Just this week we named Maumee, Ohio, the Strongest Town winner for 2024. Great little town with a lot of exciting things going on. We have all of our past Strongest Town winners on the contest site and they are all doing great things.

I personally am inspired by things they are doing in Buffalo (NY) and South Bend (IN) to build and support an ecosystem of incremental developers. Minneapolis has long been a leader in regulatory reform and is starting to see results from that.

And when it comes to backyard cottages, California, particularly southern CA, is leading the nation in building at scale.

Economists have noticed, too! So have investors and hedge funds. The affordability story in North America (and to some extent, around the world, but I'm less informed on that) is all about finance. The housing market is more sensitive to interest rates and overall top-down liquidity than it is to your and my ability to pay. That means that price responds to a set of conditions that are disconnected from how we experience things. I do see that continuing broadly -- mortgage derivative products sit at the heart of our economic system -- but I do think communities can opt out of the craziness and make housing affordable in their place. I think that will help not just young people but every live where it best suits them.

You should see that 3 and 4 story building for what it is: a financial product. It might also provide some housing for some people, but it is being proposed because it is a great financial product.

Our book outlines a three part strategy. (1) regulatory reform, (2) create an ecosystem of economic developers, and (3) localize housing finance. We literally need a localized approach to deliver a different set of products to the market.

In the coming months, we plan to role out some things to help our Strong Towns Local Conversations advocate for these approaches. And, of course, I'm going to be traveling around raising the issue.