This is the last of three FREE Insight Columns on housing policy. The earlier columns discussed government-mandated “affordable housing,” and, more generally, the effect of state and local land use regulations on housing creation. This column analyzes the appropriate federal role in creating and maintaining a healthy housing market. Federally subsidized public housing began in […]

This is the second of three FREE Insight Columns on housing policy. The first, “Affordable Housing,” discussed local attempts to require developers to sell some units in new subdivisions at prices that prospective lower- and middle-income purchasers could afford. This column is about the role of states and localities in establishing land use and other […]

Many quite normal people, not just the paranoid, believe America will spiral downward and drown in a sea of debt. The August 5th downgrade of U.S. bonds stoked their fears. Much of the debt problem is based on entitlements, commitments to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the Prescription Drug Act. As Rep. Barney Frank of […]

The City of Bozeman, which is home to FREE, is now considering revamping its workforce housing ordinance. The current law, enacted in 2007, requires that developers set aside ten percent of units in new housing developments to be sold for less than $200,000 to families with incomes of less than $70,000 per year. According to […]

Romanticism and nostalgia; everyone who lives in the Gallatin Valley seems to develop one or both. In the face of dramatic growth, residents lament that the area can’t be frozen at some point in time. For some, that point would recall a farming and ranching population to a place where the cultural center was a […]