YIMBYs Are Killing off the Family Home
Forcing everyone to live in high rise apartments isn’t solving the housing crisis. Quite the opposite.
Housing is now as hot an issue in politics as the shape of Sydney Sweeney’s jeans (or genes). The socialist Zohran Mamdani’s stunning primary win in New York came largely off the back of concerns about housing affordability. California has recently passed legislation to reform environmental regulations that have hindered home-building. The power of the so-called Yimby (“Yes in my backyard”) movement seems only to have been reinforced.
Yet the great irony is that where the Yimby agenda has advanced furthest – notably my home state of California – housing affordability has remained consistently the worst.
Yimbys have got something right – the central problem behind the housing affordability crisis is the failure to build enough homes. Homebuilders built hundreds of thousands fewer homes (including rental units) in 2024 than in 1972 when there were 130 million fewer Americans. One estimate has put the US housing market short by approximately 4.5 million homes.
Pursuit of Happiness
Revival: Americans Heading Back to the Hinterlands
Smaller communities throughout the country are poised to play an outsize role in forging our future.
Exodus: Affordability Crisis Sends Americans Packing From Big Cities
The first in a two-part series about the Great Dispersion of Americans across the country.
Stanford’s Graduate Student Union Tries to Stifle Dissent
The university may fire me because I won’t pay dues to a labor organization whose views I find repugnant.
Did Leo Strauss Get Religion?
Scholars and thinkers, East and West, have found that Leo Strauss offers intellectual insights and resources unavailable elsewhere.
The Philosophy of Jacques Maritain — A Long-Awaited Introduction
Jason West’s excellent introduction to Jacques Maritain’s philosophy should draw new disciples to Maritain at a time when his thought is needed most.
