Month: February, 2005

Can you say “budget buster”?

18 February, 2005 (11:05) | Uncategorized |

Today’s Washington Post offers a helpful talking budget, step by step … or, if you prefer to read, you can click the sound off. 
 
Or, for an alternative metaphoric take, check out my own
Budget as supermarket sweepstakes, where legislators shopping for new programs fill up their cart and hope to get them past the budget [...]

Do nimby’s eat bananas? Or just housing?

17 February, 2005 (18:41) | Uncategorized |

Fresh off the Wharton/ Harvard study the Economist cited and I mentioned in yesterday’s post, we have another example of the linkage between development restrictions and housing costs, a new HUD study, Why Not In Our Community?, a 31-page report (free, Adobe, 600 kb) that updates HUD’s original 1991 study (170 pages, Adobe, warning, very [...]

Why is housing pricy? Ask your government

16 February, 2005 (09:27) | Uncategorized |

Trust The Economist (subscription required), just after I have posted on linkage, to report academic study statistically demonstrating what those of us who
work in
affordable housing have long known in our bones: namely, that in the context of urban land, what’s valuable is not land by itself but permission to develop:< ?xml:namespace prefix =”" o ns [...]

Of train wreck, omnibus, and playing chicken

15 February, 2005 (10:22) | Uncategorized |

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Who will blink first, the train wreck, the omnibus, or the chicken?
 
Congressional Quarterly (subscription required) reports that:
 
The House Appropriations Committee will officially change its subcommittee alignment on Tuesday, setting up a conflict with the Senate that could make completion of this year’s spending bills even more difficult than usual.
 
Washington-speak for [...]

Who is the priciest link?

14 February, 2005 (15:56) | Uncategorized |

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For every silver lining, there must be a cloud.  For a city, a growing economy is great in many ways — more economic activity, more jobs, more real estate property taxes, more valuable parking spaces (!) — but bad in at least one: by driving up housing prices [...]