On a recent episode of One Room at a Time, PadSplit Founder and CEO Atticus LeBlanc sat down with Alex Horowitz, Director of the Housing Policy Initiative at The Pew Charitable Trusts, to talk about something most of our hosts will appreciate:
What does the data actually say about housing reform?
The answer? Small regulatory changes can have a measurable impact on housing costs.
As Alex explained: “We don’t just have a vague ‘housing crisis.’ We have a shortage of homes — and regulatory barriers are the main reason why.”
That shortage is shaped, in part, by rules that many people rarely think about.
Parking mandates
Cities like Minneapolis and Austin have reduced parking requirements, allowed apartments “by right” on more land, and eased lot size restrictions.
The results have been significant.
In places adding the most housing, rent growth has slowed — and in some cases, rents have declined. When local governments make it easier to build, builders respond.
Atticus summed it up during the episode: “Make it legal, make it easy, they will come.”
Fire codes and stairways
The conversation also explored building code reform — specifically, single-stair designs in small apartment buildings. Research shows that allowing more flexible stair requirements can reduce construction costs by 6–13%, which can determine whether a project is financially viable.
But what about safety?
Alex shared this: “We studied every fire death over nearly 12 years in New York City and Seattle — the two U.S. cities that have long allowed single-stair buildings. There was not a single fire death due to the lack of a second stair.”
The takeaway isn’t that safety doesn’t matter. It’s that data that should guide how we balance safety and housing access.
Why this matters
Housing affordability is fundamentally about supply and demand.
As many of our Hosts know, when regulations make housing harder, slower, or more expensive to build, fewer homes get delivered. And when supply falls short of demand, prices rise.
The encouraging news is that reforms don’t always require massive spending programs. Sometimes, they simply require revisiting whether existing rules are helping or hindering housing access.
The research is increasingly clear: when cities remove unnecessary barriers, housing production increases — and affordability improves.
If you want to dive deeper into the data, listen to the full conversation with Alex on One Room at a Time: padsplit.com/podcast or watch the episode on YouTube.
