House Appropriations Committee

Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Subcommittee hearing on "Livable Communities, Transit Oriented Development, and Incorporating Green Building Practices into Federal Housing and Transportation Policy." (Part One)
Witnesses: Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan
Location: 2359 Rayburn…

USA Today finally picked up the story we blogged last week on new EPA research that shows a substantial amount of housing built this decade has shifted from open fields on the edges of suburbia to dense central cities and their nearby suburbs, a change that suggests that the…

This story is a must-read.  Detroit's cheap housing is attracting (at least three) artists and dreamers who are then attracting friends.  "But the city offers a much greater attraction for artists than $100 houses. Detroit right now is just this vast, enormous canvas where anything imaginable can be accomplished."

Rich Florida says it will.  Citing research from a number of sources, he makes a case  in the current Atlantic Monthly that can be summarized as follows:

+ The current crisis makes the end of a whole way of life in America. 
+ The recession will accelerate the…

Shaun Donovan, the new Secretary of HUD, is speaking at the NYU Furman Center Housing Policy Conference, began his remarks by praising Judith Rodin for engaging her community and remaking it in ways that engage the "least of these."

Donovan began by saying that this is may be less a…

Bruce Katz of Brookings (on leave to HUD)  is speaking now at the NYU Furman Center's Housing Policy Conference.  What does it mean for a national government to create an Office of Urban Policy?  Bruce says it is a recognition that place matters.  Cities and metro areas are key to…

Listening to developer Richard Baron, Chairman and CEO, McCormack Baron Salazar, talk about the neighborhood transformations that he is managing and the comprehensive services he is coordinating for residents, while agencies continue to do what they have always done [working independently rather than together].  “We make very poor use of…

Mary Nichols, Chairman of California Air Resources Board, says Ed's recommendation to getting rid of the unlimited home mortgage interest deduction has not yet been discussed as a solution to climate change.  California has been absent from the scene in land use for many years, but the desire to mitigate…

I'm here at the Furman Center at NYU at a quickly organized meeting on America's Housing Policy.  The first panel is on Connecting the Dots between Housing, Transportation, Energy and the Environment.  Ed Glaeser (Harvard) is up first.  (I am always surprised how young Ed looks.)

Ed says housing policy…

Channeling Atlantic Monthly's Megan McArdle, Wendy Waters asks the provocative question, is Congress bailing out surburbia with its plan? 

Just so you don't get behind in your urban nomenclature, Time magazine this week introduces "co-ho," short for communal homeowner, Time's terms for a person who buys a house with friends. 

"Today's policy makers should be aiming to intervene early, when neighborhoods first start to fray, Philadelphia housing chief Carl Greene says. 'If you don't intervene when vacancies start to pop up, then the whole block becomes unstable," he says. "It becomes a safe haven for antisocial conduct.'"

How tough is…