Can We Predict Which Housing Reforms Will Work?

States are legalizing ADUs, cutting parking mandates, and changing zoning, but it's still difficult to estimate how much housing each of those reforms will actually produce. Carlee Alm-LaBar talks with Arnold Ventures housing director Stephanie Kestelman, The Turnout’s Grace Gordon, and Strong Towns executive director John Reuter about the Housing Data and Technology Innovation Challenge, a nine-week competition asking teams to build open-source tools that estimate the effects of housing reforms using public data and transparent assumptions. Plenty of housing reforms have arrived with big promises about what they’ll produce and then fallen short; building these tools could give people a better way to challenge the assumptions behind those promises and be clearer about what the available data can actually support.

ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES

• Housing Data and Technology Innovation Challenge by The Turnout and Arnold Ventures
• Downzone:
  • The Human Condition by Hannah Arendt
  • A Paradise of Small Houses: The Evolution, Devolution, and Potential Rebirth of Urban Housing by Max Podemski
  • The Serviceberry by Robin Wall Kimmerer
• Carlee Alm-LaBar (LinkedIn)
• Dr. Stephanie Kestelman (LinkedIn)
• Grace Gordon (LinkedIn)
• John Reuter (LinkedIn)
• Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.

 

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