Commentary

Great neighborhoods don’t have to be illegal—they’re not elsewhere

Ah, Paris! Perhaps one of the world’s most beautiful cities, a capital of European culture, and prosperous economic hub. What’s its secret? Zoning, of course!   Just kidding. Actually, Paris went for the better part of a millennium (until 1967) with nothing that an American might recognize as district-based zoning, a prospect that would surely horrify […]

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A tax credit for renters

A new proposal from Berkeley’s Terner Center aims to broaden favorable tax treatment for housing to include the nation’s renters Our tax code is highly skewed towards homeownership.  Between the deductions for mortgage interest expenses and property taxes, the exclusion of capital gains on sales of homes, and the non-taxation of the imputed rent of owner-occupied homes,

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Market timing and racial wealth disparities

One of the enduring features of American inequality is the wide disparity in homeownership rates between white Americans and Latinos and African-Americans. And because homeownership has — or at least was, historically — a principal means by which families built wealth, this disparity in homeownership translated into or amplified racial and ethnic wealth disparities.  There

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Halloween was yesterday: Let’s stop scaremongering about cities

We love scary stories. That’s what Halloween was all about–dressing up as something terrifying, if only for a day. Being scary one day a year can be fun. But constant scaremongering is one way that attitudes and beliefs become detached from facts, in ways that can have truly negative effects. Lately, the presidential campaign has gotten

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