Housing
Blog
Sounds like a plan: Cities embrace pre-approved housing designs
Sounds like a plan: Cities embrace pre-approved housing designs By D. Dowd Muska | September 4, 2026 It’s so obvious, even Los Angeles gets it. In response to the savage firestorms that struck California’s largest metro region in January 2025, both the city and county of Los Angeles enacted a ...
Blog
This Is No Way To Close California’s Housing Gap
This is the sort of behavior that is making it nearly impossible for California to ever close its housing gap, which, according to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s 2017 campaign material was a 3.5 million unit deficit that needed to be closed by 2025, which turned out to be his next-to-last year in the ...
Blog
Austin’s housing solutions offer a model for California cities
As LAist’s David Wagner reported, only about 16% of Orange County households earn the $350,400 needed to afford the county’s median home price of $1,442,930, according to the California Association of Realtors. That’s all despite Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office boasting on July 13 about his record of “hundreds of pieces ...
Blog
Useful data, but misguided advice: Harvard on housing
Useful data, but misguided advice: Harvard on housing by D. Dowd Muska | July 31, 2026 Advocates of deregulation-oriented solutions to the affordable-housing crisis continue to notch wins in liberal and conservative states, including California’s “by right” housing reforms and a recently passed package of permitting reforms known as the ...
Blog
Challenge to market-based housing reforms comes up short
Several causes have been offered to explain runaway real-estate valuation. For instance, some cities face serious geographic constraints that make building a difficult proposition. I live in an area in northwest Washington that is bounded by Canada to the north, the Pacific Ocean to the west and the Cascade mountains to ...
Blog
California Took Homes for the 710 Freeway Extension. The Extension Was Never Built
Drive through parts of El Sereno, Alhambra, South Pasadena, or Pasadena, and you will notice something strange. Homes sit behind aging fences, looking like they should belong to families, except they do not. For decades, they have been owned by the State of California, waiting for a freeway that was ...
Blog
American suburbs are better than most people think
American suburbs are better than most people think By Randal O’Toole | July 24, 2026 Economist Noah Smith writes that suburbs are “not my personal cup of tea, but there are good reasons people like them.” Most of those reasons will be familiar to Antiplanner readers [and to readers of the Free Cities ...
Free Cities
Watch: Learn How California’s New Reforms Are Making it Easier to Build ADUs
Watch below as a Sacramento-area homeowner gives us a tour of her family’s newly-build ADU and learn how California’s new reforms are making it much easier to build new ADUs.
Blog
Berkeley overcomes its exclusionary history by legalizing housing
Over a century ago, Berkeley, Calif., pioneered an approach to land-use policy that would go on to stifle housing production all over the country. In 1916, Berkeley became one of the first cities in the country to enact single-family zoning. The policy was championed by one of the major developers ...
Blog
California flips out over investors who flip distressed properties
California flips out over investors who flip distressed properties Government efforts that rig the system to produce more affordable housing are neither effective nor noble — especially when policymakers target a trend that has captured the public’s imagination while improving and increasing the housing stock. Home flippers have become prominent ...
Sounds like a plan: Cities embrace pre-approved housing designs
Sounds like a plan: Cities embrace pre-approved housing designs By D. Dowd Muska | September 4, 2026 It’s so obvious, even Los Angeles gets it. In response to the savage firestorms that struck California’s largest metro region in January 2025, both the city and county of Los Angeles enacted a ...
This Is No Way To Close California’s Housing Gap
This is the sort of behavior that is making it nearly impossible for California to ever close its housing gap, which, according to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s 2017 campaign material was a 3.5 million unit deficit that needed to be closed by 2025, which turned out to be his next-to-last year in the ...
Austin’s housing solutions offer a model for California cities
As LAist’s David Wagner reported, only about 16% of Orange County households earn the $350,400 needed to afford the county’s median home price of $1,442,930, according to the California Association of Realtors. That’s all despite Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office boasting on July 13 about his record of “hundreds of pieces ...
Useful data, but misguided advice: Harvard on housing
Useful data, but misguided advice: Harvard on housing by D. Dowd Muska | July 31, 2026 Advocates of deregulation-oriented solutions to the affordable-housing crisis continue to notch wins in liberal and conservative states, including California’s “by right” housing reforms and a recently passed package of permitting reforms known as the ...
Challenge to market-based housing reforms comes up short
Several causes have been offered to explain runaway real-estate valuation. For instance, some cities face serious geographic constraints that make building a difficult proposition. I live in an area in northwest Washington that is bounded by Canada to the north, the Pacific Ocean to the west and the Cascade mountains to ...
California Took Homes for the 710 Freeway Extension. The Extension Was Never Built
Drive through parts of El Sereno, Alhambra, South Pasadena, or Pasadena, and you will notice something strange. Homes sit behind aging fences, looking like they should belong to families, except they do not. For decades, they have been owned by the State of California, waiting for a freeway that was ...
American suburbs are better than most people think
American suburbs are better than most people think By Randal O’Toole | July 24, 2026 Economist Noah Smith writes that suburbs are “not my personal cup of tea, but there are good reasons people like them.” Most of those reasons will be familiar to Antiplanner readers [and to readers of the Free Cities ...
Watch: Learn How California’s New Reforms Are Making it Easier to Build ADUs
Watch below as a Sacramento-area homeowner gives us a tour of her family’s newly-build ADU and learn how California’s new reforms are making it much easier to build new ADUs.
Berkeley overcomes its exclusionary history by legalizing housing
Over a century ago, Berkeley, Calif., pioneered an approach to land-use policy that would go on to stifle housing production all over the country. In 1916, Berkeley became one of the first cities in the country to enact single-family zoning. The policy was championed by one of the major developers ...
California flips out over investors who flip distressed properties
California flips out over investors who flip distressed properties Government efforts that rig the system to produce more affordable housing are neither effective nor noble — especially when policymakers target a trend that has captured the public’s imagination while improving and increasing the housing stock. Home flippers have become prominent ...