Jerusalem Demsas

A new show hosted by Jerusalem Demsas questions what we really know about the narratives driving public conversation.

Mass demonstrations are becoming more frequent but less effective.

NIMBYism is coming from inside the government.

Checking Zillow is not an ideological activity.

The federal government’s dysfunction leaves immigrant-friendly cities feeling overwhelmed.

In Minneapolis, the housing shortage has fractured the green community.

National leaders left an immigration-policy vacuum that the Lone Star State is eager to fill.

Seven possible explanations for what’s going on

The city has cracked down on hotel construction and short-term rentals, with predictable results.

Even green-energy projects get quashed by local opposition.

Yearning for a blank slate crosses the ideological spectrum—but sooner or later, new places will face the same old problems.

No one can be a full-time political animal.

A story about three trees, an angry “community,” and power in Washington, D.C.

But the only people who have to feel bad about “unearned access” are the beneficiaries of affirmative action.

Researchers at UC San Francisco have released the largest representative survey of homeless people in more than 25 years.

Additional security may work in the short term. But migrants quickly adapt by taking alternative, more dangerous routes.

And why local governments hate it

No one wants “California-style” housing prices. But the state’s policies are not unique.

State capacity is downstream of ideological commitments: When we have political consensus, we have state capacity, and when we don’t, we don’t.

Environmental laws are being used to justify oil drilling in Los Angeles, single-family zoning in Minneapolis, and the construction of the border wall.

Federal agencies’ assessments of banks’ stability leave a lot out, a former Treasury Department official explains.

Why should anyone need a license to braid hair?

People are leaving superstar blue cities and moving to red states.

Blaming the housing crisis on hedge funds and private equity may be easy, but it’s dead wrong.

Real estate should be treated as consumption, not investment.

A tantalizing new scientific breakthrough will mean little if we don’t build the infrastructure to support it.

And why everyone’s ignoring it

The push for fareless transit is downstream of a larger failure: American urban elected officials have struggled to improve government services, especially infrastructure development.

Supply skepticism and shortage denialism are pushing against the actual solution to the housing crisis: building enough homes.

American couples didn’t let pandemic isolation go to waste.

To speed up permitting for energy projects, we’ll need to rethink community input.

The demographic shift from cities to suburbs illuminates many stories: of families moving to opportunity, of inequality replicating itself when they get there, and of the people left behind.

Marc Andreessen says he’s all for more new housing, but public records tell a different story.

We treat pandemics as inevitable when we could commit to averting them.

Senate Democrats should take their cues from the House.

Younger buyers who sunk their savings into new homes have too much to lose.

Officials seem unwilling to be direct about who is most at risk of the disease.

It’s become clear that the anti-abortion movement won’t sit idly by while states enact the abortion policies their residents want.

How abortion could scramble American geography

American cities need to grow up.