Shane Phillips

This week on UCLA Housing Voice we talked to David Schleicher about the property tax revolt sweeping conservative states across the US, its likely consequences (good and bad), and its similarities and differences from the liberal-state tax revolts of the 70s and 80s. lewis.ucla.edu/2026/10/28/1...

A fun fact about elevators: it’s always 2% (or 0%) of total hard costs. Developers scale the number of elevators they buy to meet this number. Developing a six-unit apartment building? In Switzerland the elevator is like $50k so it fits within the 2% and they include it. In the US it’s $175,000…

There is also the bonus that, while those wanting to support families will endlessly champion owned houses, when you look at family sized units, rentals of every possible building size have way more kids than houses, & are vastly cheaper & more efficient. bsky.app/profile/shan...

the routine, pay for play pardons are all by themselves one of the worst corruption scandals in american history!

A very important detail that gets missed here is that these folks are NOT engineers. They are building department plan examiners, inspectors, firefighters, etc. They do enforcement and implementation, not system-level analysis. It’s kind of like if the police could write the criminal laws.

One last thought. There is something broken about the way that a trade association owns the codes and it lobbies and PRs aggressively as I am documenting. The public interest in the codes is smoothied up with the private interests of this particular group. Very very uncomfortable.

In addition to Mo's commentary here, there's also a reality we need to grapple with that policies that increase up front (i.e., construction) costs can stop housing production even if they lower lifecycle costs. Especially if the building owners can't capture all the operational savings.

Great thread, definitely worth reading in full.

Nationally, single-family houses have a lot more kids (per 100 units) than multifamily, and rentals have a lot more than owner-occupied homes. But the numbers look very different when you control for householder age and bedroom count, and by location: domainexpansion.substack.com/p/what-kinds...

Single Family Rentals (SFRs) are a key tool for families w/ children to get access to n-hoods w/ high performing schools. Important because poorer children who move to, & stay in, n-hoods w/ strong schools make significant academic gains (as shown by research from IZ & voucher mobility programs).

This is very true and way too widely ignored, and yet another reason why treating owner occupied homes as more desirable than renter occupied ones, even when well intentioned, can do a lot of harm.

Nationally, single-family houses have a lot more kids (per 100 units) than multifamily, and rentals have a lot more than owner-occupied homes. But the numbers look very different when you control for householder age and bedroom count, and by location: domainexpansion.substack.com/p/what-kinds...

A housing podcast episode for you education folks! Or those who want to know more the relationship between rental housing and school preferences

They don’t have incentives anymore for affordable housing or energy efficiency because they got rid of so many regulations. They didn’t want to intentionally down zone to keep them. They decided just to remove barriers for all types of developers.

No parking minimums. No density maximums. No setbacks. Commercial allowed in every zone. Developments up to 200 units allowed by right citywide. This is so much bigger than what any other city is doing.

Vancouver, WA did the biggest upzone / deregulation possibly in the entire nation and not enough people are talking about it. And this all came from City staff - they didn’t have community advocates demanding this for years!

Given how much Los Angeles' terrible governance on housing and homeless affects the rest of the state, it's no exaggeration to call the LA Mayor's race the most important election in California this cycle.

In this week's UCLA Housing Voice reading list, we cover homeownership and risky behavior, measuring rental affordability, state policies to encourage manufactured housing, AI in permit reviews, vacancy chains, and more. Check it out (and subscribe!): uclahousingvoice.substack.com/p/ucla-housi...

In this week's UCLA Housing Voice reading list, we cover homeownership and risky behavior, measuring rental affordability, state policies to encourage manufactured housing, AI in permit reviews, vacancy chains, and more. Check it out (and subscribe!): uclahousingvoice.substack.com/p/ucla-housi...

Sort of insane fact about how broken US urban planning is—America now spends more building *just the lights for roads and highways* than on all subways & ground mass transit combined Spending on roadway *pavement* is 18x transit spending

Would sure be nice to see more candidates explicitly running against this. Elon spending money for your opponent is a GIFT, Democrats. Voters hate this shit. They hate this guy specifically. Break out the big bats and go after it!

🎵Democrat for Senate, California🎵

Left-NIMBYs love to pit welfare state expansion against land use reform, but the latter can 1) can achieve significant poverty reductions 2) without means testing or administrative burdens, and 3) at a net gain for the public budget, which can then be used to expand the welfare state.

The GOP cut funding to the IRS because *audits work* and they fundamentally don't believe rich people should have to play by the rules.

NEW from me: Over the last 4 years, America has lost more than 200k jobs in creative fields like publishing, film, TV, or graphic design. It's the worst stretch for arts jobs outside of recessions. How much is AI to blame? And can the arts' business model survive?🧵 www.apricitas.io/p/ai-and-the...

There are other things, like mandatory fire curtains that lack demonstrated safety benefits but add $7k/floor. The Coalition for Elevator Reform, launched this month by accessibility-forward housing developer The Kelsey, has model legislation. elevatorreform.org

I have a confession to make. The townhomes I & others spent most of a decade trying to legalize are popping up all over Oregon & elsewhere...and I love that...but they're a problem in one big way. (get ready for a twisty thread about the housing report @sightline.org just published)

Maybe I'm just a partisan hack and this happens all the time with both parties, but it seems like putting the flag of a major geopolitical rival literally on top of the Oval Office is kind of insane???

So many problems, in so many states, are downstream of our unwillingness to tax real estate at its market value, and more generally of our unwillingness to acknowledge that housing wealth is, in fact, wealth.

My new market rate apartment is affordable to households making ~80% AMI. It was built 5 years ago. I need every skeptic of “filtering” to spend five minutes looking at rentals on Zillow for Sacramento. Actually, let’s do it together: www.zillow.com/sacramento-c...

On this week's reading list we cover the supply and affordability impacts of suburban expansion, tight mortgage lending standards, tools for estimating housing development feasibility, growing the urban tree canopy, and more. uclahousingvoice.substack.com/p/ucla-housi...