Chris Elmendorf

California housing legislation idea:
For the purpose of ensuring compliance with PSA deadlines, require municipalities to post on their websites
A) date of application submission for housing project and deadline for determination of completeness (30 days after submission)

Locations of new homes built in Switzerland in 2018

Country-wide effects of new housing supply: Evidence from moving chains, by Lukas Hauck and Frederic Kluser

Another new paper on housebuilding and vacancy chains, this time with data on every Swiss resident & housing unit! An interesting context given Switzerland's high immigration, very large rented sector and strong tenancy rent controls... frederickluser.github.io/files/Moving...

Read this in draft—it’s great!

Abstract for Transportation for the Abundant Society: A growing chorus known as the abundance movement seeks to overcome artificial scarcity in the built environment—especially housing. Yet this movement’s signature goal of increasing housing production collides with a central driver of scarcity: development restrictions rooted in traffic concerns. Advocates often assume that building more housing will generate support for needed transportation reform. Experience suggests otherwise. In auto-dependent regions, adding housing without reconfiguring transportation tends to reinforce the logic of restriction. Unlocking abundance’s promised feedback loops requires re-grounding transportation policy in its relationship to land use. This Article makes two contributions. First, it introduces into legal analysis a core urban-planning framework: transportation accessibility, which evaluates system performance by users’ ability to reach destinations. Though facially modest, anchoring policy in accessibility would depart sharply from a century of practice, with significant implications across state and local government law. Second, drawing on 13 original interviews with current and former transportation officials, the Article develops a novel account of institutional barriers to reform. Far from the marble corridors and mahogany courtrooms where law is articulated, transportation policy is functionally made in the unglamorous offices of state and local government. We call this institutional crucible—shaped by agency culture and industry convention as well as hard law—“transportation policy linoleum.” It helps explain why proven, seemingly unobjectionable reforms routinely wither. The Article closes with a policy playbook designed to help accessibility break through the linoleum and deliver abundance.

Table of Contents CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 3 I. ABUNDANCE AND TRANSPORTATION POLICY 6 A. The Rise of Abundance 7 B. Transportation as a Binding Constraint 10 II. THE PURPOSE OF TRANSPORTATION POLICY 17 A. What Counts as Success? 18 B. From Mobility to Access 20 C. Transportation Policy Spillovers 24 1. Housing affordability 24 2. Climate mitigation 28 3. Roadway safety 29 III. OPERATIONAL BARRIERS TO REFORM 32 A. Network Effects and System Interdependence 33 B. Operational Complexity and Risk 34 IV. LEGAL BARRIERS TO REFORM 36 A. NEPA and the Dawn of Conservation Primacy 36 B. Judges as Planners: California’s CEQA Regime 40 C. Judges as Planners Around the Country 44 1. Minnesota and comprehensive planning 44 2. Washington, D.C. and density review 46 3. Montana and constitutional penumbra 46 V. TRANSPORTATION POLICY LINOLEUM 48 A. Policy “In Books” and “In Action”: 13 Interviews 48 B. Fragmentation and Coordination Failures 49 C. Path Dependence and Institutional Lock-In 53 D. Legal Risk and Defensive Administration 55 VI. A POLICY PLAYBOOK FOR ACCESS 57 A. Behavioral Data as Participation 57 1. Ex ante participation 58 2. Ex post participation 59 B. Realistic Alternatives Modeling 59 C. A More Honest Cost-Benefit Analysis 60 1. Requiring cost-benefit discipline 61 2. Accounting for opportunity costs and externalities 63 CONCLUSION 64

ToC continued, plus first bit of text from article: A central claim of the emerging “abundance agenda” is that in the physical world, more is more: more housing, more clean energy, and more infrastructure to support both. Abundance brings the American promise of plenty into policy, arguing that government should expand capacity—so that individuals can access the good life and society can advance climate goals, scientific discovery, and prosperity. In both its academic and popular expressions, the ideologically diverse movement contends that law has created artificial scarcity and that the remedy is to loosen outdated constraints and rebuild state capacity so government can build and approve major projects—housing, transportation, energy, health—more quickly and reliably. Abundance draws on a substantial literature diagnosing law-made supply constraints in American public policy. Its core question is pragmatic: how to clear regulatory blockages to enable more building. Scholars have long identified such blockages at the intersection of land use and transportation, from highways to high-speed rail. Yet even improved megaprojects would not meet most Americans’ daily transportation needs. And the connection between transportation policy and abundance remains underdeveloped, even as political interest grows.

✨ introducing… ✨

🌇 Transportation for the Abundant Society 🚅

"Abundance" says our problem is artificial scarcity—especially housing. But you can’t build your way out if transportation policy still treats traffic flow as sacred.

Transportation is the binding constraint. ssrn.com/abstract=538...

California Forever Building the next great American city

You've probably heard that a group of CA tech guys wants to build a brand new port city in northern CA. The project is called "California Forever" & it's apparently breaking ground this year. Lots of folks are skeptical!

On Wed., I'm going to talk with Jan Sramek, the founder/CEO.

Got questions?

Read @mbolotnikova.bsky.social excellent new story on housing aesthetics and housing politics, covering my work w/ @dbroockman.bsky.social & @jkalla.bsky.social, the advocacy of @urbancourtyard.bsky.social, and more!

Gift link: www.vox.com/future-perfe...

For more, read David's thread on the paper, threadreaderapp.com/thread/19934..., or the paper itself, osf.io/preprints/so...

Such a fun conversation! Thanks, @jerusalem.bsky.social, for having me on the show to discuss my work w/ @dbroockman.bsky.social & @jkalla.bsky.social on aesthetic objections to housing development.

www.theargumentmag.com/s/the-argume...

Read literally, it would end zoning, except in cases where a city can demonstrate that a zoning ordinance actually increases land value.

Presumably it would not be read literally. So who knows.

appellatecases.courtinfo.ca.gov/search/case/...

CA Supreme Court has denied review / depublication of Save Our Access v. City of San Diego.

This means that worst CEQA opinion of the last two decades is binding law on superior court judges statewide.

Leg attention needed!

It's not a tax on the redevelopment!

I appreciate your focus!

Possible, yes, but a bad idea b/c local gov't needs certainly about revenue so it can plan for and finance infrastructure.

threadreaderapp.com/thread/19778...

This is a great question ⤵️. The CA Leg has made existing old, small, and often-unsafe apartment buildings almost impossible to redevelop.

A big mistake.

There's a real need to reconsider & standardize tenant protections, while giving tenants collective agency to authorize redevelopment.

None, to my knowledge. I share your skepticism about it.

A thread for those interested in housing construction economics & regulation/codes.

I have very weak views about how best to organize workforce training.

I would like to learn more about where the workers come from in the metro regions that build a lot of housing.

And in nations (like New Zealand) that upzoned & ramped up production. @mnolangray.bsky.social

I'm a strong supporter of social insurance -- health care, social security -- for workers in all industries. It's not clear to me why the cost of social insurance should be covered by employer rather than by the state, funded with broad progressive taxes.

Bingo. Davis Bacon wage rates are determined via surveys sent by DOL to construction projects. Most contractors don't bother to report payroll data unless harassed by local unions.The job sites the unions harass are typically those with subs using union labor or public works projects paying PW.

The tax would have to be paid whether you build or don't build.

The main risk, I think, is that it might cause some owners of developable sites to lobby against upzoning. But LVT presents the same risk.

I mean PW came about during New Deal over concerns that as Fed govt was essentially a monopsonistic buyer of cxn labor during Great Depression, Feds would use buying power to lower wages further. The policy argument for having PW is frankly well long since dead.

Prof. Elmendorf's thread reminds me of the time when a Palo Alto homeowner wanted to hire me to find fault with the environmental assessment for this affordable housing project. He and his attorney were perfectly ready to pay me $300/hour for this work. 🧵

site.robquigley.com/project/alma/

I was very proud to lobby this bill on behalf of the Bay Area Council! This is the huge win we hoped it would be

You can't be serious.

“The Leg should revisit how state code requirements (and local code amendments) are made, requiring cost-benefit analysis. Then audit the existing code and strip away rules that don't pass the test.“

My thoughts exactly.

🧵 on a big new CA Court of Appeal decision that's going to make CEQA attorneys think twice when they're next asked to challenge a housing approval on contingency.

threadreaderapp.com/thread/20065...

Reducing the cost of construction is a job for state legislatures. A 🧵 w/ ideas for California's 2026 legislative session.

threadreaderapp.com/thread/20060...