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Cullum Clark, director of the Economic Growth Initiative at the George W. Bush Institute, returns to the Strong Towns Podcast to discuss his recently published report on housing reform. Cullum highlights several reforms that have proven to be economically feasible, politically realistic, and impactful on a large scale.

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  Chuck Marohn 0:00

  Chuck, hey everybody. This is Chuck Marohn. Welcome back to the strong towns podcast. We've had Cullum Clark on here before, from the Bush Institute, the George W Bush Institute. The latest report that they have out is blueprint for opportunity. Series number five, aptly titled, build homes, expand opportunity. I feel like that's the most succinct title you've had. Cullum is that, is that fair? Welcome back to the strong towns podcast.

  Cullum Clark 0:34

  Thanks so much, Chuck. It's good to be with you. I think this is my third time, and I've loved the other two, and I'm honored to be back. I think about these titles, and some have been better than others, but, but I like the idea of the verbs, the imperative sense of we need to go and do something. As I contemplate everything that's going on around housing in our country, I think what we have is a great deal of talk and a whole lot of inaction. We do have some good reforms here and there. So I'm an optimist at heart, and I want to try to point to progress and not primarily focus on shortcomings. But I do think there is just an overwhelming need to kind of get at it, to get to work on it.

  And you know, when I say that, I wish I could say that in this report I had come up with some absolutely wonderful new local housing reform that no one's ever thought of before. I don't think that's actually possible to do at this point, or at least it's beyond me to do that. What I can do, maybe a little bit better, is, first of all, be an economist and try to evaluate the evidence. What do we actually see that is having an effect at scale that I think I can make a bit of a study of? Another is to try to think about like, well, what has turned out to be politically feasible, because I do work at a think tank, and I think we're trying to be realists here, what actually is both impactful and has gotten through in some places. And then I think also to try to articulate what success looks like. Because success is not, you know, Nirvana in this in this world that we live in, it is we need to be able to sort of define what it would look like and aim at that.

  And so, yeah, build and expand. And as for linking homes and opportunity, I really want to emphasize they're joined at the hip. I think sometimes people think of housing as kind of in its own silo. It really needs to not be. It's all about creating a strong town, creating a strong community, a place that is a good place to live, a good place to raise a family, start a business, get ahead in a job, pursue whatever dreams that you have in this in this life, it's all joined at the hip, and being able to afford a decent home is absolutely a prerequisite for doing those other things.

  Chuck Marohn 2:39

  I feel like you and I are well aligned in many, many ways. And I wanna spend some time like going through that. I want people to listen to the whole thing, because I think there are a few places where we have some obvious divergences too, and you and I have discussed these, so it's not, you know, I think there's two perspectives. I think at the beginning here, you have some really strong arguments about missing middle housing and a reform agenda for cities. How do we start with existing neighborhoods and build affordability there? Like, what is the message for mayors city councils, when they're looking at their existing neighborhoods, maybe particularly ones that are struggling? How should they be thinking about these differently than than the way they are today?

  Cullum Clark 3:24

  Well, I think one thing that I really try to do in the report is to start with the idea that we need more housing, and we need more housing in good locations, so locations that help people to, you know, pursue whatever it is they want to pursue in their life, which oftentimes includes a job and maybe good schools for kids and so on. So both getting more of it and in good locations is kind of the core of the story. I'm kind of agnostic about the extent to which we manage to do more infill home building in locations that are relatively densely built up and urban, versus areas that are, that are they're new, that are expansions of metropolitan areas outward, typically, although it could be kind of larger scale infill, the area between a suburb and a city that never has quite been built out. I generally like it all, so long as we build a good, integrated place, a place that incorporates, you know, everything that human beings need to thrive in relatively close proximity. So in terms of infill and dense built up areas, here's what I try to do to check in this report, it's easy to list the full possible toolkit of reforms. That's not hard. It's been done in lots and lots of places.

  What I've tried to do that I hope adds a little bit of value, is to first of all, take a pretty disciplined look at, well, which of these reforms have actually gotten through in one or a handful of places, where does it actually seem possible politically, and also, where has it been impactful? Because, like, one thing that I think is kind of a problem in the whole housing discussion, the incentives for political leaders can be very. Out of line and, you know? And one thing that I think is really unhelpful is someone manages to build one single, little garden apartment building someplace with like, 20 units, and