Emily Hamilton is a Senior Research Fellow and Director of the Urbanity Project at the Mercatus Center, where she focuses on urban economics and land-use policy. She publishes both academic research and policy work, contributes to outlets including the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, and writes an occasional column at Governing. Emily also advises state and federal policymaking and has testified before several state legislatures and the U.S. House of Representatives. In this episode, Geoff and Emily discuss building code reform, case studies on housing policy, the potential for progress around the country, and more.
You can find Yeoman on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Youtube, and elsewhere.
Links
Emily Hamilton at the Mercatus Center
Architect Michael Eliason on single-stair design
“The Case for Single-Stair Multifamily” by Stephen Smith
Pew study on single-stairway building fire safety
Successful Frontier Institute campaigns in Montana
Timestamps
0:00 – intro
0:43 – recent progress, cross-partisan support for housing policy
5:31 – single-stair building code reform, outcomes
11:29 – building code and lack of fire safety effectiveness, regulatory burden
16:15 – accessory dwelling unit (ADU) policy
22:34 – subsidiarity, Euclid, restrictions on property rights
25:10 – case study: Montana
30:46 – case study: Houston
38:07 – housing policy in other states: Pacific Northwest, Colorado, Texas
41:06 – major policy reform in Cambridge, MA
44:42 – rapidly liberalized markets, large developer building culture, yeoman developers, small lot development
52:45 – granularity, urbanism
55:12 – housing in Japan
58:45 – Mercatus Center work
1:03:01 – process and outcomes of building codes, case study: windows
1:08:53 – optimism and progress in the future
1:10:14 – reform in the Southeast
1:13:27 – conclusion
Yeoman 