got their single family ranch home that they want to live in in their senior years, and they want to see its value appreciate, so they don't want duplexes and fourplexes built next to them, rather than them saying no to turn them into saying yes. I mean, how do you get those people to understand that? Well, like this is the way for the next generation, for you to be able to live near your children and grandchildren?   Nolan Gray  32:21 Yeah, that's a great point. You know, I think when you go to these public hearings around projects, you hear relentlessly about the cost of new development, right? Folks speculating about traffic and runoff and other factors parking. We get that perspective. We get bombarded with that perspective. But what we don't get is the alternative perspective of the benefits of a community, remaining relatively affordable, remaining a place where teachers and nurses and firefighters can still afford to be able to own a home and live places, allowing for the kids who grew up in a neighborhood or a city to remain there. And in fact, even just the selfish appeal to the homeowner, there's not actually any evidence that new development happening around you necessarily reduces the price of your single family home, and in some cases, it could actually signal to the market, hey, there's actually development potential on this so when you do decide to maybe sell and move on, your land is potentially going to be more valuable because it has more development potential than it might under a strict exclusionary zoning scenario. So you know, of course, you try to make the altruistic case to people. Hey, think about future generations. Think about folks who maybe want to move to this community or stay in this community, but aren't going to be able to if we don't build housing. But even so, I think there's selfish reasons. If you want to have somebody who's going to check you out at the supermarket or serve you at a restaurant or be a home care nurse, eventually you got to have housing for folks like that. In many cases, new development happening around you is going to increase your land value. Now I would just try the rage of appeals and work people through it. And in many cases, you know, I think people will understand, yeah, okay, I understand we got to have some growth. They might have a perspective on what it should look like, and that's okay. But as long as we can get some consensus that we got to have some growth to accommodate demand the form it takes, we can have a healthy discussion over.   Keith Weinhold  33:57 Yeah, real community is the integration of all different types of people, and not school teachers living an hour away where they need to make a two hour round trip drive every day. Well, Nolan, as we're winding down here, can you give us any more successful zoning reform examples that maybe other communities can look to you touched on the success stories in Houston a bit. Are there some other ones?   Nolan Gray  34:21 Absolutely. Yeah. So one of the most successful things we've done in California has been statewide legalization of accessory dwelling units. Yeah, that's been key. That started in 2017 and that took a lot of legislation to get us to a place where we are today, but that's resulted in something like 80,00 ADU's permitted, since 2017. That's powerful stuff, right? That's 80,000 households that might have a home, or might be able to rent out a unit to young adult child or an aging parent. Really, really powerful. So I would suggest that folks look into that. That's the lowest of the low hanging fruit. Empower homeowners to add additional units to their properties, and by the way, we also allow you use to be added to multifamily properties, and we're seeing a lot of that happen as well. At other contexts, many cities, dozens of cities across the country. Have removed their minimum parking requirements, acknowledging that, hey, this is a huge cost that we're imposing on projects, developers who are close to consumers, who have, they have the incentives and local knowledge to get this question right. Let them decide. So that's been, I think, a big success. You know, certain cities like Austin and Minneapolis, for example, they've actually sort of kept their markets back under control amid all the chaos of the pandemic real estate market fluctuations by allowing for a lot more mid rise multi family on their commercial corridors and in Job rich areas and in places near transit, that's where we have a huge shortage, is these studios and one bedrooms. So young professionals who, if they can't find that unit, they're going to go bid up the price of a two or three bedroom unit, they're going to roommate up and be living in potentially overcrowded conditions. So Austin, Minneapolis, we, relative to peers, they built a lot of housing and have seen prices stabilize as a result. So there's a lot of different success stories, you know, I would say, if you're at all interested in this, talk to your neighbors about this issue. See what sorts of solutions might make sense for your community. You know, in a suburban or a rural community, ADUs or minimum loss size reform might make sense. And an urban community, removing your parking mandates, allowing for more multifamily, allowing for missing middle, make more sense.   Keith Weinhold  36:06 There sure are some encouraging signs. There was there any last thing that a person should know, especially a real estate investor type audience that's interested in buying a property and renting it out to a tenant for the production of income? Is there anything that our group really ought to know about zoning and the direction that things are moving, what to look for and what to be careful of?   Nolan Gray  36:28 Well, as your audience probably knows, you know that first essential step for your mom and pop local real estate investor is often a duplex, a triplex, a four Plex, historically, that was an absolutely essential source of middle class wealth building. Yeah, right. And you can see these in so many historic neighborhoods. And to the extent that we've made those exact typologies so incredibly hard to build, we've cut off this very valuable source of democratic, decentralized wealth building that we need to actually encourage as real estate investors and professionals, in many cases, you're an authority figure with your local policymakers and your local planners, and you can say to them, Hey, here's my perspective on what's happening in the market. You know, we have a shortage of a certain type of small scale multifamily or making this case. You know, I talked to a lot of elected officials, and when I say starter home, I think they still think of the bungalow on the 5000 square foot lot with the two car garage. But a starter home in 2024 might be a townhouse, two bedroom condo, a small lot, single family home. These are the types of stories that real estate investors and professionals are trusted advocates on, and you can make that case and explain to local policymakers. Hey, here's the change that we need or explaining. Hey, I wanted to add an additional unit to a property that I own, or I wanted to redevelop a property I own to add a lot more housing. And these were the barriers that I faced that's incredibly valuable information for your local policymakers and planners. And I would say, you know, look around many US, cities and states now have very active yimby or, Yes, in my backyard groups. Go connect up with them. You could be a valuable, trusted expert for them, somebody that they can learn more about the situation with real estate markets, and they can be more effective advocates for policy that I think a lot of us would like to see.   Keith Weinhold  37:58 And when it comes to changing NIMBY people to yimby people, and we look at esthetics and adu in the back, that really doesn't change aesthetics on the street front. And I've seen very smart, careful designs of duplexes, triplexes and fourplexes that really look just like single family homes from the Street View level. So there really are some ways around this. You've given us some really good ideas today. Nolan, hey, well, someone wants to learn more about you and your work and zoning. What's the best way for them to do that?   Nolan Gray  38:30 Well, I'm on the platform formerly known as Twitter. I'm @mnolangray, M, N, O, L, E, N, G, R, A, y, so feel free to find me there and reach out. And I have a book Arbitrary Lines, how zoning broke the American city and how to fix it. Check that out. If you're at all interested in this, always reach out. Love to hear from folks. Thanks so much for having me, by the way.   Keith Weinhold  38:50 All right, well, I hope our audience didn't zone out. It's been great. Chat with you. Nolan, thanks so much for coming on to the show. Yeah, a thought provoking discussion with California yimbys Nolan Gray there it's essentially illegal to build affordable housing in a lot of areas with the way that these zoning laws are written, allowing for more dense building that can limit this ugly urban sprawl, and this makes me think about an Instagram account that I follow. It's called how cars ruined our cities, or some names similar to that. It shows, for example, a picture of how a highway interchange in sprawling Houston has an area so large that you could fit an entire Italian town inside of it. And these sprawl problems compound when a lot size must be, say, at least a quarter acre or a half acre. The tide is turning toward allowing more dense building in some places like we touched on, but it's too bad that it took a. Visible housing crisis to make this happen. I mean, visible like more homeless people out on the street. It took that almost for municipalities to start doing something about all of this. Our guest has quite a following on X. Again, you can find his handle there @mnolangray on X and the image on his account cover it shows someone holding up a sign that reads, zoning kills dreams. Hmm, big thanks to the terrific Nolan gray today until next Monday, when I'll be back here to help you actionably build your Real Estate Wealth. I'm Keith Weinhold. Don't quit your Daydream.   Unknown Speaker  40:44 Nothing on this show should be considered specific, personal or professional advice. Please consult an appropriate tax, legal, real estate, financial or business professional for individualized advice. Opinions of guests are their own. Information is not guaranteed. All investment strategies have the potential for  profit or loss. The host is operating on behalf of Get Rich Education LLC, exclusively.   Keith Weinhold  41:12 The preceding program was brought to you by your home for wealth building,  GetRichEducation.com.  

The Bright Side shines a light on stories of hope and problem-solving people around Australia.

The Bright Side shines a light on stories of hope and problem-solving people around Australia.

Conversations with Tyler Intro  One person's freedom is another person's unfreedom Unanimity theorem, also known as the Stiglitz-Greenwald theorem, posits that in the presence of incomplete markets and imperfect information, the competitive equilibrium is generally not Pareto efficientSharecropping can create poor incentives for tenants to work hard or invest in land improvement because they only receive a fraction of the output, leading to lower agricultural productivity compared to other forms of land tenureCities can achieve optimal sizes by balancing the benefits of agglomeration economies (such as increased productivity and innovation due to proximity) against the costs (such as congestion and pollution)Carefully designed tax policies and urban planning can help cities grow in a way that maximizes economic efficiency and equityMarkets cannot be perfectly efficient because if prices fully reflect all available information, there would be no incentive for traders to acquire information, leading to a paradoxMarkets are not very good at pricing risk into the decision-making process Credit availability of monetary policy is what matters – not the money supply or interest rate Hierarchies are particularly problematic when the people the at the top of them are not good decision makers Read the full notes @ podcastnotes.orgNobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz joined Tyler for a discussion that weaves through Joe's career and key contributions, including what he learned from giving an 8-lecture in Japan, how being a debater influenced his intellectual development, why he tried to abolish fraternities at Amherst, how studying Kenyan sharecropping led to one of his most influential papers, what he thinks today of Georgism and the YIMBY movement, why he was too right-wing for Cambridge, why he left Gary, Indiana, his current views on high trading volumes and liquidity, the biggest difference between him and Paul Krugman, what working in Washington, DC taught him about hierarchies, what he'll do next, and more. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video. Recorded April 22nd, 2024. Other ways to connect Follow us on X and Instagram Follow Tyler on X Follow Joseph on X Sign up for our newsletter Join our Discord Email us: cowenconvos@mercatus.gmu.edu Learn more about Conversations with Tyler and other Mercatus Center podcasts here.

Conversations with Tyler Intro  One person's freedom is another person's unfreedom Unanimity theorem, also known as the Stiglitz-Greenwald theorem, posits that in the presence of incomplete markets and imperfect information, the competitive equilibrium is generally not Pareto efficientSharecropping can create poor incentives for tenants to work hard or invest in land improvement because they only receive a fraction of the output, leading to lower agricultural productivity compared to other forms of land tenureCities can achieve optimal sizes by balancing the benefits of agglomeration economies (such as increased productivity and innovation due to proximity) against the costs (such as congestion and pollution)Carefully designed tax policies and urban planning can help cities grow in a way that maximizes economic efficiency and equityMarkets cannot be perfectly efficient because if prices fully reflect all available information, there would be no incentive for traders to acquire information, leading to a paradoxMarkets are not very good at pricing risk into the decision-making process Credit availability of monetary policy is what matters – not the money supply or interest rate Hierarchies are particularly problematic when the people the at the top of them are not good decision makers Read the full notes @ podcastnotes.orgNobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz joined Tyler for a discussion that weaves through Joe's career and key contributions, including what he learned from giving an 8-lecture in Japan, how being a debater influenced his intellectual development, why he tried to abolish fraternities at Amherst, how studying Kenyan sharecropping led to one of his most influential papers, what he thinks today of Georgism and the YIMBY movement, why he was too right-wing for Cambridge, why he left Gary, Indiana, his current views on high trading volumes and liquidity, the biggest difference between him and Paul Krugman, what working in Washington, DC taught him about hierarchies, what he'll do next, and more. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video. Recorded April 22nd, 2024. Other ways to connect Follow us on X and Instagram Follow Tyler on X Follow Joseph on X Sign up for our newsletter Join our Discord Email us: cowenconvos@mercatus.gmu.edu Learn more about Conversations with Tyler and other Mercatus Center podcasts here.

YIMBY billionaires are buying up thousands of acres northeast of the Bay, to build a planned community of rich tech types. To sell their East Solano Plan (f.k.a. “California Forever”) to locals, its founders launched a PR campaign complete with artwashing and more. Vallejo-based Anna Kirsch of Artists Against Billionaires is part of the resistance. Artists Against Billionaires on Instagram Anna Kirsch (@girlonbus) on Instagram

Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz joined Tyler for a discussion that weaves through Joe's career and key contributions, including what he learned from giving an 8-lecture in Japan, how being a debater influenced his intellectual development, why he tried to abolish fraternities at Amherst, how studying Kenyan sharecropping led to one of his most influential papers, what he thinks today of Georgism and the YIMBY movement, why he was too right-wing for Cambridge, why he left Gary, Indiana, his current views on high trading volumes and liquidity, the biggest difference between him and Paul Krugman, what working in Washington, DC taught him about hierarchies, what he'll do next, and more. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video. Recorded April 22nd, 2024. Other ways to connect Follow us on X and Instagram Follow Tyler on X Follow Joseph on X Sign up for our newsletter Join our Discord Email us: cowenconvos@mercatus.gmu.edu Learn more about Conversations with Tyler and other Mercatus Center podcasts here.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit andrewsullivan.substack.comNoah is a journalist who covers economics and geopolitics. A former assistant professor of Behavioral Finance at Stony Brook University and an early blogger, he became an opinion columnist at Bloomberg in 2014. He left after seven years to focus on his own substack, Noahpinion, which you should definitely check out.For two clips of our convo — on why we should fear a military strike from China, and the good news about tech and the economy we don't pay enough attention to — pop over to our YouTube page. Other topics: the amazing story of Fawlty Towers triggering Noah's birth in Oklahoma; raised in Aggie country; his father the psych professor; Noah's clinical depression after his mom died young; trolling X File fans on the early web; the internet as an escape back then, before social media ruined it; joining the early blogs; Jonah Goldberg and Liberal Fascism; Noah living in Japan after Battle Royale gripped him; Yakuza burning down his apartment; the MAX show Tokyo Vice; debunking stereotypes about Japan (e.g. xenophobia); his tech optimism; Ozempic and HIV drugs; wages and wealth growing in the US; tuition falling; inflation leveling; the YIMBY movement; how AI will empower the normies; the collapse of global poverty; the China threat; EVs and tariffs; industrial policy as means for national security; risking global war over Taiwan; Noah downplaying the chips factor; the chance of another Pearl Harbor — from China; TikTok and controlling US media; the woke wars as a distraction; “information tournaments”; debating mass immigration; agreeing about the asylum clusterfucker; questioning whether the US was ever a melting pot; Biden catching up on the border and inflation; how he's more likely to tighten the budget than Trump; debating which nominee is losing his marbles more; and why Ukraine and Gaza are diversions from China.Browse the Dishcast archive for an episode you might enjoy (the first 102 are free in their entirety — subscribe to get everything else). Coming up: Nellie Bowles on the woke revolution, George Will on Trump and conservatism, Lionel Shriver on her new novel, Elizabeth Corey on Oakeshott, Tim Shipman on the UK elections, Erick Erickson on the left's spiritual crisis, Bill Wasik and Monica Murphy on animal cruelty, and the great Van Jones! Send any guest recs, dissents, and other comments to dish@andrewsullivan.com.

In 2020, U.S. census data analysis revealed that, for the first time, Native Hawai'ians living in the continental U.S. outnumbered those living in Hawaii. Redfin reports that the median home list price is currently $825,000.  High cost of living and a lack of affordable homes have continued to be huge challenges for natives and transplants living in Hawai'i. Listen to this episode of Infill to hear what advocates are doing to make homes more affordable.This year in honor of AAPI Heritage  Month, we wanted to highlight all of the amazing work that our Hawai'i YIMBY chapter is doing and how it is impacting native Hawai'ians on the islands.Listen in to hear our conversation with Hawai'i YIMBY volunteer leaders Damien Waikaloa and Matt Popovich. We spoke about how they got started in the YIMBY movement, the missing middle housing policies they're organizing around now, and why they think YIMBYism is so important to uplift Hawai'ians. Learn more about YIMBY Action: https://yimbyaction.org/Follow YIMBY Action on Twitter: https://twitter.com/yimbyaction/Follow YIMBY Action on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yimbyaction/Follow YIMBY Action on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/yimbyaction/Learn more about Hawai'i YIMBY: https://hawaiiyimby.com/Follow Hawai'i YIMBY on Twitter: https://x.com/hiyimby/Follow Hawai'i YIMBY on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hawaiiyimby/

Guest Information:Joe SangirardiIf you have campaign questions or want to learn more, reach out to us using the contact information below.The Campaign Workshop: Twitter: @cmpwrkshpInstagram: @TheCampaignWorkshopEmail: marketing@thecampaignworkshop.comJoe FuldX: @joefuldInstagram: @joefuldMartín Diego GarciaX: @gmartindiegoInstagram: @gmartindiegoPresented by The Campaign Workshop

You may have heard the phrase, “Not In My Backyard,” or NIMBY. It's often used – negatively – to describe neighbors who don't want development in their neighborhood, whether it's a new apartment building or affordable housing. Meaning that many of us support changes in principle, until it potentially affects our own neighborhood. Some Madisonians are worried that Madison is growing and changing too fast, and their neighborhoods will become too crowded or full of traffic.  But Will Ochowicz says that more Madisonians should say YIMBY, or “Yes In My Backyard” in order to help ease the city's housing crisis. As in: Yes, we want more development. Yes, we want more housing to be built. He's started a grassroots group called Madison is for People to rally for changes to Madison's zoning laws. Dylan Brogan sat down with Will to learn what's motivating him. Editor's Note: After we recorded this interview, the Madison City Council voted to change its zoning code to allow for more housing density. You can now build an Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU) on lots with small apartment buildings, and not just single-family homes.  This can mean creating additional living space within an existing building – like a garage, attic, or basement – or building a separate structure on the same lot. ADUs are limited to 900 square feet and no more than two bedrooms. Wanna talk to us about an episode? Leave us a voicemail at 608-318-3367 or email madison@citycast.fm. We're also on Instagram!  Want more Madison news delivered right to your inbox? Subscribe to the Madison Minutes morning newsletter.  Looking to advertise on City Cast Madison? Check out our options for podcast ads. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Virginia is short 105,000 homes while rents have gone up 13% in the last 5 years. Despite housing costs rising astronomically, local governments are largely not stepping up to help facilitate or build more homes. That's why our local YIMBY chapters are taking matters into their own hands, and demanding action from State Officials. Tune in to this episode of Infill to hear from volunteer leaders from our chapters YIMBYs of NoVA, YIMBY Hampton Roads, and RVA YIMBY. They break down the four state-wide YIMBY bills they are advocating for, share insights on how they are learning to successfully work with state legislators and local coalition partners, and explain why grassroots organizing is critical to get elected officials to take action on housing. YIMBY volunteers in Virginia are not only bringing their state one step closer to a future of abundant, affordable, inclusive housing. They are also paving the way for YIMBYs in other states to learn strategies to build power in their communities and connect with new folks who share our vision for a better future. Learn more about YIMBY Action: https://yimbyaction.org/Follow YIMBY Action on Twitter: https://twitter.com/yimbyaction/Follow YIMBY Action on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yimbyaction/Follow YIMBY Action on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/yimbyaction/Learn more about YIMBYs of NoVA: https://www.yimbysofnova.org/Learn more about RVA YIMBYs: https://rvayimby.org/Learn more about YIMBY Hampton Roads: https://yimbyhamptonroads.org/

"Yes In My Back Yard" - The Fellas sit down with Christopher, Peter, and Kate from the grassroots group called YIMBY which advocates for more housing choices in Fort Collins. The timing of this episode could not be better as the Governor of Colorado, Jared Polis recently signed the HB1007 Bill which address the residential occupancy limits in communities all around Colorado.

– How do you define core, growth and speculative?  – Is intrinsic value possible to calculate? And is it worthwhile?  – Should I mirror my personal portfolio inside Super?  – How should I help my kids invest?  – Hey Scott… here's what YIMBY is about  – Why not borrow against the house? See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

America doesn't have enough homes. The “yes in my backyard”, or YIMBY, movement believes that making it easier to build is the best solution. To what extent would building more help solve America's housing problem?John Prideaux hosts with Charlotte Howard and Daniel Knowles. They're joined by YIMBY activist Sonja Trauss and law professor Michael Allan Wolf. The Economist's Stevie Hertz reports from New York. Sign up for Economist Podcasts+ now and get 50% off your subscription with our limited time offer.You will not be charged until Economist Podcasts+ launches. If you're already a subscriber to The Economist, you'll have full access to all our shows as part of your subscription. For more information about Economist Podcasts+, including how to get access, please visit our FAQs page. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.