Christian Britschgi
Reporter at Reason Magazine covering urbanism, property rights, and occasionally heavy metal. Sign up for my housing newsletter! reason.com/newsletters/rent-free/
- “You say the ICE agent is bleeding internally. Doesn't everyone do that? Usually it's only a problem if the blood’s on the outside”
- Big year for stater home bills. Florida’s bill caps min. lot sizes at 1,200 square feet (!) and apply strict scrutiny to zoning laws (!!). Mass. has a starter home ballot initiative that would cap lot sizes at 5k square feet. Internal polling shows 65% support! reason.com/2026/01/13/t...
- Reposted by Christian BritschgiLatest: A Border Patrol officer threatened a legal observer in Key Largo, Florida with arrest today for following him. Exchange captured on video. I interviewed the observer, too. reason.com/2026/01/12/v...
- Florida’s Live Local Act flew under the radar when it passed in 2023. Almost 3 years later, there’s 52,000 Live Local units in the pipeline per Florida Housing Coalition’s tracker. Obvs pipeline units are just that. Even so, that’s got to make it one of the most productive YIMBY bills ever.
- Link to the tracker: flhousingc.maps.arcgis.com/apps/dashboa...
- I think there's a pretty obvious tension between wanting to encourage more private development and staffing up your administration with communists who despise anyone who makes money off said development reason.com/2026/01/06/t...
- Reposted by Christian Britschgi“The proposed amendments would mandate new S.B. 840 apartments with an outdoor Olympic-sized swimming pool, pedestrian trails, and masonry walls of between eight and 10 feet tall.” 😳
- The ways that Texas NIMBYs are finding to make apartments more expensive to build are are funnier than what coastal NIMBYs come up with reason.com/2025/10/14/t... by @christianb.bsky.social
- In California, cities like to thwart new housing with affordable housing mandates. Texas cites thwart new housing with luxury housing mandates. The result is the same; less construction, higher prices.
- The ways that Texas NIMBYs are finding to make apartments more expensive to build are are funnier than what coastal NIMBYs come up with reason.com/2025/10/14/t... by @christianb.bsky.social
- Reposted by Christian BritschgiThe ways that Texas NIMBYs are finding to make apartments more expensive to build are are funnier than what coastal NIMBYs come up with reason.com/2025/10/14/t... by @christianb.bsky.social
- Reposted by Christian BritschgiIf the Trump administration wants to use military power, it should seek authorization from Congress, says Sen. Rand Paul.
- Reposted by Christian Britschgi"I like an escalator because an escalator can never break; it can only become stairs. There would never be an 'escalator temporarily out of order' sign, only 'escalator temporarily stairs. Sorry for the convenience.'" — Mitch Hedberg
- Reposted by Christian Britschgi@christianb.bsky.social on whether YIMBYism or post-neoliberalism is needed to get housing built reason.com/2025/08/19/a...
- So far there’s been 7 applications for SB 9 projects in the Palisades. For Newsom and Bass, that’s dangerous overdevelopment.
- Reposted by Christian BritschgiCalifornia Gov. Gavin Newsom and L.A. Mayor Karen Bass declare NIMBY martial law to prevent wildfire-ravaged properties from being turned into duplexes.
- I wrote up the supply portions of the new Senate housing bill for the newsletter. Basically it’s a bill of a million tweaks, with many of those tweaks focused on shifting existing federal grant spending toward higher-growth jurisdictions reason.com/2025/07/29/o...
- Reposted by Christian BritschgiLook at what they did to my big brutalist boy.
- I’m very supportive of speed cameras in the abstract but cities do also just use them as ATM machines
- Reposted by Christian BritschgiEvaluation of Minneapolis’ reducing zoning constraints in suggests that deregulation reduced housing costs by 15-23%—even without adding a lot of new units, because density alone may reduce construction costs. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
- This is democracy manifest
- A Chuck E. Cheese employee in full costume was arrested by Tallahassee officers for credit card fraud www.tallahassee.com/story/news/l...
- Didn’t realize until writing this piece but Seattle’s inclusionary zoning policy has no minimum threshold. Even if you’re adding just one unit of housing, you could end up having to pay affordable housing fees. Even if IZ were constitutional, that’s insane reason.com/2025/07/17/s...
- Reposted by Christian Britschgi@zyudhishthu.bsky.social, @christianb.bsky.social & others have shown how Minneapolis legalized triplexes but only built ~35 in its first 3 years. Portland built 8x faster. Why? Size. Minneapolis said triplex homes on a standard lot could average no more than 833sqft.
- Reposted by Christian Britschgiyour Reason headline of the day reason.com/2025/05/21/p...
- Two New Jersey business owners are having their properties (a tire shop and a 4plex) taken by the city of Perth Amboy b/c both are allegedly blighted. The city's evidence of blight? Its own mismapped property lines, litter on adjacent city land, and too little parking reason.com/2025/05/13/n...
- Pending the governor's approval, Montana will have made it legal to build six-story, market-rate apartments without parking in downtown commercial zones by-right. Meanwhile, some California lawmakers are still struggling with basic economic literacy. My latest newsletter: reason.com/2025/04/29/b...
- Hawaii Co. tells Shahzaad Ausman all permits are good to go on the house he's buying. A year later it says “oops the home has been illegal for decades. Move out or get fined.” Even after a court ruled his permits valid, Ausman tells me the county is still threatening fines reason.com/2025/04/15/h...
- This is wild ✅Developer proposes 254 affordable housing units ✅Town tells developer "actually we're gonna seize your land for a town hall" ✅Developer sues, saying this a sham taking ✅The town secretly transfers the property title to itself then tells developer to gtfo reason.com/2025/03/18/t...
- The acronym makes no sense here Forbidding Unlawful Representation of Roleplaying in Education (FURRIES) Act? If it's unlawful, isn't it already forbidden? it bans representation of roleplaying, as opposed to just roleplaying? where does the 'S' come from?
- Obviously the feds shouldn't have power over local/state govts tolling their roads, but it is amusing that the Trump admin's rationale for yanking congestion pricing was that it was really just about funding transit, not traffic reduction and Hochul's message is this? Everyone involved is a clown
- Gavin Newsom's latest "streamlining" order gives builders fake relief from rules requiring low-income housing destroyed in the L.A. fires be rebuilt as new affordable housing reason.com/2025/02/18/b...
- Reposted by Christian BritschgiFree markets give people want they want at the price they're willing and able to pay. It's a setup that respects people's freedom while sorting out their preferences in the aggregate. - @christianb.bsky.social reason.com/2025/02/11/w...
- There's definitely a curse at work
- In R.I., a developer uses a new state density bonus law to propose 252 unsubsidized affordable units. Local mayor vows to stop the project. A few weeks later he's proposing to seize the developer's land for a new town hall that had never been publicly discussed before. reason.com/2025/02/04/t...
- For the latest issue of @reason.com I wrote about how the Fair Housing Act has been interpreted to guarantee a right to emotional support parrots reason.com/2025/02/02/y...
- Reposted by Christian BritschgiGood points from @christianb.bsky.social: re-legalizing 4plexes & "middle housing" is more about housing *choice* than about housing supply. (He doesn't mention desegregation, but that too.) To get lots more homes, we need lots of good ol apartment zoning too! reason.com/2025/01/28/m...
- Looking at some new data from Spokane & Austin, it seems fair to say that the modal missing middle reform will boost yearly production by at most 5 percent. That’s not going to lower citywide housing costs. But it does give people more choice in where they want to live. reason.com/2025/01/28/m...
- While I do think AOC's comments on zoning have improved, her conversion on this issue is also much exaggerated. reason.com/2024/09/24/c...
- AOC going from vague left-NIMBY to actively self-IDing as YIMBY is when I went from “she’s a charismatic young progressive, cool!” to “give this woman an army” I think. Consequential policy issue where she did the reading and became an advocate for the better option even in the face of some headwind
- Reporting on the L.A. fires had me wondering how well the rebuilding efforts on Maui have been going since the August 2023 fires. Of the 2,000 homes destroyed or severely damaged, a grand total of 3 have been rebuilt. That's a rate of one home rebuilt every six months. reason.com/2025/01/22/1...
- Austin and San Francisco getting the same amount of money in the second round of "YIMBY Grant" awards says a lot about how well-conceived this program is
- California's regulations around zoning, insurance, public land management, are all bad and desperately in need of reform. But I don't think any of these had more than a marginal impact on the severity of the L.A. fires. reason.com/2025/01/14/t...
- Boston bragging about how a third of the pitiful amount of housing it builds is “affordable” irritated me enough to write this week’s newsletter all about just how misguided that view is. reason.com/2025/01/07/w...
- Reposted by Christian BritschgiA HoCo man built a backyard go-kart track for his son. Without a single permit. Neighbors want to make him tear it down. The man says his neighbors "suck" and are against one of the few biracial families in the area. @jessmnocera.bsky.social has the tale. www.thebaltimorebanner.com/politics-pow...
- We have new permitting data on the results of Austin's 'missing middle' reforms. Over 200 individual units permitted 6 months after implementation. That would make it more productive than Minneapolis', PDX's missing middle reforms were even a year out.
- Not sure how much of that is Austin's reforms just being more liberal versus the city just being larger than MPS, PDX. Link to the full report: www.documentcloud.org/documents/25...
- What I wrote about the Austin reforms when they passed in December 2023. The above data is from Feb to August 2024. reason.com/2023/12/12/h...
