Housing

An unlikely outcry over a U.K. government architecture committee.

Plus, move over Paw Patrol.

For many California families, the accelerating housing crisis affects not just their budget, but their way of life. Every year over the past decade, the state estimates, 100,000 fewer units of housing have been built than were needed to keep up with demand. The result has been spiraling housing…

Comprehensive tax reform, done right, would accomplish many things: It should boost investment, productivity, and employment, and along with these economic growth. That is the intent, anyway.

Comprehensive tax reform, done right, would accomplish many things: It should boost investment, productivity, and employment, and along with these economic growth. That is the intent, anyway.

Nearly every household in the country spends a sizable proportion of its income on housing. The median household allots over one-third of its income to keeping a roof over its head, and the annual expenditure of the median earner's income on housing has increased by 35 percent since 2000.

Nearly every household in the country spends a sizable proportion of its income on housing. The median household allots over one-third of its income to keeping a roof over its head, and the annual expenditure of the median earner’s income on housing has increased by 35 percent since 2000.

Our neighborhood dodged a bullet. At least that's the spin the local weekly paper covering our tony D.C. community put on the news that a former museum would become a single-family residence rather than be converted into apartments. This despite the fact that the building boasts 27,000 square feet,…

When Donald Trump takes office in January he's promised a long list of executive orders and federal regulations he'll unwind or eliminate. And if he wants to avoid another economic meltdown driven by the housing market, he should rapidly start undoing the regulatory misapplication of the Community…

On Wednesday, a different Castro was in the news: U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development secretary Julián Castro decreed that all 3,100 local Public Housing Agencies must implement "smoke-free" policies for all indoor dwellings within the next 18 months. In essence, by late 2018, smoking…

The Fair Housing Act of 1968 makes it illegal to sell or rent housing "because of race, color, religion, sex, familial status or national origin." The provision prohibits the disparate treatment of individuals because of race or any of the other forbidden grounds it identifies, as when a real…

Believe it or not, there are head-spinning stories about dysfunctional New York politicians that do not involve Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. Governor Andrew Cuomo and New York City mayor Bill de Blasio are in a forced marriage. Their partnership, such as it is, takes its cues from congressional…

Just before Thanksgiving, Senator Bob Corker (R-TN), proposed an amendment that would essentially prohibit Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored enterprises that purchase, repackage and resell home mortgages, from taking any steps to rebuild capital or to sell any of the government's…

Sometime in the next two years, if Obama administration bureaucrats get their way, public housing tenants who smoke in their own apartments will face sanctions, fines and perhaps even eviction. The proposed  policy is deeply flawed. However, those who oppose it—as many conservatives will…

After the Great Depression, Democrats ran against Herbert Hoover for 30 years—and with great success. Even though Hoover’s policies were anything but market-oriented—he greatly raised spending, taxes, and tariffs in response to the 1929 Wall Street crash—Republicans took the fall for Hooverism. It…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD Casual Podcast, with Erin Mundahl reading her casual essay "A Room of One's Own."

The Hillary Clinton campaign is looking for some Everyday Americans willing to open up their homes to strangers. On a webpage entitled "Host a Hillary for America Volunteer," the campaign asks for name, email address, phone number and home address for those willing to host a fellow Clinton…

Bob: I've got an idea for a new government program to help homeowners.

Last winter President Obama’s Department of Housing and Urban Development published a regulation pursuant to the Fair Housing Act that defines discrimination as actions or policies that while neutral and nondiscriminatory in their intent have a disparate impact, shown through statistics, on a group…

The old saying about how banks only loan money to people who don’t need it seems to be coming around again. This after the disaster that followed a policy of lending money, and lots of it, to people who really needed it but weren’t likely to pay it back. 

First, the good news. Initial unemployment claims, which were expected to come in at 305,000, came in at 280,000 good deal less than that. More people working might mean that, in time, wages will rise and families that have never seen their financial situations improve since the Great Recession,…

Until housing picks up.  That, anyway, is the way Neil Irwin of the New York Times is reporting it:

Former President Bill Clinton insists he and his wife, Hillary Clinton, are not out of touch. The examples he cites? They talk to people at their "local grocery store on the weekend" and, he adds, they "talk to people in [their] town."

Little ado about not very much. Markets yawned when the government revised its initial estimate of economic growth in the first quarter from a slight positive, +0.1 percent, to a non-trivial negative of -1.0 percent. There are several reasons that the first shrinkage of the economy in three years…

Hedge fund manager Barry Rosenstein is not a man to be fazed by the recent rise in mortgage interest rates. Nor is he one to worry that the housing market might be softening, loping the odd million off the $147 million he shelled out for an 18-acre beachfront home in the Hamptons, on New York’s…

Top Senate Banking Committee members released plans this week to wind down mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and replace them with a complicated apparatus disturbingly similar to Obamacare.

The housing market and house prices are the economy’s gift to journalists. For one thing, almost everybody either owns a house, is looking to buy one, or to sell one – and all want to know whether prices are going up, down, or sideways, whether buyers are in the saddle and ride sellers, or vice…

The highest rents in the country aren't in major metropolises like New York, Los Angeles, or Chicago--they're in Williston, North Dakota. Business Insider reports that the highest average monthly rents for entry-level, one-bedroom apartments can be found in Williston, a small town in northwestern…

Herewith some thoughts about the outlook for this year. Thoughts, not forecasts, for which I have neither the skill nor the courage. I offer these thoughts in deference to the understandable demand for look-aheads. Human beings are always hunting for certainty, attempting to reduce randomness,…

It’s not that anyone here in Washington begrudges Britain, and to some extent Spain, their fledgling recoveries. But President Obama and other proponents of more government spending aren’t delighted that those nations’ austerity programs seem to be paying off in renewed growth rather than in the…

Until recently it has been fashionable to denigrate the U.S. economic recovery: “America is the best house in a bad neighborhood,” sniffed many analysts. No longer. America is now a very good house in a terrible neighborhood.

“Demand for new U.S. homes probably climbed in June to the highest level in two years, economists project a report today will show, another sign the housing market is recovering,” Bloomberg, midnight.

Just as America proved to be such a safe haven for immigrants in the latter 19th and early 20th centuries, it is now seen as a safe haven for wealth attempting to escape Europe’s tax collectors and financial chaos and recession in Europe, and for foreign central banks newly enamored of the dollar.

America is the best house in a run-down neighborhood: The famous BRICs are crumbling.

It is no easy thing to peer through the fog of recent economic data. Confidence that the economic recovery would accelerate ran into a not-so-good job report Friday. To the chagrin of the president’s reelection campaign team, only 121,000 workers were added to private sector payrolls in March, far…

Foreign Policy: "How the Obama administration bungled the Iraq withdrawal negotiations"

Mark McKinnon: "Chris Christie's Best Reason to Run"

Jonathan Last: "The Wisdom of Juice-Boxers"

Guy Benson: "BREAKING: Obama Administratrion Clarifies Biden Remarks, 'Strongly Opposes' China's One-Child Policy"

So the media is abuzz today that Mitt Romney has plans to tear down his 3,000 square foot beach front home in La Jolla, California and replace it with an 11,000 square foot home. (Note NPR's sarcasm about the matter.) Yes, this doesn't exactly scream "man of the people" and these kinds of splashy…

Byron York: "Obama: I reversed recession until 'bad luck' hit"

If you want to have a relaxed summer break, definitely do not include on your beach reading list This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly, by Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff. Based on a massive multi-nation data base covering 800 years the authors conclude that, in the case of…

Sure, the rest of America's hurting economically, but Congressional leaders are doing quite well.

Hmm: "Group Launches Effort To Draft Ryan For WH Bid"

The black day – with the red ink – arrived this week: America reached the limits of what it can borrow. But the world didn’t end, the economy didn’t grind to a halt, and the dollar didn’t collapse. This non-event is being handled by accounting sleight of hand: some $4 trillion of the $14.3 trillion…

NATO agrees to oversee no-fly zone.

The Wall Street Journal interviewed hedge-fund manager Paul Singer over the weekend: