2026-05-20

the most natural act is to create something in the likeness of oneself (aristotle)

this random ap physics teacher in vermont is a gem: How to Be an Evil Genius

pattern books of pre-approved housing designs for quicker approvals
- pre-approved plans worked in other cities
some deregulation around building requirements (unrequire permanent chasis on manufactured homes and environmental reviews for "homes built in the gaps between existing buildings"
groups owning more than 350 homes (how'd they decide 350...) can't buy more single-family homes
- weirdly, NPR says "corporate landlords have become a sort of bipartisan boogeyman", implying NPR thinks there is nothing wrong with one fund owning corporate landlords?
  - looking into it, it seems the "blackstone buying homes is causing all our problems" view might be overblown. they own .06% of housing stock (60k single family homes, 210k other units). which is non-trivial, but not a root cause.
  - institutional investors own 3% of single-family rentals
  - certain cities have disproportionate amounts of institutional real estate: atlanta (25%) and jacksonville (21%)
npr says estimated 4 MILLION unit gap between demand and supply. is that real? that's insane. is that just family demand or investor demand? there are only 133.6m households in the us. so that's a 3% gap.