Happy Tuesday, and welcome to another edition of Rent Free. This week’s newsletter covers a number of new reforms that try to relegalize formerly ubiquitous forms of affordable housing.

• In Washington, D.C., the city council will consider a bill to allow taller single-stair apartment buildings.
• The Idaho Legislature has passed a bill allowing small starter homes to be built on smaller lots.
• Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has signed into law a bill that allows manufactured housing to be built in single-family areas.

Single-stair apartment buildings, starter homes, and manufactured housing are nothing new. All worked to make the American cities and towns of the past more affordable, accessible places to live.

Over the decades, states and localities have imposed rules that restrict or even ban these forms of housing. As evidenced by the reforms advancing across the country, many policymakers consider those restrictions a mistake. Bit by bit, we’re returning to the old, freer land use regime.

But first, the newsletter covers how the backlash to data centers in rural Ohio is leading some communities to consider adopting zoning for the first time.

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Live Free or Ban Data Centers?

In rural Ohio, residents are balancing two uncomfortable propositions: live next to new data centers or adopt zoning codes to stop them.

WUOB, the state’s public media outlet, reports that a mounting number of data center developments are springing up in the state’s southeast, where many of the area’s rural counties have no zoning codes.

The data centers are often unpopular, with local residents complaining about large, unsightly buildings consuming existing farmland and the lack of transparency from local governments and data center builders about their projects.

But without zoning codes, local officials have limited ability to block new data centers where they’re proposed.

As I noted in a recent cover story for Reason, data centers are—all things considered—pretty low-impact land uses. They’re not particularly noisy. They don’t emit noxious fumes or smells. Their small permanent staffs mean that they also don’t strain local roads and schools. Their water use is normal, and the impacts of their admittedly gargantuan power consumption are overblown.

For all those reasons, there are few environmental laws or nuisance regulations focused on actual neighborhood effects that one could use to stop new data centers from opening up. For that task, one needs zoning.

Zoning skips the whole business of regulating externalities and instead gives local officials the direct power to say what kinds of buildings are allowed where.

It’s a perfect tool for stopping data centers. The problem is that zoning is a perfect tool for stopping almost everything.

“We don’t have to ask permission for simple things like putting up a fence, so that’s great.…At the same time, I think there should be some form of protection in place for this type of thing,” WUOB quotes one woman who is concerned about new data center development while also wary of the regulations required to stop them.

The outlet notes that some towns are adopting straight moratoriums on data center development as an alternative to comprehensive zoning, but these can only be a temporary measure.

For people who don’t want zoning, moratoriums can be risky business. Read Reason‘s coverage of land use battles in Caroline, New York, where a temporary moratorium designed to stop a Dollar General morphed into a wider effort to impose zoning on the then-unzoned town.

At the end of the day, freedom for me but not for thee is a hard thing to write into the law. The conflict over data centers in unzoned Ohio is evidence that being allowed to do what you want on your property usually requires tolerating what someone else does on their property—even if it’s building a data center.

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The D.C. City Council Considers Single-Stair Reform

Today, the Washington, D.C., City Council’s Committee of the Whole will consider a bill introduced by Councilmember Brianne Nadeau that would allow apartment buildings of up to six stories to be built with just one staircase.

Like most U.S. cities, D.C. currently requires apartment buildings over three stories in height to have two staircases as a fire safety measure.

Reformers have argued that the requirement of a second staircase significantly increases costs to new construction and stymies the construction of smaller apartment buildings on smaller urban lots.

That’s a loss for supply and affordability, advocates argue. And because new multifamily housing has the best fire safety record, single-stair requirements that prevent new multifamily construction could actually reduce fire safety.

New York City and Seattle have long allowed single-stair buildings to rise six stories. According to Pew, seven states passed single-stair reforms in 2025 that either require building code updates to allow taller single-stair buildings or otherwise require building code officials to consider such reforms.

Nadeau’s “One Front Door Act” would require city building officials to update construction codes to allow six-story single-stair buildings within two years.

The reform will “increase the amount of space that can be built for residents, making it more economical and easier for builders to create more units or bigger units, which are good for families,” said Nadeau in introducing the bill last year.

A public hearing on the bill was held in January. Written testimony shows a long list of housing policy groups, architects, and real estate advocates in favor of the reform. The main opposition comes from the city’s Fire Fighter Association.

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Idaho Passes Sweeping Starter Home Reforms  

Last week, the Idaho Legislature passed a bill allowing “starter home subdivisions” in municipalities across the state.

Senate Bill 1352, which was transmitted to the governor yesterday, would require cities of 10,000 people or more to update their land use laws to allow single-family homes on lots as small as 1,500 square feet within new subdivisions of at least four acres.

Similar “starter home” legislation is becoming an increasingly common form of housing supply reform. “Small homes on small lots” offers the potential for more modestly priced, owner-occupied housing. When restricted to new subdivisions, these bills can avoid some of the fights about allowing multifamily housing in existing residential areas.

According to the American Enterprise Institute’s housing legislation tracker, over a dozen states have considered lot size reform bills this year.

Texas made headlines last year when it adopted a law allowing starter homes on 3,000-square-foot lots in five-acre subdivisions in larger cities and counties last year. Idaho’s reforms go beyond Texas’ policy by allowing even smaller lots in smaller subdivisions in smaller communities.

In addition to S.B. 1352, the Idaho Legislature is also considering reforms that would allow duplexes and accessory dwelling units in single-family areas. Bills that would enact those reforms passed the Idaho Senate earlier this month and are now being considered by the House.

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Florida Passes Bill To Boost Manufactured Housing, Reduce Permit Fees

On Friday, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law House Bill (H.B.) 399, which would restrict local governments’ ability to discriminate against manufactured housing.

The new law requires local governments to allow off-site constructed manufactured housing anywhere that detached single-family homes are also allowed. Localities are also forbidden from regulating manufactured housing more restrictively than single-family housing in the same zoning district.

Manufactured, a.k.a. mobile, homes used to be a significant portion of new homes built in America. These homes were also typically the most affordable form of new housing.

Brian Potter, author of the Construction Physics Substack, notes that in some years in the 1960s and 70s, as many as a fifth of new homes were factory-built manufactured housing.

In the 1970s, this type of housing went into steep decline, the reasons for which are debated. Some blame federal regulations of manufactured housing. Certainly not helping matters were the proliferation of zoning codes that explicitly banned manufactured housing in whole communities.

In more recent years, there’s been a rising interest in attempting to revive the manufactured housing sector.

The housing bill currently being considered by Congress would peel back some federal regulations on manufactured homes. Florida’s H.B. 399, meanwhile, tackles the zoning restrictions that keep these units out of town.

The new law also requires local governments to cap permitting fees at the cost of actually reviewing and processing building permits.

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Quick Links

• The Argument‘s Jerusalem Demsas on Congress’ bipartisan bias against renters
• The FBI is warning homeowners about a new scam in which fraudsters send them fake letters demanding payment for building permits. The bureau says the scam is so successful because the fraudulent fee demands sound so much like the real, random fees homeowners have to pay.
• A Rhode Island House committee will consider a bill that repeals regulations on single-room occupancy and co-living housing today.
• America’s first developer president wants his presidential library to be a gleaming glass tower.
• No lies detected:

(Georgist meeting) we recognize that we are holding this meeting on untaxed land,

— Harlo Pippenger ???????????? (@PippengerHarlo) March 30, 2026

The post Live Free or Ban Data Centers appeared first on Reason.com.

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I give a lot of thought to timing on the Supreme Court. Internal deliberations are usually a black box, unless there are some leaks. All we know for sure is when a case is argued and when it is decided.

Today, the Court decided Chiles v. Salazar. This case was argued six months ago on October 7. The vote was 8-1. Justice Gorsuch wrote the majority opinion, which was about twenty-pages long. Justice Kagan wrote a short concurrence, joined by Justice Sotomayor, that was about four pages long. Justice Jackson wrote a solo dissent that spanned more than thirty pages.

Why did this case take six months? It seems pretty clear the majority opinion coalesced fairly early on. There is not much daylight between the majority and the concurrence. I have to imagine that Justice Gorsuch circulated his majority opinion fairly quickly. There are no footnotes suggesting attempts to modify or water-down the majority opinion.

What we don’t know is how Justice Jackson affected the process. The majority opinion offers a few citations to Jackson’s dissent, but there is no lengthy back-and-forth. I don’t think there was much engagement here at all. Indeed, it is telling that Justice Kagan felt compelled to respond to Justice Jackson in a footnote.

This opinion also makes me think about Callais, which was argued on October 15. I doubt that case will be 8-1. But it may take around the same time, if not longer.

For those who care about such things, Justice Alito is the only Justice who has not yet written a majority opinion from October.

The post What Took So Long In <i>Chiles</i>? appeared first on Reason.com.

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From Justice Kagan’s concurrence, joined by Justice Sotomayor, in today’s Chiles v. Salazar:

[A.] The Court today decides that the Colorado law challenged here, as applied to talk therapy, conflicts with core First Amendment principles because it regulates speech based on viewpoint. I agree. I write only to note that if Colorado had instead enacted a content-based but viewpoint-neutral law, it would raise a different and more difficult question.

As the Court states, governments must “nearly always” abstain from adopting viewpoint-based restrictions. Those laws represent a particularly “egregious form” of content-based regulation, implicating First Amendment concerns to the highest possible degree. A law drawing a line based on the “ideology” of the speaker—disadvantaging one view and advantaging another—skews the marketplace of ideas our society depends on to discover truth. And such a law suggests an impermissible motive—that the government is regulating speech because of its own “hostility” toward the targeted messages. If the First Amendment prohibits anything, it is the “official suppression of ideas.” …

Consider a hypothetical law that is the mirror image of Colorado’s. Instead of barring talk therapy designed to change a minor’s sexual orientation or gender identity, this law bars therapy affirming those things. As Ms. Chiles readily acknowledges, the First Amendment would apply in the identical way. Once again, because the State has suppressed one side of a debate, while aiding the other, the constitutional issue is straightforward.

[B.] It would, however, be less so if the law under review was content based but viewpoint neutral. Such content-based laws, as the Court explains, trigger strict scrutiny “[a]s a general rule.” But our precedents respecting those laws recognize complexity and nuance. We apply our most demanding standard when there is any “realistic possibility that official suppression of ideas is afoot”—when, that is, a (merely) content-based law may reasonably be thought to pose the dangers that viewpoint-based laws always do. But when that is not the case—when a law, though based on content, raises no real concern that the government is censoring disfavored ideas—then we have not infrequently “relax[ed] our guard.” …

Medical care typically involves speech, so the regulation of medical care (which is, of course, pervasive) may involve speech restrictions. And those restrictions will generally refer to the speech’s content. But laws of that kind may not pose the risk of censorship—of “official suppression of ideas”—that appropriately triggers our most rigorous review. And that means the “difference between viewpoint-based and viewpoint-neutral content discrimination” in the health-care context could prove “decisive.” Fuller consideration of that question, though, can wait for another day. We need not here decide how to assess viewpoint-neutral laws regulating health providers’ expression because, as the Court holds, Colorado’s is not one.

Here’s more from her opinion dealing with a similar question in Reed v. Town of Gilbert (2015), which she cites in her opinion in Chiles:

We apply strict scrutiny to facially content-based regulations of speech … when there is any “realistic possibility that official suppression of ideas is afoot.” That is always the case when the regulation facially differentiates on the basis of viewpoint.

It is also the case … when a law restricts “discussion of an entire topic” in public debate. We have stated that “[i]f the marketplace of ideas is to remain free and open, governments must not be allowed to choose ‘which issues are worth discussing or debating.'” And we have recognized that such subject-matter restrictions, even though viewpoint-neutral on their face, may “suggest[] an attempt to give one side of a debatable public question an advantage in expressing its views to the people.”

Subject-matter regulation, in other words, may have the intent or effect of favoring some ideas over others…. But when that is not realistically possible, we may do well to relax our guard so that “entirely reasonable” laws imperiled by strict scrutiny can survive…. Our concern with content-based regulation arises from the fear that the government will skew the public’s debate of ideas—so when “that risk is inconsequential, … strict scrutiny is unwarranted.”

To do its intended work, of course, the category of content-based regulation triggering strict scrutiny must sweep more broadly than the actual harm; that category exists to create a buffer zone guaranteeing that the government cannot favor or disfavor certain viewpoints. But that buffer zone need not extend forever. We can administer our content-regulation doctrine with a dose of common sense, so as to leave standing laws that in no way implicate its intended function….

The post Justice Kagan's Arguments for "Relax[ing] Our Guard" as to Some Content-Based (But Viewpoint-Neutral) Speech Restrictions appeared first on Reason.com.

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Ten years ago today, Donald Trump said he would pay off the national debt in the span of just eight years.

That did not happen. Instead, the gross national debt has doubled since that day—from about $19 trillion to over $39 trillion. Much of that additional borrowing has taken place during Trump’s five-plus years in the White House.

The gap between Trump’s outlandish promise and the brutal fiscal reality of the past decade is not just a political gotcha. It’s also an apt illustration of how far and how fast the debt has spiraled. And it’s a painful reminder of a missed opportunity that Americans will be facing for a long, long time. The bill for these 10 years of fiscal profligacy will be coming due long after Trump has finally departed from the political scene.

But it’s a story that starts, as everything in politics seems to these days, with Trump.

“We’re not a rich country. We’re a debtor nation,” is what then-candidate Trump told The Washington Post in an interview on March 31, 2016 (a full transcript was published two days later). “We’ve got to get rid of the $19 trillion in debt.”

How long would it take to do that, asked the Post‘s Bob Woodward.

“Fairly quickly,” Trump replied. When pressed for a more specific answer, Trump provided a shocking timeline. “Well, I would say over a period of eight years.”

That was never going to happen. As the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) pointed out shortly after Trump’s comments made headlines, “achieving this goal would be virtually impossible—particularly for a candidate who has proposed large tax cuts and ruled out significant entitlement reforms.”

Instead, the CRFB estimated that Trump’s proposals would cause the national debt to nearly double within 10 years. The group arrived at that figure by taking the existing baseline for the debt—which, as of early 2016, was expected to grow to about $28 trillion by 2026—and adding the estimated cost of Trump’s various campaign promises.

It’s worth appreciating how remarkably accurate that assessment turned out to be. The number-crunchers at the Congressional Budget Office and the CRFB didn’t know there would be a pandemic. They didn’t know the outcome of the major tax-and-spending bills that Trump and President Joe Biden would pass. Heck, they didn’t even know who would be president—remember, in April 2026, most of the political class didn’t believe Trump had much of a chance.

The accuracy of that prediction points to two things, Marc Goldwein, senior policy director at the CRFB, said when asked about it this week. First, the extent to which rising debt was baked into the federal budget before Trump came on the scene. Social Security and Medicare are the largest federal programs, and both were on pace to borrow more during the 2020s.

Second, it’s due to Trump keeping many of his campaign promises. That’s not the compliment that it might sound like. Trump vowed not to touch the aforementioned entitlement programs that were driving borrowing to new heights, and he promised to both cut taxes and increase military spending. That was a recipe for higher deficits, and over his first four years in office, Trump added over $8 trillion to the national debt that he’d once sought to “get rid of.”

Biden picked up where Trump left off, adding another $4.7 trillion to the debt with various proposals. In his first year back in the White House, Trump has done nothing to address the growing pile of debt. The federal government borrowed $1.8 trillion during the fiscal year that ended in September and is on pace to borrow about the same amount this year.

What have Americans gotten from a decade of heavy borrowing that doubled the size of the debt? Higher inflation and higher interest rates, for starters.

A recent analysis from the Yale Budget Lab found that federal borrowing since 2015 has contributed to rising yields on long-term Treasury bonds. Those increases, in turn, have put upward pressure on interest rates and will, in the years ahead, make it more difficult for Americans to finance homes, cars, and other things.

For a typical 30-year mortgage, borrowing costs today are about $2,500 higher annually than they would be in the alternate reality where federal borrowing didn’t explode in the past decade, the Yale Budget Lab estimates. Similarly, the average car loan costs $120 more annually, and the average small business loan costs $770 more.

Meanwhile, Americans will also face higher taxes or reduced government services to pay for the debt. Interest payments on the national debt will exceed $1 trillion this year—about 20 percent of all tax collections.

There are a few lessons that might be taken from all this.

First, trust the budget wonks more than the politicians. Trump’s promise to pay off the national debt might be an all-time whopper of an impossible campaign promise, but he’s certainly not the first or last politician to make an unrealistic claim about fiscal policy. The next time it happens, pay more attention to what the CBO or the CRFB says than anything else.

To that end, I asked Goldwein for a realistic goal that a prospective presidential candidate should set for the country.

The key, he said, is to keep the debt from growing faster than the economy as a whole, which it has been doing recently. Capping budget deficits at 3 percent of gross domestic product would stabilize the debt and put needed constraints on future borrowing.

Second, when it comes to Trump, the claim he made 10 years ago to the Post remains an illustrative example of how he engages in politics. Saying he could pay off the national debt in eight years was a ridiculous, grandiose promise made off-the-cuff without any semblance of a plan or even the intention to follow through on it.

That seems particularly relevant right now, as the Trump administration tries to figure out the next steps in a war with Iran that it launched in a similar grandiose, improvisational manner.

Trump has been making it up as he goes for a decade now, and Americans will be left to pay the price.

The post 10 Years Ago Today, Trump Promised To Eliminate the National Debt. Instead, It Has Doubled. appeared first on Reason.com.

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