When Derek said that about housing starts, and Ezra echoed it, I was hiking with my dog and I shouted into the trees, "WHY DID YOU SAY THAT, DEREK." I was really glad Marc pushed back on it: He said "I have to say, in the scheme of things — you guys are journalists, and I’ve spent a long time in politics — the idea that a year later you’d have a bunch more housing built because of a book seems a little far-fetched to me." No kidding!
Pushing is good, but Derek and Ezra seemed to be holding themselves to a weirdly high standard. On the one hand, "we fell short" sounds like they are holding themselves accountable to something real, and who doesn't love that—but 12 months to solve housing? It's like they had assigned themselves godlike powers and then bravely admitted they weren't, after all, gods.
Having said that, I found their discussion overall to be incredibly heartening and soul-replenishing for this lonely housing advocate in a very NIMBY little town in the middle of the high desert. We fill our cups where we can.
Agreed. In any case my main takeaway from the conversation was much more about the need for positive visions of the future, which had been talked about by others I follow around the same time.
There’s like a big plank of Abundance that says you really need to focus on results not process and it’s worth applying here.
If you’re not delivering the end state people want then you’re not winning the argument. People don’t want one inch drill bits they want one inch holes.
But this was precisely Thompson's point in the interview. YIMBYs have won the rhetorical argument and everyone must at least pay lip service to supply-side housing reforms now. But Abundance wasn't about that; it was about achieving real, rapid physical results.
I initially had the same reaction as you when I heard Thompson say that--it's only been a year! But it's been an entire year, and the outcomes aren't there yet. Your example for Auckland is for a six-year period. That's not good enough, and constant vigilance is still necessary to make sure the NIMBYs don't find loopholes (c. f. "Are we being pricks?). Winning the 'argument' is not winning the fight.
What do you mean “that’s not good enough”? Is there some result that would be “good enough”? If, after one year, we haven’t fully solved the housing shortage, then we should keep working. If, after six years, we’ve got a serious chunk taken out of the housing shortage, we should keep working. All of this is still much better than doing nothing. Is any of it “good enough”?
In this context, Thompson was specifically saying that one year after California passed reforms, housing starts in the state have not notably increased. That's a failed policy in the abundance framework. It's better than the previous status quo, obviously, and improves the trajectory over the long term, but ideally you would see a clear uptick almost immediately.
Developers are able to respond rapidly to policy changes (e. g. the obvious and immediate decrease in starts after the build-to-rent restrictions were floated in the national housing bill), so one would hope to see a change quickly, but it didn't happen.
It's hard to get policy perfect the first time, but a truly responsive government would have revisited the issue more quickly rather than waiting a year. Things are improving, but we still need to do better.
Didn't the main post address that? It takes several months of paperwork before you can get a housing start (even assuming you have the land already assembled), though you can cancel one that's in the pipeline immediately. It's not surprising that decreases in starts can result immediately from policy, while increases in starts take longer to show up.
In this case, since the law only legalized higher density on land that mostly already has buildings, you expect an even longer delay.
I am not being a dick. You do understand what even just the physical building of housing takes right? There was no world, with the best gov on the planet, that you were going to see more than statistical noise in year 1.
California's NIMBYs are still very much here! I don't think you can declare victory when the NIMBYs are still in elected office. (Yes, things have improved, but this piece overstates the case by looking at vibes, not individual electeds.)
Karen Bass might win the mayoralty, Nancy Pelosi endorsed super NIMBY Connie Chan against Scott Wiener and NIMBY Aisha Wahab is continuing her electoral success in California.
On a less negative note, Xavier Becerra is gonna be governor (and he was less Yimby than Porter, Swalwell, Mahan and Steyer). This doesn't seem to be an issue he cares about.
Also worth noting that the NIMBYS are more likely to be politically engaged than the YIMBYs or people benefiting from YIMBY policies. They are building apartments near me and people are upset. They don't like the construction, they don't like how big the buildings are, they don't like that their parking is being taken away from them (two of the biggest developments are in former parking lots) and they don't like the congestion this causes. They also probably won't like that their property values stagnate because there is more supply and thus they won't get 1.5M for their 1940s bungalow. I think it is important to hammer home why this is important and a win for us all as the negative effects of building housing (more people, more congestion, less parking) start to become a reality
A lot of this kind of “nuh uh it failed!” crap just smells like pontification from people who’ve never actually been involved in a development project before.
1) A theoretical win doesn’t matter if the exceptions and carvebacks are so convoluted that it’s still hard to use. (“oh cool, now I can build 874-1252 SF 1 bedroom condos on lots with odd numbered addresses on streets whose names include exactly 3 consonants. I’m sure that’ll really help somehow.”)
2) Planning, development, construction, design, entitlements, etc, all take A LOT OF TIME. Even if all the hurdles disappeared tomorrow, you’re not building 10,000 new houses this year.
3) State leg wins are great, but local jurisdictions will spend the next decade fighting them. Newsom’s spent nearly a decade suing CA cities over their refusal to comply with NIMBY bills.
4) Confidence is huge and 1-3 all strike against that confidence. I need to be confident enough in the project’s success to launch it. I need investors to be confident enough to fund it. I need local authorities to be confident enough in the law’s efficacy to allow it rather than fight it. etc etc etc.. None of that happens overnight.
People don't care whether you produce more housing. People care whether the cost of housing, flat lines or goes down. That has not occurred. Until that occurs, this absolutely bizarre yimby tendency to constantly declare victory and spike the football as though you have already won is just so... weird
From the present moment of now, we tend to compress the time difference between one year and five years. Both seem in the distant future. So when something like zoning reforms don't kick in with more housing after a year we're impatient. That's what this essay does such a good job of illuminating. Measuring the effects of changes in zoning after one or even two years is close to meaningless.
And of course more supply will eventually affect prices. You can't make intelligent comments about an economic issue without understanding this basic law.
so you are just not going to engage in your awful contrarian pro trillionaire take? isn't the argument supposed to be about discussions. you responded more here than in the other piece. it's so gross you ignored doge and Elon literally saying he put USAID in the wood chipper
She specified in the section about Auckland: "The effect was massive: within six years, the reforms produced an additional 43,500 housing permits and rents ended up about 28% lower than they would have been without it." I suppose I agree that people aren't going to perceive housing prices as "going down" unless they're literally going down, which isn't going to happen without much more radical policy (and which I'm guessing Jerusalem would argue is not inherently desirable).
But it does seem like a problem worth noting that people see their rent go up 4% and perceive it as bad, instead of understanding that their rent could have instead gone up 20% and seeing 4% as good. There's little reason for policymakers to perceive that 4% as bad if they know about the 20% counterfactual.
Most smart YIMBYs don't claim Austin as a success story because it's too hard to disentangle the effect of the tech downsizing/RTO and spike in mortgage rates.
The big problem with Derek’s statement that “California still hasn’t actually increased housing starts” is that SB79 still hasn’t gone into effect yet! It had a yearlong phase-in and isn’t in effect until July 1st, 2026.
That's not a big problem with their statement, that's a big problem with the law in light of what abundancism is supposed to be achieving, which is building things fast.
A bit of a tangent from the main topic, but in reference to the angry leftist comment from Hal Singer… Although the term “bootlicker” describes so many people desperate to be approved of by and to be adjacent to power (see the entire MAGA administration) and was useful at one time, the concept has creeped. It now refers to anyone even a hair’s breadth to a Leftist’s right.
1. Cities in California and Washington have a housing supply problem and are correct to address it aggressively.
2. Wealthy countries are happier. This is well documented. In Seattle, tech is the number one driver of housing supply needs. Tech is also a large part of what's improving our lives in the U.S. via economic growth.
3. In wealthy countries, people who live in cities--the drivers of economic growth--are paradoxically less happy than people in less dense areas even when controlling for income. This is called the rural happiness paradox (RHP) and it is also well documented.
4. In 1910, only 10% of individuals lived in cities. Today, it is 55%, trending towards 68% by 2050. Whatever causes the RHP is going to get worse.
Are the benefits of economic growth going to remain enough the counter the happiness penalty on individuals that live in cities when evaluating the well-being of a nation on the whole?
While the Census definition of urban has shifted over the decades, here is roughly the urban/rural makeup for the U.S. specifically, according to Claude:
"The US attained urban-majority status between 1910 and 1920  — so in 1910 the country was right at the tipping point, roughly 45-50% urban depending on definition. Today 83.5% of Americans live in urban areas  according to the World Bank. And by the middle of the century it is expected that almost 90% of the US population will live in an urban setting."
Of course “urban” here is mostly what people think of as suburban. Only a small minority of people live in neighborhoods with many multi unit buildings.
My understanding is that suburban is actually optimal. There's a British paper showing a ring AROUND urban centers where people report the highest well-being--again, controlled for income.
Actually, my question of whether or not the penalty to well-being that comes from urban density will one day outweigh the benefits of growth is probably answerable to someone with good data chops....
At least somewhat. It depends on what causes the RHP. If it is, in fact, the physical structure of density, then we would need to account for the fact that urban centers will become physically denser in addition to more people moving into them. That will be harder onto calculate.
In California, reforms to Bonus Law have been a huge success. In 2024, it was used in nearly half of all project approvals, trippling since reforms began in 2021.
Okay, maybe I'm just a big 'ol NIMBY, but whether housing should be built depends a lot on the exact location and the sort of housing.
I live in a small Midwest suburban area. It's upper middle class, 60-40 Democrat, a college town, and known for preserving green spaces and being thoughtful about zoning to preserve the history and community feel of our neighborhoods. The city council has been packed with progressives who have been pushing for more low-cost, dense housing, which I think is a bad idea because we're surrounded by other suburbs and next to a major city that is wide open for dense housing.
Recently city counsel revealed they had plans to approve the sale of a one-story city building to a developer, who planned to put up a three-story apartment building along with an integrated hotel, parking lot, and retail space, all in a quiet, tree-lined neighborhood with single family homes and narrow two-lane streets. They were trying to fast-track it, but when locals found out, they organized, spread the word, confronted city council, and got the project shut down.
One of the opponents who lived in the affected area spoke at a council meeting and commented that her recent yard sale shut down traffic on her street. And if a little yard sale could cause that much havoc, what would the proposed development do, especially in an area of town that already faces serious traffic and parking issues? And yes, it would have hammered home prices. We've had similar development in other areas of the city, along a four-lane state road with good traffic flow and appropriate parking, and no one has a problem with it.
I get the argument that we need more housing, but I don't see that as an argument that it's justified to put it anywhere at any cost. People complain about zoning, but I've seen cities and towns where they're lax on zoning, and it turns nice areas into over-developed dumpsters.
I work in multi-family housing construction. The average project takes 3-5 years to complete and a lot of that has nothing to do with the building department. They cause plenty of issues and delays, but they are not ever going to get these projects done faster just by cutting red tape by more than six months.
one reason is because corporations and even a political belief that is good is weighed down by the greed and private equity mentality of squeezing every dollar out of people.
people hate corporations because post great financial crisis there were no consequences for companies, except a few bankruptcies. but our money bailed out goldman, amex, chase, Bank of America and so on and the CEOs didn't even change. people are skeptical of industry for good reason.
I'm an MBA but like companies now just try to squeeze everything out of customers, have a record quarter and then do massive layoffs. that's why people are distrustful as a start.
When Derek said that about housing starts, and Ezra echoed it, I was hiking with my dog and I shouted into the trees, "WHY DID YOU SAY THAT, DEREK." I was really glad Marc pushed back on it: He said "I have to say, in the scheme of things — you guys are journalists, and I’ve spent a long time in politics — the idea that a year later you’d have a bunch more housing built because of a book seems a little far-fetched to me." No kidding!
I do ultimately think it’s good to always be pushing for the next step, and their proposals seemed sound to me… but yeah
Pushing is good, but Derek and Ezra seemed to be holding themselves to a weirdly high standard. On the one hand, "we fell short" sounds like they are holding themselves accountable to something real, and who doesn't love that—but 12 months to solve housing? It's like they had assigned themselves godlike powers and then bravely admitted they weren't, after all, gods.
Having said that, I found their discussion overall to be incredibly heartening and soul-replenishing for this lonely housing advocate in a very NIMBY little town in the middle of the high desert. We fill our cups where we can.
Agreed. In any case my main takeaway from the conversation was much more about the need for positive visions of the future, which had been talked about by others I follow around the same time.
There’s like a big plank of Abundance that says you really need to focus on results not process and it’s worth applying here.
If you’re not delivering the end state people want then you’re not winning the argument. People don’t want one inch drill bits they want one inch holes.
I agree it's important to deliver on outcomes. That's why it's important to double down on building more housing.
But this was precisely Thompson's point in the interview. YIMBYs have won the rhetorical argument and everyone must at least pay lip service to supply-side housing reforms now. But Abundance wasn't about that; it was about achieving real, rapid physical results.
I initially had the same reaction as you when I heard Thompson say that--it's only been a year! But it's been an entire year, and the outcomes aren't there yet. Your example for Auckland is for a six-year period. That's not good enough, and constant vigilance is still necessary to make sure the NIMBYs don't find loopholes (c. f. "Are we being pricks?). Winning the 'argument' is not winning the fight.
What do you mean “that’s not good enough”? Is there some result that would be “good enough”? If, after one year, we haven’t fully solved the housing shortage, then we should keep working. If, after six years, we’ve got a serious chunk taken out of the housing shortage, we should keep working. All of this is still much better than doing nothing. Is any of it “good enough”?
In this context, Thompson was specifically saying that one year after California passed reforms, housing starts in the state have not notably increased. That's a failed policy in the abundance framework. It's better than the previous status quo, obviously, and improves the trajectory over the long term, but ideally you would see a clear uptick almost immediately.
Developers are able to respond rapidly to policy changes (e. g. the obvious and immediate decrease in starts after the build-to-rent restrictions were floated in the national housing bill), so one would hope to see a change quickly, but it didn't happen.
It's hard to get policy perfect the first time, but a truly responsive government would have revisited the issue more quickly rather than waiting a year. Things are improving, but we still need to do better.
Didn't the main post address that? It takes several months of paperwork before you can get a housing start (even assuming you have the land already assembled), though you can cancel one that's in the pipeline immediately. It's not surprising that decreases in starts can result immediately from policy, while increases in starts take longer to show up.
In this case, since the law only legalized higher density on land that mostly already has buildings, you expect an even longer delay.
The "several months of paperwork" is a problem that could be addressed.
I am not being a dick. You do understand what even just the physical building of housing takes right? There was no world, with the best gov on the planet, that you were going to see more than statistical noise in year 1.
That's why we talk about housing starts, not completions.
I'm not calling anyone a dick, it's https://www.cbsnews.com/boston/news/marblehead-david-modica-mbta-communities-law/
California's NIMBYs are still very much here! I don't think you can declare victory when the NIMBYs are still in elected office. (Yes, things have improved, but this piece overstates the case by looking at vibes, not individual electeds.)
Karen Bass might win the mayoralty, Nancy Pelosi endorsed super NIMBY Connie Chan against Scott Wiener and NIMBY Aisha Wahab is continuing her electoral success in California.
On a less negative note, Xavier Becerra is gonna be governor (and he was less Yimby than Porter, Swalwell, Mahan and Steyer). This doesn't seem to be an issue he cares about.
These are serious hurdles!
Also worth noting that the NIMBYS are more likely to be politically engaged than the YIMBYs or people benefiting from YIMBY policies. They are building apartments near me and people are upset. They don't like the construction, they don't like how big the buildings are, they don't like that their parking is being taken away from them (two of the biggest developments are in former parking lots) and they don't like the congestion this causes. They also probably won't like that their property values stagnate because there is more supply and thus they won't get 1.5M for their 1940s bungalow. I think it is important to hammer home why this is important and a win for us all as the negative effects of building housing (more people, more congestion, less parking) start to become a reality
A lot of this kind of “nuh uh it failed!” crap just smells like pontification from people who’ve never actually been involved in a development project before.
1) A theoretical win doesn’t matter if the exceptions and carvebacks are so convoluted that it’s still hard to use. (“oh cool, now I can build 874-1252 SF 1 bedroom condos on lots with odd numbered addresses on streets whose names include exactly 3 consonants. I’m sure that’ll really help somehow.”)
2) Planning, development, construction, design, entitlements, etc, all take A LOT OF TIME. Even if all the hurdles disappeared tomorrow, you’re not building 10,000 new houses this year.
3) State leg wins are great, but local jurisdictions will spend the next decade fighting them. Newsom’s spent nearly a decade suing CA cities over their refusal to comply with NIMBY bills.
4) Confidence is huge and 1-3 all strike against that confidence. I need to be confident enough in the project’s success to launch it. I need investors to be confident enough to fund it. I need local authorities to be confident enough in the law’s efficacy to allow it rather than fight it. etc etc etc.. None of that happens overnight.
People don't care whether you produce more housing. People care whether the cost of housing, flat lines or goes down. That has not occurred. Until that occurs, this absolutely bizarre yimby tendency to constantly declare victory and spike the football as though you have already won is just so... weird
The people who live in that housing certainly care. I grew up in housing developed by prescient upzoners and I certainly care.
From the present moment of now, we tend to compress the time difference between one year and five years. Both seem in the distant future. So when something like zoning reforms don't kick in with more housing after a year we're impatient. That's what this essay does such a good job of illuminating. Measuring the effects of changes in zoning after one or even two years is close to meaningless.
And of course more supply will eventually affect prices. You can't make intelligent comments about an economic issue without understanding this basic law.
so you are just not going to engage in your awful contrarian pro trillionaire take? isn't the argument supposed to be about discussions. you responded more here than in the other piece. it's so gross you ignored doge and Elon literally saying he put USAID in the wood chipper
She specified in the section about Auckland: "The effect was massive: within six years, the reforms produced an additional 43,500 housing permits and rents ended up about 28% lower than they would have been without it." I suppose I agree that people aren't going to perceive housing prices as "going down" unless they're literally going down, which isn't going to happen without much more radical policy (and which I'm guessing Jerusalem would argue is not inherently desirable).
But it does seem like a problem worth noting that people see their rent go up 4% and perceive it as bad, instead of understanding that their rent could have instead gone up 20% and seeing 4% as good. There's little reason for policymakers to perceive that 4% as bad if they know about the 20% counterfactual.
...but it has: https://www.macrotrends.net/3389/austin-area-home-price-index
Most smart YIMBYs don't claim Austin as a success story because it's too hard to disentangle the effect of the tech downsizing/RTO and spike in mortgage rates.
The issue isn’t saying we’ve already won - it’s rejecting the people who say we in fact lost and we should stop doing what we’re doing.
The big problem with Derek’s statement that “California still hasn’t actually increased housing starts” is that SB79 still hasn’t gone into effect yet! It had a yearlong phase-in and isn’t in effect until July 1st, 2026.
That's not a big problem with their statement, that's a big problem with the law in light of what abundancism is supposed to be achieving, which is building things fast.
It’s a win. It’s not the whole answer but part of the answer. It bends the arc.
A bit of a tangent from the main topic, but in reference to the angry leftist comment from Hal Singer… Although the term “bootlicker” describes so many people desperate to be approved of by and to be adjacent to power (see the entire MAGA administration) and was useful at one time, the concept has creeped. It now refers to anyone even a hair’s breadth to a Leftist’s right.
Some thoughts:
1. Cities in California and Washington have a housing supply problem and are correct to address it aggressively.
2. Wealthy countries are happier. This is well documented. In Seattle, tech is the number one driver of housing supply needs. Tech is also a large part of what's improving our lives in the U.S. via economic growth.
3. In wealthy countries, people who live in cities--the drivers of economic growth--are paradoxically less happy than people in less dense areas even when controlling for income. This is called the rural happiness paradox (RHP) and it is also well documented.
4. In 1910, only 10% of individuals lived in cities. Today, it is 55%, trending towards 68% by 2050. Whatever causes the RHP is going to get worse.
Are the benefits of economic growth going to remain enough the counter the happiness penalty on individuals that live in cities when evaluating the well-being of a nation on the whole?
While the Census definition of urban has shifted over the decades, here is roughly the urban/rural makeup for the U.S. specifically, according to Claude:
"The US attained urban-majority status between 1910 and 1920  — so in 1910 the country was right at the tipping point, roughly 45-50% urban depending on definition. Today 83.5% of Americans live in urban areas  according to the World Bank. And by the middle of the century it is expected that almost 90% of the US population will live in an urban setting."
Of course “urban” here is mostly what people think of as suburban. Only a small minority of people live in neighborhoods with many multi unit buildings.
I don't know the rates of what kinds of urban area rural people are moving into.
My understanding is that suburban is actually optimal. There's a British paper showing a ring AROUND urban centers where people report the highest well-being--again, controlled for income.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11259172/#R3
Actually, my question of whether or not the penalty to well-being that comes from urban density will one day outweigh the benefits of growth is probably answerable to someone with good data chops....
At least somewhat. It depends on what causes the RHP. If it is, in fact, the physical structure of density, then we would need to account for the fact that urban centers will become physically denser in addition to more people moving into them. That will be harder onto calculate.
In California, reforms to Bonus Law have been a huge success. In 2024, it was used in nearly half of all project approvals, trippling since reforms began in 2021.
We took the W with our recent report "Win-Win Bonus:" https://www.circulatesd.org/win_win_bonus_report
Okay, maybe I'm just a big 'ol NIMBY, but whether housing should be built depends a lot on the exact location and the sort of housing.
I live in a small Midwest suburban area. It's upper middle class, 60-40 Democrat, a college town, and known for preserving green spaces and being thoughtful about zoning to preserve the history and community feel of our neighborhoods. The city council has been packed with progressives who have been pushing for more low-cost, dense housing, which I think is a bad idea because we're surrounded by other suburbs and next to a major city that is wide open for dense housing.
Recently city counsel revealed they had plans to approve the sale of a one-story city building to a developer, who planned to put up a three-story apartment building along with an integrated hotel, parking lot, and retail space, all in a quiet, tree-lined neighborhood with single family homes and narrow two-lane streets. They were trying to fast-track it, but when locals found out, they organized, spread the word, confronted city council, and got the project shut down.
One of the opponents who lived in the affected area spoke at a council meeting and commented that her recent yard sale shut down traffic on her street. And if a little yard sale could cause that much havoc, what would the proposed development do, especially in an area of town that already faces serious traffic and parking issues? And yes, it would have hammered home prices. We've had similar development in other areas of the city, along a four-lane state road with good traffic flow and appropriate parking, and no one has a problem with it.
I get the argument that we need more housing, but I don't see that as an argument that it's justified to put it anywhere at any cost. People complain about zoning, but I've seen cities and towns where they're lax on zoning, and it turns nice areas into over-developed dumpsters.
I work in multi-family housing construction. The average project takes 3-5 years to complete and a lot of that has nothing to do with the building department. They cause plenty of issues and delays, but they are not ever going to get these projects done faster just by cutting red tape by more than six months.
FUCK YEAH
Which Washington state reforms were you referring to in the paragraph about Seattle? It looks like the homes built in 2024 were the result of a surge in permitting around 2020, and applications for new units fell to only 4,000 last year: https://seattlecitygis.maps.arcgis.com/apps/dashboards/0ecefa68fbda40de8ad9c6412ac5149d
one reason is because corporations and even a political belief that is good is weighed down by the greed and private equity mentality of squeezing every dollar out of people.
people hate corporations because post great financial crisis there were no consequences for companies, except a few bankruptcies. but our money bailed out goldman, amex, chase, Bank of America and so on and the CEOs didn't even change. people are skeptical of industry for good reason.
I'm an MBA but like companies now just try to squeeze everything out of customers, have a record quarter and then do massive layoffs. that's why people are distrustful as a start.