"Everything helps!"
Massachusetts officials predicted the average household with a heat pump would save $540 on their electric bills this past winter, thanks to the new discounted heat pump rate.
www.wbur.org/news/2026/04...
New residential buildings in Gowanus. Source: https://www.crainsnewyork.com/real-estate/boom-times-continue-major-new-gowanus-projects/
Upzonings in New York City produced substantial increases in housing supply. Source: https://www.urban.org/research/publication/how-big-upzonings-affect-housing-supply
When NYC rezoned Brooklyn's Gowanus neighborhood to allow high-density residential uses along a cleaned-out canal, it hoped to attract thousands of new housing units.
That's exactly what it got, new research comparing upzoned areas to similar, non-upzoned areas shows: www.urban.org/research/pub...
Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced on Thursday that New York City will invest in a new program to provide cheaper property and liability insurance to landlords of affordable housing and rent-stabilized buildings.
Such a key point! This construction productivity trend plot from Richmond Fed also nags at my mind in these convos. Not exactly moving in the right direction when it costs more to rebuild a house than it did to build in the first place..
www.richmondfed.org/publications...
Far-below-average snowpack in California (just 23% of historical average as of today) is creating conditions for elevated wildfire risks this season.
Earlier-than-usual fuel clearing, home hardening, and creation of defensible space can mitigate some of these risks.
calmatters.org/environment/...
Don't have project-level info like in the RAND study at arm's length, but definitely see similar regional building cost differences for single-family in Census's Survey of Construction data.
eyeonhousing.org/2025/10/squa...
This figure should make everyone in the state of CA furious. Market rate multifamily building costs in CA are 2.5x+ Texas.
This is also, for the record, the kind of thing that drives insurance premiums through the roof. If builders pay this to build, insurers pay it to rebuild.
So many good audience questions! The housing policy wonk crowd takes research design very seriously (as we should).
Speaking of energy prices… “In all 50 states, the cost of home-charging an EV is considerably cheaper than fueling a car with gasoline” — @climateconnections.bsky.social yaleclimateconnections.org/2026/04/what...
I am hiring a postdoc @ Univ of Iowa. Potential project focuses include flood-risk infrastructure planning, disaster recovery processes and outcomes, insurance program externalities, or uncertainty in climate damage attribution. Please consider applying/sharing! jobs.uiowa.edu/postdoc/view...
The costs of home maintenance and upgrades on America’s aging housing stock are vast and rising fast.
🔗: on.wsj.com/3POYHXv
Hawaii joins CA and NY with legislation to hold the oil and gas industry accountable for insurance related losses.
www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...
Breaking News: Mortgage rates climbed for the fifth straight week as the war in Iran weighed on the U.S. housing market.
This is my favorite climate change chart. Japanese monks, aristocrats, and emperors kept meticulous records of cherry blossom festivals for 1,200 years and accidentally built the world's longest climate dataset.
Recent tweet on California’s insurance market post-LA fires.
EPA Admin. Zeldin charged with engaging with California insurers.
Will be following to see what the follow-through looks like here.
"Hidden" costs could be alternatively framed as price uncertainty of non-mortgage homeownership costs.
In recent years, many homeowners across the US have faced stable mortgage payments, but insurance costs that've risen well above expectations (and CPI-U).
www.businessinsider.com/homeowners-s...
Line chart showing presidential approval rates for disaster aid requests submitted by Democratic- and Republican-led states, covering the period from the Reagan administration to today. The chart is based on a Politico/E&E News analysis of records from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
89% – percentage of disaster aid requests Trump has approved for states with a Republican governor and two Republican senators
23% – percentage of disaster aid requests Trump has approved for states with a Democratic governor and two Democratic senators
www.politico.com/news/2026/03...
Speaker lineup showing two presenters: Carolyn Kousky from Insurance for Good, presenting 'How Do We Make Insurable Communities?', and Ori Chegwidden from Carbon Plan, presenting 'Open Climate Risk: An Explorer Mapping Wildfire Risk Across the Contiguous United States.'
The next CLIVAR climate risk seminar is April 28 at 4 pm ET. We have two fantastic presentations on the schedule.
Join the mailing list to get the info to join.
mailchi.mp/usclivar.org...
Insurance companies are fighting efforts to get fossil fuel industry policyholders to chip in to the costs of adapting to climate change:
www.eenews.net/articles/ins...
March 27: Here are three graphics that highlight why there is rising concern regarding the prospect of difficult wildfire activity in the months to come.
- Widespread drought
- Very dry soils
- Well below normal Western US snowpack (water equivalent)
This is on top of continued anomalous heat.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency on Wednesday opened applications for a major resilience grant program that the agency canceled last year, less than three weeks after a federal judge ordered FEMA to make the funding available. https://to.pbs.org/3Q17ipM
We are in uncharted territory. Both with respect to water and fire.
Despite ongoing legal disputes over already-awarded BRIC projects from previous cycles, FEMA's BRIC program's FY24-25 NOFO for $1 billion worth of grant funding has been released. Applications due by July 23, 2026.
www.grants.gov/search-resul...
coverage) will bring down insurance and borrowing costs for some homebuyers who will choose less robust coverage. That said, this will result in GSEs taking more loans onto their books for homes that don't have full coverage.
FHFA press release: www.fhfa.gov/news/news-re... (2/2)
Seems generally in line with the White House's deregulatory executive orders last week to address housing costs.
Loosening the GSEs' insurance requirements to accept actual cash value coverage (instead of higher bar of replacement cost...(1/2)
www.insurancejournal.com/news/nationa...
Holy cow, rates up to 6.53% today! A borrower putting 20% down on a $600,000 home would pay $168 more now than they would have the day before the U.S. bombed Iran when rates were 5.99%. War is costly in innumerable ways, including the cost of homeownership.
Very thoughtful and substantive set of panels on homeowners insurance in the US. Definitely worth a watch.
Even though Freedom House gave USA a pass this year, downgrading it by only 3 points and still calling it "Free," it's worth noting that Freedom House now considers USA less democratic than Argentina, Belize, Mauritius, Mongolia, Panama, and Romania. And tied with Suriname.
