Maxwell Palmer

Blocking new development doesn’t “preserve” your town—it drains your wallet.

No new homes = no new taxpayers… but guess what does grow? School budgets, potholes, annual maintenance costs and legacy pension requirements.

Fewer people to split that bill = higher taxes for you.

Please check out the thread and paper @jamesfeigenbaum.bsky.social, @maxwellpalmer.com, and I wrote below. We started this project a LONG time ago, and could never have anticipated exactly how timely it would be when it finally was published.

What happens when immigrants and their descendants enter the halls of power? Does family history matter for policy on a contentious topic like immigration? @benschneer.bsky.social, @maxwellpalmer.com, and I wrote a post for the LSE United States Centre about our forthcoming @qjeharvard.bsky.social

NYT spelling bee, rejecting the word “monotonic.”

Really?

How many meetings does it take in Philadelphia to build 57 affordable homes? A lot. The Philadelphia Housing Authority and developer Pennrose have been trying to get project approval since 2019. The cost has risen, and federal funding could be at risk.

A truly depressing account of the enormous time, effort, & resources that go into building *anything* in blue cities.

Can not be exaggerated how much this phenomenon is crippling blue politics in the US.

www.inquirer.com/real-estate/...

Screenshot from The New Yorker: One morning a few weeks ago, I met de Blasio at his regular coffee shop in Park Slope. He had just come from the gym—the same one that he’d insisted on commuting to every morning from Gracie Mansion, no matter how much grief the press gave him for it—and was wearing sweats. He held forth among his fellow-patrons with a spirit of magnanimous, possibly unreciprocated camaraderie, greeting a startled man by the door with a familiar “How you doing, brother?” and ordering his breakfast (scrambled egg whites, cheddar, ham, and tomato on multigrain toast) as “mi sandwich especial.” These days, de Blasio most often makes the news for his love life or for such momentous moves as dyeing his salt-and-pepper crewcut. But he’s sensed a bit of de Blasio nostalgia creeping into town. “Since I left office, the No. 1 thing that people come up to me on the street and talk about is pre-K,” he told me, lacing his iced espresso with a heavy pour of simple syrup. “The No. 2 thing that people talk about is that Onion headline.” He quoted it for me, savoring every word: “Well, well, well, not so easy to find a mayor that doesn’t suck shit, huh?”

bill de blasio in park slope, ordering his breakfast sandwich as “mi sandwich especial” and quoting the onion headline omg

www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

Boston's Zoning Board of Appeals, in a 5-2 vote, rejected plans for 70-units of new housing, just 0.3mi to the MBTA's Andrew Square station, to replace a 2-story industrial building.

US Congressman Stephen Lynch (D) sent an aide to read a letter opposing the development for lack of parking...

This is great music for grading midterms.

Johnston, R.I., follows through on seizure of land by eminent domain, halting 250-unit affordable housing project - The Boston Globe Town officials are facing a lawsuit alleging they abused the law to block the housing “simply because they don’t want that kind of thing in their town.”

New: Johnston, R.I., has formally taken ownership of 31 acres of land through eminent domain as it moves forward with plans to build a new Town Hall and police and fire stations there, thwarting a proposal seeking to build affordable housing at the site.

www.bostonglobe.com/2025/03/17/m...

Also, for traffic, I think in the Boston area traffic comes up in every conversation, regardless of topic.

I think we see schools mentioned more around large developments, especially affordable housing developments. Since we included every multi family development in our sample, that might affect our results.

The Missing $25 Gift Card That’s Rocking the Hamptons Mystery has prompted a disciplinary trial with 1,400 pages of testimony and derailed a school principal’s career; 38 surveillance cameras

Local politics is the best politics. www.wsj.com/us-news/educ...

This is not helping my productivity on a day when I need to finish a report with PDF graphs.

I am confident that this will be the best thing I read today.

After eight years, Northborough has no purpose for historic White Cliffs estate - The Boston Globe Northborough has poured millions into the White Cliffs estate. It still is unused.

This story underscores just how much communities are willing to spend to avoid building more housing. @maxwellpalmer.com and I find that communities buy land, sometimes to block affordable housing, with no plan or capacity to maintain/redevelop the property.
www.bostonglobe.com/2025/01/05/m...

I just completed all 25 days of Advent of Code 2024! #AdventOfCode adventofcode.com

You can’t have enough.

We just bought our first set, and it is great. I was really impressed, especially with the light kit. We got the ski cabin, and it fits in great with our winter village sets.

I just completed "Hoof It" - Day 10 - Advent of Code 2024 #AdventOfCode adventofcode.com/2024/day/10

I just completed "Red-Nosed Reports" - Day 2 - Advent of Code 2024 #AdventOfCode adventofcode.com/2024/day/2

A perfect waffle, made from Thanksgiving stuffing.

The Thanksgiving stuffing waffle is the platonic ideal of leftovers.

Yes. You can have IT set up your BU email to use Gmail instead of outlook. Then you still have two inboxes, but you can control forwarding etc from the BU Gmail.

Nothing says "climate emergency" like "policies to slow down addressing the climate emergency."

How much money is going to be spent from the "Intervenor Trust Fund" on lawsuits brought solely to delay clean energy infrastructure?

Thanks!

Our full report is here: www.tbf.org/-/media/tbf/...

Table showing 13 different instances in which local governments purchased land expressly to stop a housing development since 2010. These purchases totaled over $50 million in public funds. Table includes Ashland, Billerica, Dover, Duxbury, Hingham, Marblehead, Norwood, Peabody, Quincy, Scituate (x2), Sudbury, and Wellesley.

Here are the thirteen cases we've found over the last ten years. If you know of more, please share them with @katherineeinst.bsky.social and me!

Great callout from @bostonglobe.com from our new report with The Boston Foundation:

Using tax dollars to block new housing is bad policy - The Boston Globe More than a dozen communities have been accused of ‘weaponizing’ the sale of public land to stop housing development.

Excited to see @maxwellpalmer.bsky.social and my research in this @bostonglobe.com op-ed this morning. The use of public money to actively block much-needed affordable housing is appalling, and shows the strength of opposition to new housing in Greater Boston. www.bostonglobe.com/2024/11/25/o...