Hello hello! Happy February.
I apologize I got a bit behind in this newsletter so I’ll be sending several new pieces today but in the future I’ll try to break them up more!
1. The biggest case concerning the rights of homeless people in decades is headed to the Supreme Court. I’ve been covering this case (Grants Pass v. Johnson) but when SCOTUS announced in January it would be officially hearing it, I wrote an article explaining what this is all about and what it could mean for tent encampments, for unhoused people, for cities. You can read that story here and I’ll definitely continue to cover it more this year.
2. I wrote about this obscure policy idea called a “land-value tax” that’s getting a lot of attention right now in Detroit, Michigan. It’s essentially an idea to tax land at a higher rate than any buildings or improvements on the land, in the hopes that it would spur development on vacant property and disincentivize blight generally. Detroiters may vote on the proposal later this year, and housing wonks in cities across the nation are pretty excited about the prospect and interested in possibly pushing similar policies. I give an overview of what this land tax could do and why it’s suddenly a big thing on the political radar. You can read that here.
3. Joe Biden is prioritizing abortion rights in his re-election campaign and he’s specifically rallying around the idea of “restoring Roe.” This makes political sense, but abortion rights groups generally don’t want to “restore Roe” — they want even stronger protections. I reached out to a dozen abortion rights groups to get their sense of how they’re navigating the campaign and I look at what it means that Biden’s abortion rights policy isn’t exactly where his abortion rights politics are. You can read that here.
4. Lastly I wrote about the success of new publicly-owned housing built recently in Montgomery County, MD that has inspired cities like Atlanta, Boston, and Chicago to follow suit. Rhode Island is on track to pass a state-level bill this year. Some people are calling it social housing, others called it mixed-income public housing, still others call it housing from "public developers." I covered this back in 2022, when the idea was still mostly just on paper, and I wanted to see what’s happened since. Turns out there’s been a lot of action! And it’s been especially intriguing to local governments at a time when even regular market-rate construction is tough to get going. You can read that here.
That’s all for now. On the personal news side- I got engaged last month! I am very happy about it. ❤️
Hi Rachel, Congrats on the engagement! Nicely timed for Valentine's Day? On the housing article, I'm not clear on exactly what financing arrangement Montgomery County offers that makes the difference. Currently I'm bugged by the (non-housing) issue of deepfakes deepsixing election integrity. I'm sending you some notes of mine on that. Stay well, Alex