Scott Beyer Author Archives

How do good ideas go from theory into political reality? This has become a pressing question for America’s YIMBY movement.

Much like America’s East Coast, the West Coast is struggling from a housing affordability problem – meaning Washington, Oregon and California.

During an era of urban renaissance, and while sitting within one of America’s most prosperous regions, Baltimore has managed to become the nation’s biggest tragedy.

By the reckoning of today’s pundits, wealth inequality is one of the seminal problems of our time. It has been called a “moral issue” by Bernie Sanders.

The nation’s capital is gentrifying – right before our eyes. The high home prices that once largely existed west of Rock Creek Park are spreading eastward.

Readers of this publication may already know about the modern industry towns of America, and what they have done to housing markets.

Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing has been gutted – and now there is a lawsuit. In January, Ben Carson, secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), delayed an agency rule meant to desegregate U.S. cities. Now the affordable housing industry has filed NFHA et al v Carson, aiming to restore the rule.

In these last few decades, as Americans have flocked to major metros, two economic trends have surfaced.

The South has played a crucial role in American history, and by extension, in the nation’s architectural legacy.

Memphis and Nashville are viewed as the two prominent cities of Tennessee. But their realities, both at street level and in statistics, are very different.

The rise in home costs has led to some creative solutions and workarounds by city governments to reduce prices.

Overall, Memphis is pretty old-school. As a city filled with rural migrants and defined by decades of slow growth, it maintains a dated and Southern feel.