Independence Institute

Building Micro-Homes in Portland 0
- TRANSPORTATION - Miscellaneous
- May 5, 2011
Okay, it is one thing for someone who wants to live within a block of Central Park to pay $700 a month for a 90-square-foot “apartment.” But now a major homebuilder, D.R. Horton, is building 364- to 687-square-foot micro-homes in Portland. “You can’t just keep going farther from the city and acquiring farm land,” says […]
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Ending the Mortgage Interest Deduction 0
- TRANSPORTATION - Miscellaneous
- May 4, 2011
Realtors and home builders strongly defend the mortgage interest deduction as a way of increasing homeownership, which is supposed to be a good thing. But does it really work that well? Edward Glaeser doesn’t think so. While he agrees that there are social benefits to increasing homeownership, he notes that the mortgage-interest deduction mainly benefits […]
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Whitest City Gets Whiter 0
- TRANSPORTATION - Miscellaneous
- May 3, 2011
Portland should change its motto from “the city that works” to “the city that’s white.” Already the whitest big city in America in 2000, the city has gotten whiter still as poor people have been pushed from the inner city into the suburbs, as shown in this stunning series of maps. The Antiplanner has covered […]
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Transit Energy Efficiency 0
- TRANSPORTATION - Miscellaneous
- April 29, 2011
A new report from Florida’s National Center for Transit Research looks at how transit can save energy. The report’s lead author, Steve Polzin, has been mentioned here before. Some of the findings are more surprising than others. Transit uses about the same amount of energy as driving, the report finds, and transit in most places […]
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