Noah Kazis
noahkazis.bsky.social
Noah Kazis
@noahkazis.bsky.social
Ass't professor at Michigan Law. Formerly NYU Furman Center, NYC Law Department, Streetsblog NYC. Cities, suburbs, housing and transportation.
This stretched two full miles, ending at the Big House, game traffic honking support the entire time. Ann Arbor upon Ann Arbor. It was awesome.
Signs at the Ann Arbor, Michigan #NoKings protests.
October 18, 2025 at 7:23 PM
Reposted by Noah Kazis
October 18, 2025 at 6:41 PM
It goes without saying by now, but these are forms of discrimination that have been upheld as FHA violations since immediately after the passage of the Act and which have specific textual grounding.

They simply oppose fair housing and don't want to enforce it.

papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
September 22, 2025 at 2:04 PM
Another thought on the politics here too: This is from Elizabeth Warren and Tim Scott. It's not "four moderates" bipartisanship, it's the real left and right.

That tells us something important about "abundance" politics.
I finally had time to digest it, and the big bipartisan housing package looks impressive. A little of everything, from zoning and NEPA to mortgages and vouchers. Lots of smart sensible tweaks, but also a sea change getting the feds in the game on zoning reform

www.banking.senate.gov/newsroom/min...
Scott, Warren Announce Markup of Landmark Bipartisan Housing Legislation from Banking Committee Members | United States Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs
The Official website of The United States Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs
www.banking.senate.gov
July 28, 2025 at 8:57 PM
I finally had time to digest it, and the big bipartisan housing package looks impressive. A little of everything, from zoning and NEPA to mortgages and vouchers. Lots of smart sensible tweaks, but also a sea change getting the feds in the game on zoning reform

www.banking.senate.gov/newsroom/min...
Scott, Warren Announce Markup of Landmark Bipartisan Housing Legislation from Banking Committee Members | United States Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs
The Official website of The United States Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs
www.banking.senate.gov
July 28, 2025 at 8:28 PM
My old local!
Fenway concession workers on strike
July 27, 2025 at 1:00 PM
Reposted by Noah Kazis
I get the focus on national politics now, but in Ann Arbor our city plan is facing anti-growth pushback and needs support. Growth is good! Families *want* to live here, and we should make that possible.

Learn about this cause and get involved here!
www.moreneighborsa2.org?utm_source=n...
Home | Neighbors for More Neighbors A2
www.moreneighborsa2.org
June 30, 2025 at 6:42 PM
My NYC mayor take: The best accomplishments of the Bloomberg, deBlasio, and Adams admins each came on issues where they hired great staff and gave them room to execute.

Andrew Cuomo has never done that in his life. He's uniquely unsuited for being mayor -- whether you're left, right or center.
June 13, 2025 at 5:41 PM
This was a very fun project to join. I got to think about how local gov will be transformed in a world of longer life spans. Think over-represented seniors at public meetings and property tax revolts over the schools.

www.cambridge.org/core/books/l...
May 29, 2025 at 5:56 PM
May 22, 2025 at 6:52 PM
Very happy to see this in print--and thank you to the amazing editors at the Virginia L. Rev. for getting it here.

virginialawreview.org/articles/the...

I argue that the Fair Housing Act uses a distinctive conception of discrimination. It questions market structures and not just transactions.
The Radical Fair Housing Act - Virginia Law Review
This Article uncovers the radical logic at the core of the Fair Housing Act (“FHA”). It is a law which can question and remake the underlying structure of housing markets, not just police individual t...
virginialawreview.org
May 20, 2025 at 2:36 PM
I really love this paragraph, which captures what's both valuable-to-necessary and annoying-to-dangerous about Abundance Politics (as opposed to various abundance policies)
May 15, 2025 at 2:08 PM
To be clear, this eliminates the market-based demand side and market-based supply side programs.

As Russ Vought himself explained, the goal is nothing to do with efficiency and everything to do with segregation
Toplines from HUD section of Trump proposed FY26 budget:
Sections 8, 9, 202 and 811 all eliminated and replaced by much smaller state block grant.
Elimination of HOME+CDBG.
Elimination of the Pathways to Removing Obstacles program, which helped cities do zoning/permitting reform.
May 2, 2025 at 4:13 PM
A final, personal note. This rule is lawless and this administration is lawless. “Why bother” is a fair question—and one I asked myself a lot when working on this. It’s pretty clear HUD doesn’t care about comments here (even if a lot of folks at HUD really do).

But we just can’t think that way.
In March, HUD declared it was “revising” (read: gutting) its Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing regs. That was illegal. I got mad and submitted a comment. www.regulations.gov/comment/HUD-...

It’s not in the 100 worst things happening right now, but it’s still MY thing. So, thread:
Regulations.gov
www.regulations.gov
May 2, 2025 at 12:33 PM
In March, HUD declared it was “revising” (read: gutting) its Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing regs. That was illegal. I got mad and submitted a comment. www.regulations.gov/comment/HUD-...

It’s not in the 100 worst things happening right now, but it’s still MY thing. So, thread:
Regulations.gov
www.regulations.gov
May 2, 2025 at 12:19 PM
The Trump proposal to cut and block-grant housing vouchers is as callous as you think--but also stupider. States have bad incentives on rental assistance--even the limited $ would be spent inefficiently, with less tenant choice. Conservatives should oppose this too.

www.nytimes.com/2025/04/17/u...
White House Eyes Overhaul of Federal Housing Aid to the Poor
The Trump administration has considered sharply curtailing vouchers as part of its budget for the 2026 fiscal year.
www.nytimes.com
April 21, 2025 at 1:41 PM
I can tell you what makes me feel unsafe, as a Jew, right now: secret police, deportations and prosecutions of political opponents, eugenics.

Not in my name.

Proud to have signed this letter.
April 1, 2025 at 4:00 PM
My own review of Abundance is up, at The Guardian:

TLDR: It's a necessary policy intervention, right on the merits, and there's no one better at explaining this stuff.

But for people quick to call others "tradeoff denialists," they are too guilty of the same.

www.theguardian.com/books/2025/m...
Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson review – make America build again
Over-regulation has rendered progressive change impossible, argue the authors of this clear and rigorous book. But what about the tradeoffs?
www.theguardian.com
March 27, 2025 at 7:28 PM
Plainly true.

See also: the (illegal) attempts to nullify the Fair Housing Act's AFFH provision, destroy the FHIP program, reject HUD referrals to DOJ over Texas cases...
March 27, 2025 at 2:01 PM
OK, the actual reason to do this was to take some stock of the discourse -- so some themes:

All of this deeply sharing the basic premise that we should build more housing, transportation, clean energy. We should increase state capacity. And a lot of that requires deregulation and less process.
Because Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson's "Abundance" is less a book than a discourse-generating machine (by design), I'm going to review the *reviews* (I also have a review of the actual book coming, I'm not a total weirdo).

Roughly from worst to best:
March 18, 2025 at 7:54 PM
Reposted by Noah Kazis
Everyone means the exact same thing when they say “neoliberalism,” which is, “the bad policies that the elites made.”
March 18, 2025 at 7:30 PM
Because Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson's "Abundance" is less a book than a discourse-generating machine (by design), I'm going to review the *reviews* (I also have a review of the actual book coming, I'm not a total weirdo).

Roughly from worst to best:
March 18, 2025 at 7:01 PM