The hottest Urban Policy Substack posts right now

And their main takeaways
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Top U.S. Politics Topics

San Francisco's urban revival is in danger

Noahpinion • 30235 implied HN points • 12 Mar 26
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Urban Policy
  1. San Francisco’s recent turnaround — big drops in crime and some pro-housing moves — came from a moderate mayor working with a slim moderate majority on the Board of Supervisors.
  2. Before that, a hardline progressive board blocked housing and public-safety reforms, contributing to high crime, very low housing production, and economic decline.
  3. A single upcoming District 4 special election could flip the Board back to hardline progressives, which would likely derail the city’s recovery and make future reforms much harder to pass.

Erdmann Housing Tracker, 2025 Year in Review (January to March)

Erdmann Housing Tracker • 252 implied HN points • 25 Mar 26
💼 Business Urban Policy
  1. The housing shortage and rules that block new construction, along with tighter mortgage access, have pushed rents way up and suppressed household formation, which hits low-income families hardest.
  2. Common economic measures get the story backwards: rising rents drive price/rent ratios and displace poorer households, and metro-area averages mask the within-city inequalities that matter most.
  3. Policy choices — from lending rules to bans on investor activity and restrictive zoning — are a major cause of the problem, and building more homes is the practical market solution that would reduce inequality.

Where does a liberal go from here?

Noahpinion • 95001 implied HN points • 04 Jan 26
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Urban Policy
  1. Liberal ideals like freedom, equality, economic security, tolerance, and democratic inclusion have produced real, lasting gains and are still worth defending.
  2. Recent progressive overreach in culture, governance, and policy eroded public trust and helped fuel a conservative backlash.
  3. The way forward is to try again: learn from mistakes, recommit to practical, principle-driven liberalism, and rebuild steadily instead of abandoning the project.

Perceptions of Crime and Disorder

In My Tribe • 744 implied HN points • 01 Mar 26
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Urban Policy
  1. People often confuse visible disorder—like graffiti, litter, fare-jumping, and public urination—with a rise in serious crime, so cities can feel unsafe even when violent crime is low.
  2. Social cohesion depends on rewarding cooperators and punishing defectors; when public norms are openly flouted it demoralizes others and encourages more rule-breaking.
  3. Worries about immigrants often reflect fears they won’t adopt local norms, so promoting assimilation and consistent enforcement of consensus norms is presented as a way to reduce public disorder and restore trust.

Reading List 1/10/2026

Construction Physics • 9395 implied HN points • 10 Jan 26
🕹 Technology Urban Policy
  1. California now requires landlords to provide a working stove and refrigerator, ending the common practice of renters buying and moving appliances themselves.
  2. Parents are turning to robotaxis like Waymo to shuttle kids when buses and ride-hail services are unreliable, which raises enforcement questions because minors are technically barred from riding alone in some places.
  3. To meet massive data-center power needs, companies are proposing unconventional sources such as repurposed naval reactors, jet engines, and gas turbines instead of waiting for new grid power.
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The Gripes of Wrath: Inside NYC’s ‘Rental Ripoff’ Hearings

Common Sense with Bari Weiss • 319 implied HN points • 12 Mar 26
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Urban Policy
  1. People packed the Bronx hearing to call out bad landlords and complain about unsafe, exploitative housing; attendees were angry and demanding real change.
  2. The event offered tenant unions, know-your-rights workshops, and free legal aid booths, showing strong grassroots organizing and practical support for renters.
  3. The hearings are a political test for the mayor’s promise to challenge landlords, and tenants say they want concrete action, not just lip service.

No, buses should not be "free"

Machine Learning Everything • 1379 implied HN points • 19 Feb 26
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Urban Policy
  1. Fares are more than revenue — they’re information that reveals demand and cost so transit agencies can decide where to add, trim, or change service.
  2. Making buses free changes behavior: zero price pulls in marginal riders who value trips less, which can crowd, slow, and degrade service for others.
  3. A small fare acts as a behavioral gate and preserves competition; instead of blanket free service, targeted subsidies, income‑based fares, and enforcement are better tools to help riders and keep the system functioning.

America's mayors are right to support small business

Noahpinion • 14470 implied HN points • 03 Dec 25
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Urban Policy
  1. Small businesses are a powerful ladder to the middle class and boost economic opportunity, especially for immigrants and owner-operators who gain wealth and mobility from running firms.
  2. A dense network of independent shops and restaurants makes cities more livable and vibrant by creating third spaces, encouraging foot traffic, and supporting safer, healthier urban life.
  3. City policies that cut red tape, speed permits, reduce fees, and fund small-business support are smart investments because they strengthen local economies, broaden capital ownership, and help stabilize pro-market politics even if big chains can be more efficient.

More thoughts on the investor ban and on homebuilders

Erdmann Housing Tracker • 295 implied HN points • 13 Mar 26
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Urban Policy
  1. The investor ban is driven more by moral prejudice than by strong evidence, and it risks destroying an industry based on misleading interpretations of a few studies.
  2. Large investors have not been the primary cause of rising home prices — owner-occupiers and small buyers largely drive demand and investor share has fluctuated without large macro effects.
  3. Banning big investors would likely shrink housing supply, cost many jobs, and help land speculators and existing landlords, while making it harder to build the millions of rental homes the country needs.

My Day in the Socialist Snow Corps

Common Sense with Bari Weiss • 1043 implied HN points • 25 Feb 26
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Urban Policy
  1. The city recruited emergency snow shovelers at up to $30 an hour, attracting people who wanted both pay and a chance to help during the blizzard.
  2. The program was pitched as a collective, big-government effort but suffered from poor communication, confusing requirements, and bureaucratic disorganization.
  3. Participants found the experience mixed: it felt heartwarming to pitch in, yet the messy implementation and lack of clear information made the day frustrating.

San Francisco should be profitable—instead property owners are

The Novelleist • 401 implied HN points • 24 Feb 26
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Urban Policy
  1. Private land ownership and speculation have let landlords capture rising city land values, leaving municipalities unable to collect that wealth and making housing and public projects unaffordable. This concentration of unearned land rent stalls development and shifts gains away from city residents.
  2. Taxing only the unimproved value of land (a land value tax or Georgism) would punish speculation, encourage productive use of lots, and give cities a reliable revenue stream to fund services and infrastructure without taxing improvements. Land held in trusts or leased publicly achieves similar results by keeping land value for the community.
  3. Political and legal changes centralized tax power away from cities (and limited municipal control over land), so cities are economically productive but lack money and authority to execute big plans. When a city or public trust controls land, however, it can implement master plans and capture the benefits for the public, as seen in places that retain land ownership.

The Housing Crisis as a Land Crisis

Progress and Poverty • 2155 implied HN points • 05 Feb 26
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Urban Policy
  1. The housing affordability problem is really a land crisis: scarce, desirable urban land near jobs and amenities is constrained, so prices rise even though there’s plenty of land elsewhere and building costs themselves haven’t driven the spike.
  2. A long run of policy and technological changes de-densified cities, and modern shifts (congestion, tighter credit, dual-career households, more single adults) have re-concentrated demand in a few job-rich places, making central land much more valuable and harder to expand.
  3. Solving the problem means loosening the land constraint — allow more housing where demand is highest and curb land speculation with tools like land value taxes or public land leasing so the location premium benefits the community.

Another cool paper and more notes on a bad paper on housing supply

Erdmann Housing Tracker • 463 implied HN points • 02 Mar 26
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Urban Policy
  1. Preapproved permits carry a large market premium: land and sites with ready-to-issue permits sell for much more and are far likelier to be developed, so permitting frictions explain a meaningful share of the gap between housing prices and construction costs.
  2. Common economic models and supply measures rest on assumptions like identical workers and costless mobility that don’t match how people actually behave, so those models can misread affordability, displacement, and migration dynamics.
  3. The 2008 mortgage crash and collapse in single-family construction shifted the supply picture nationwide, making many standard metro-level supply metrics uninformative; high prices in expensive cities often reflect broad demand vs. constrained supply, not unique local popularity.

Da Bears. Moving to Indiana?

Points And Figures • 799 implied HN points • 19 Feb 26
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Urban Policy
  1. The Chicago Bears are moving to Hammond, Indiana because Illinois politicians and taxes made building in Arlington Heights impractical. Indiana is offering a more business-friendly option that could support stadium-driven development.
  2. High property taxes and intrusive bureaucracy in Illinois are pushing residents and businesses to lower-tax states like Nevada, changing where people buy homes and where companies choose to operate.
  3. Relocations of major teams and businesses can spur redevelopment in struggling regions and become central political talking points about taxation and governance, influencing campaigns focused on avoiding an "Illinois-like" decline.

Decades of Wisdom from an LVT Advocate: Josh Vincent

Progress and Poverty • 615 implied HN points • 24 Feb 26
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Urban Policy
  1. A land value tax (LVT) is a practical way for cities to capture the unearned value of land to fund local services, lower taxes on buildings, and encourage infill development so cities can compete with suburbs.
  2. Getting LVT adopted is a pragmatic, local political project: start with a clear fiscal problem, recruit a local champion, run straightforward data showing most homeowners and small businesses will save, and design a revenue‑neutral shift.
  3. Compared with income, sales, or one‑off wealth taxes (and restrictive rules like Prop 13), LVT is harder to evade, better aligns incentives for land use, and is especially timely as cities and states take on more fiscal responsibility.

Can Reform be YIMBY? Why I'm doubtful that Reform can fix the housing crisis

Odds and Ends of History • 737 implied HN points • 11 Feb 26
🌍 World Politics Urban Policy
  1. The political right is shifting toward Reform, with think-tanks, campaigners and YIMBY groups increasingly aligning with or opening up to Reform supporters.
  2. High-profile defections like Simon Dudley bring mainstream YIMBY ideas—such as pro-building advocacy and 'representative planning'—into Reform's orbit.
  3. Despite some optimism, many remain skeptical that Reform or a Farage-led government will actually solve the housing crisis and see the moves as politically expedient rather than a real policy breakthrough.

Georgism through Land Leasing

Progress and Poverty • 2078 implied HN points • 06 Jan 26
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Urban Policy
  1. Municipal land leasing is a practical, proven form of Georgist policy that can generate substantial, ongoing public revenue and fund local projects.
  2. Long-term ground leases with reassessment points, lump-sum payments, annual fees, and repossession clauses let cities monetize land while retaining ownership and capture rising land value in predictable ways.
  3. Leasehold monetization requires capable public development authorities and a more hands-on planning role, so it’s not a perfect substitute for land value taxation, but it is often more politically feasible and complementary to tax reforms.

Mamdani Is Inviting a Property Tax Revolt

Common Sense with Bari Weiss • 394 implied HN points • 19 Feb 26
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Urban Policy
  1. The mayor proposed a 9.5% property tax increase to help close a roughly $5.4 billion budget shortfall after state leaders refused to raise taxes on the wealthy.
  2. The hike would hit a broad swath of New Yorkers — homeowners across boroughs and renters who could face landlords passing on costs or landlords going under.
  3. Progressive leaders have labeled the plan inequitable, and it risks provoking a voter backlash or tax revolt over rising property bills.

A Simple Test of What People Really Think About Immigration

Common Sense with Bari Weiss • 445 implied HN points • 16 Feb 26
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Urban Policy
  1. A quick way to judge whether immigration is helping or hurting a city is to watch local real estate prices — if immigration were ruining a place, you'd expect property values to fall.
  2. Home prices have long tracked a city's overall health, dropping when jobs, safety, or governance decline and rising when a city revives.
  3. Property values aren't a perfect measure, but they're measurable and force you to weigh the net pluses and minuses; they tend to capture major economic and social trends in a simple, quantitative way.

Landscape 6 – New Year, New Legislative Sessions and Launching the CLE Board

Progress and Poverty • 962 implied HN points • 21 Jan 26
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Urban Policy
  1. Land value tax legislation is gaining momentum nationwide, with new bills and carryover proposals active in states like Maryland, New Hampshire, New York, Minnesota, Washington, Michigan, and Ohio.
  2. A new Center for Land Economics board has been launched with prominent housing, parking, and policy leaders, signaling more organized and mainstream support for land value tax advocacy.
  3. Media, research, and political figures are increasingly discussing and endorsing land value tax, bringing more attention through reports and editorials even as some local pushback and policy rollbacks occur.

Cool Paper on the progressive effect of upzoning

Erdmann Housing Tracker • 252 implied HN points • 09 Feb 26
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Urban Policy
  1. Targeted upzoning mainly triggers redevelopment on low-density, high-value parcels near city centers, and those changes tend to take many years to materialize.
  2. Newly added floorspace lowers rents only modestly and diffusely because supply effects spread across the region, so undoing the large scarcity-driven rent premium would require much larger, citywide building and depends a lot on migration responses.
  3. Mid-20th-century zoning now imposes large welfare losses because floorspace prices far exceed construction costs, and the post-2008 mortgage/finance shock that curtailed suburban single-family building amplified the current housing shortage.

Billionaires Can Flee Mamdani, But Small Business Can’t Hide

Common Sense with Bari Weiss • 445 implied HN points • 14 Jan 26
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Urban Policy
  1. The mayor’s ambitious social programs will be expensive and will require new revenue from the state to be paid for.
  2. Wealthy individuals can often avoid higher personal taxes by moving away, but corporations are harder to escape taxing because state and city corporate taxes are apportioned based on where their sales occur.
  3. If Albany raises corporate income taxes to fund these plans, the increases could ripple through the economy and end up hurting small, local businesses.

How To Save The Movie Theater

The Discourse Lounge • 455 implied HN points • 31 Dec 25
🎭️ Culture Urban Policy
  1. Movie theaters are disappearing because streaming and tough economics make traditional cinema business models hard to sustain, even though people still seek out big, communal movie experiences.
  2. Local governments should proactively support at least one local theater with tools like low-interest loans, bond measures, or modest taxes so a nonprofit or small operator can buy and run it.
  3. Independently run or nonprofit cinemas can succeed as community hubs that show diverse programming, draw people to nearby businesses, and justify public investment.

What should America’s transit ‘moonshot’ look like?

Urben Field Notes • 232 implied HN points • 26 Jan 26
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Urban Policy
  1. The country needs a transit “moonshot” — a big, sustained federal push to build far more high-quality transit in the places with the most ridership potential.
  2. That effort should prioritize modern technologies and design choices like automation, electrification, grade separation, and through-running so transit is fast, frequent, and competitive with driving.
  3. Practical priorities include building the top high-ridership grade-separated subway lines, transforming busy commuter rails into electrified regional metros with through-running, and fully grade-separating and automating top light-rail corridors.

Berlin hospitals struggle to treat hundreds of slip-and-falls after repeated snow and ice storms because environmental laws forbid the use of melting agents on stairs and sidewalks

eugyppius: a plague chronicle • 238 implied HN points • 30 Jan 26
📰 News Urban Policy
  1. Hospitals are overwhelmed with hundreds of slip-and-fall injuries from weeks of ice and snow, with many fractures and serious cases straining emergency services.
  2. Environmental rules banning salt on sidewalks and stairs to protect plants have kept pedestrian areas icy, even though roads and bike paths are still treated.
  3. Authorities only recently allowed salt in exceptional cases and suggested personal precautions like shoe spikes, but the move came after many injuries and left legal uncertainty.

Chartbook 394 "A City we can afford": capitalism and democracy in New York

Chartbook • 2718 implied HN points • 29 Jun 25
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Urban Policy
  1. New York City is a very exciting and diverse place, full of contrasts between rich and poor. It has a unique mix of cultures and a reputation as a hub of innovation and debate.
  2. Socio-economic inequality is a major issue in New York, with a significant divide between high earners and those struggling to make ends meet. This gap has only gotten wider in recent years, especially after COVID.
  3. The recent political shift towards progressive leadership, like that of Zohran Mamdani, shows hope for addressing issues of affordability and inequality. However, there are strong forces that want to maintain the status quo.

Office hours—register now for February dates

The Novelleist • 43 implied HN points • 13 Feb 26
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Urban Policy
  1. February office hours are open for registration, including a session this afternoon and meetings on the next two Fridays at 1pm MT and Wednesday Feb 25 at 1pm MT.
  2. Only paid subscribers can sign up to join these sessions.
  3. The format is conversational — bring a short intro and something you're reading to kick off discussion; past topics have included revolution and secession, new technologies (like BYD), city design, and governance movements.

Zohran Mamdani's Budgetary Buffoonery

QTR’s Fringe Finance • 45 implied HN points • 18 Feb 26
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Urban Policy
  1. A nearly 10% property tax increase runs against the mayor's affordability promises and shifts a big bill onto homeowners and landlords.
  2. Property taxes are a blunt tool that often lead owners to pass costs to renters or cut maintenance, which undermines housing affordability.
  3. Relying on repeated large tax hikes risks eroding political support and could drive wealthy residents and businesses away, shrinking the city's tax base.

On leadership, planning, careers with Shin-pei Tsay

Exasperated Infrastructures • 14 implied HN points • 05 Mar 26
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Urban Policy
  1. City innovation works best when data, design, and civic experimentation are joined so pilots can be tested, evaluated, and scaled across departments.
  2. Parking is an everyday, retail-like urban problem that affects car owners and non-car users alike, so it needs a clear inventory, better communication, and creative mixes of policy and technology to balance people’s needs.
  3. Genuine public engagement and storytelling should define problems before prescribing solutions, and should be paired with flexible zoning and incremental, well-communicated action to meet climate and mobility goals.

Micro versus Macro thinking and affordability

Erdmann Housing Tracker • 273 implied HN points • 14 Dec 25
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Urban Policy
  1. Micro thinking focuses on surviving day-to-day and treats high housing costs as an inevitable local problem, while macro thinking asks why systems and policies produce those costs and where levers for change might be.
  2. A long run of shocks plus legal and capacity constraints—like zoning, mortgage rules, and post-2008 supply limits—have kept housing supply too low and pushed prices up, making it more expensive for people to "trade down" and worsening affordability.
  3. The affordability squeeze affects everyone but hurts lower-income families worst, so middle-class strains are a warning sign that zoning and mortgage suppression deserve serious policy scrutiny and collective solutions.

New York Can’t Afford to Sideline Private Developers

QTR’s Fringe Finance • 21 implied HN points • 25 Feb 26
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Urban Policy
  1. New York needs to build many more homes where people want to live, and the private sector is essential because the city can’t afford to pay for all the new housing itself.
  2. Policies that sideline developers—like strict tenant controls, talk of expropriation, or big public housing plans—discourage investment and reduce the supply of rental housing, which tends to raise rents.
  3. Given tight city finances and the risk of people and firms leaving if taxes rise, the practical way to close the housing gap is to work with private builders and use market-driven solutions.

How "YMCA" explains the homelessness crisis

Urben Field Notes • 124 implied HN points • 09 Dec 25
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Urban Policy
  1. Single-room occupancy hotels were once a widespread, low-cost housing option that housed many different people with small private rooms and shared facilities.
  2. Policy choices—like zoning bans, urban renewal demolitions, and incentives to convert SROs—destroyed millions of these units and removed the cheapest rung of the housing ladder, helping create the modern homelessness crisis.
  3. There is renewed interest in rebuilding SRO-style housing through office conversions, co-living, and new laws, but these models need strong safeguards to avoid unsafe or exploitative conditions.

Banfield on the Hyperbole of Urban Bankruptcy

Bet On It • 135 implied HN points • 28 Nov 25
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Urban Policy
  1. Politicians often exaggerate city budget crises to gain credit or shift blame, rather than because the city is truly insolvent.
  2. When leaders claim a city "must" get state or federal aid, it usually means local taxpayers prefer not to pay or hope others will, not that paying would force people into poverty or be impossible.
  3. If people aren't willing to pay to fix a problem, it's probably not truly critical, and governments still have options like austerity or tapping unused tax bases (for example, taxing unimproved land) instead of declaring bankruptcy.

Cea Weaver vs. The Entire Field Of Economics

QTR’s Fringe Finance • 60 implied HN points • 11 Jan 26
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Urban Policy
  1. Replacing market signals with collective ownership and a flat 30% rent destroys incentives. Builders stop building, maintenance declines, and allocation becomes political instead of efficient.
  2. Funding this by printing money fuels inflation and shifts purchasing power to asset holders and political insiders. That makes costs rise and hurts workers, renters, and savers.
  3. The combined effect is not more affordable housing but less housing and worse quality, plus expanding bureaucracy that benefits friends while everyone else waits. Shrinking private investment and political allocation create scarcity and decay.

Mamdani’s Clown Show Offers Its Opening Act

QTR’s Fringe Finance • 61 implied HN points • 07 Jan 26
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Urban Policy
  1. He promised big changes on affordability and free transit, but a subway and bus fare increase right after he took office exposed a gap between his slogans and what actually happens.
  2. He focused on high‑profile, symbolic fights like protesting World Cup ticket prices without any real authority or concrete plan, which looks more like showmanship than problem‑solving.
  3. Appointments of housing activists who have criticized private property and a false claim about being "briefed" on a federal operation triggered backlash and suggest he’s prioritizing ideology and image over practical governance.

Why American Cities (Actually) Suck

The Discourse Lounge • 1348 implied HN points • 31 Dec 24
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Urban Policy
  1. Many American cities struggle because of poor political support and funding for urban infrastructure. Unlike some other countries, America often neglects its cities, leading to issues like poverty and crime.
  2. Increased policing alone won't solve the problems in American cities. Issues like gun violence and bad transportation systems need to be addressed holistically.
  3. To make cities better, America could learn from European and Asian approaches to urban planning and social welfare. Improving community support and organizing urban services better could lead to healthier, safer cities.

Abundists Should Hedge Their Bets

Abstraction • 24 implied HN points • 05 Feb 26
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Urban Policy
  1. Housing supply reforms are the right long-term fix but they act slowly and invisibly, so voters may not notice benefits or may even blame reforms for short-term price or value changes.
  2. Remote work immediately unlocks a large 'shadow' housing supply by letting people move to cheaper places, which lowers competition for city housing and gives families quick, tangible time and cost relief.
  3. Cities are pushing return-to-office to protect municipal revenues, which harms families with long commutes, so defending remote work is a practical, pro-family political strategy that buys time for slower housing reforms.

American cities are poised for a street design revolution

Urben Field Notes • 81 implied HN points • 15 Dec 25
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Urban Policy
  1. Cities can reclaim narrow, busy streets by creating car-free or low-traffic neighborhoods that prioritize walking, biking, and public life, though access for deliveries and people with disabilities will need careful solutions.
  2. The fastest way to make transit competitive is true bus rapid transit with physically separated lanes, all-door and level boarding, and priority signals so buses move reliably and quickly.
  3. Redesigned streets require comprehensive curb management that assigns paid, designated curb space for deliveries, ride-hail, dining, EV charging, and bike parking so the whole system functions efficiently.

Mini Exasperation #3

Exasperated Infrastructures • 16 implied HN points • 23 Jan 26
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Urban Policy
  1. You can just do stuff. Start small actions—write the blog, email the contact, fix the bike lane, or learn the skill—because action often matters more than overthinking.
  2. Reauthorizing federal transportation programs could focus on using grants better, improving environmental sustainability, and directing investments to communities that need them most. These are sensible goals but are often left vague and risk never being fully implemented without clearer plans.
  3. Many local policy moves are politically driven and miss the real problem or cost, like blanket e-bike registration schemes or long-term parking privatizations. Those choices can create big administrative headaches and long-term financial or practical harms without actually improving safety or service.

Expensive Cities Aren't Attractive Cities

Erdmann Housing Tracker • 337 implied HN points • 14 Dec 24
🇺🇸 U.S. Politics Urban Policy
  1. High housing prices in cities don't mean they're great places to live. Instead, these prices often come from not having enough houses.
  2. Cities like Los Angeles are expensive mainly due to people wanting to stay near their families and jobs, even when it gets hard to afford living there.
  3. If cities allowed more housing to be built, they could become more affordable, meaning people wouldn't have to feel forced to leave their homes.