We're back with another edition of the Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Emily Desnski,
culture editor here at the Federalist. As always, you can email the show
at radio at the Federalist dot com, follow us on Twitter at fdr LST.
Make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcasts into the premium version of
our website as well. Today we're joined once again by Patrick Brown, who
is working on all pro family policy things at the Ethleics and Public Policy Center.
Patrick, thanks for joining us, Emily, great to be back on
Thanks so much so. I think you and I have talked about this a
little bit. But if there was one and if there are two things that
I think conservatives, the conservative movement, the Republican Party should be focusing more
on, those would be healthcare and housing. And you recently wrote just excellent,
excellent piece talking about what conservative policy towards housing can look like, and
especially in this new context of so many people putting their heads together on the
right and thinking what is pro family policy? What is a Republican Party?
What is a conservative movement post Trump? Where you have some new coalitions,
some new voters joining the mix, what is you know, the post populist
or the populist Republican Party. What should policy look like? Could you give
us before we kind of dive into some of the details, a broad overview
of when it comes to housing, A why you think it's so important for
people to address, and then be what your sort of suggestions from the peace
are. Yeah. No, thinks that's a great sort of synopsis of what
I'm trying to do here, because I do think that when we talk about
being pro family, we have a lot of ideas that have been getting a
lot of attention on the right. Uh, you know, stuff like the
child tax credit, paid leave, baby bonuses, all these sort of things
which are great and good, and we should be continuing to think about those.
And obviously I spent a lot of time thinking about this, but when
we think about families as they're currently constituated today and also future families, right,
people who haven't had kids because they feel too financially precarious or concerned about
their ability to provide. I think one of the biggest weights on people's pocketbooks
is the cost of housing, and about about a third of the typical family's
budget goes towards housing, either the form of rent or mortgage payments, and
it used to be the case that we could kind of tell ourselves the story
that you know, oh, well, New York City or San Francisco or
you know, Los Angeles, Washington, see these big metro areas, those
are the places that have this, you know, really bad housing affordability problem.
But out here in real America, we're doing just fine. And that's
still somewhat true that there's a lot of cheap houses to be had in certain
parts of the country, but especially after the ramifications of COVID and what that
did to the housing market, and places like you know, Memphis, Tennessee,
and Des Moines, Iowa. You know, places that are not coastal
hubs of liberal elites, they saw their housing markets go crazy too. And
obviously indust rates have gone up that's cooled some of that off, but they're
still much higher than they were pre COVID. So if you didn't think that
housing affordability was an issue before COVID, I think a lot of places in
America are realizing that it is something that families are constrained by, that it's
hard to afford a house, especially if you're just starting out. And so
if we're thinking about pro family policy and trying to keep families at the forefront
of our political agenda. Thinking about ways to make housing more affordable is got
to be near the top of the list, both from the federal and the
state level. Yeah. Absolutely, And you know, again, especially on
this issue, and you've pointed this out, I think you point this out
in the piece, But like this seems so obvious. It's it's such a
fertile ground for conservatives. What should people be looking at right now if they
want to offer policy prescription for conservative policy on housing. Yeah, I mean
it is fertile ground, both in the sense of being right to be discussed
and also literally fertile in the sense that we know from economic research that house
prices have the direct impact on people's decisions whether or not to have kids or
not. And in a context in which the birth rate is falling and people
are putting off parenthood until later in life. If we rely on an economic
model lists as house prices should always be high and never never falling, that
you know, we need we need to prioritize homeowners interests first and foremost before
we concerned about getting people sort of on the building equity in their home well,
that's gonna that's going to contribute to decreasing fertility. And we know again
we know this from California and other places that when the house price in your
neighborhood goes up, if you're a homeowner, you feel a little richer,
you're you're a little more likely to have kids. But if you don't own
a home, as so many people in Lucy as the California don't, you
actually have lower fertility. So it is it directly related to this question of
family formation and how we can help people you know, have kids to our
families and and sort of you know, really have a piece in the American
dream. Now this gets a little complicated because, on the one hand,
I think it is a natural sort of limited government impulse to say, uh,
you know, if we want to make housing more affordable, all the
easiest and most straightforward thing to do is to restrict sorry to make supply easier
to build. We get easier to build houses. We can talk about all
the red tape and reform restrictions that are piled on top of developers trying to
build houses, and you know, I think that makes a lot of sense.
Unfortunately, once you break it down to the local level. A lot
of times there's a hesitation, often for a good reason. What is this
going to do to the environment, What is this going to do to traffic,
What is this going to do to our schools and the you know,
the appeal of our neighborhood, all these sort of things which are valid concerns.
But the problem is once they stack up and make it harder and harder
for people to build new houses, we see the kind of constraints that are
driving house prices up. And again this really impacts people just starting out on
life, young couples who don't have a nest egg to turn to, who
have a real trade off between well, can we afford a down payment on
a home and think about having our first or second kid. These are linkages
that we can see in the researcher, we know in our personal lives as
well. So I do think that this is something that conservatives, who maybe
a little more hesitated about change sometimes. And again we you know, as
good as conservatives, we all are, you know, a different points in
our lives, but when it comes to housing especially, I think this is
when where conservatives need to lean in towards this idea of making sure that we
have an abundance of housing for families of all types across the income of spectrum.
Can you break down the Yimbi nimbi dynamic in this space, because it
is I mean, if you just dip your toe into the water of the
housing debate, you're just immediately bombarded with both sides of the humbie nimbie debate,
like just flooding the conversation. What does that look like? I mean
my impression is that it's actually fairly heated, and it's sort of I don't
know, it's like almost trans political, a political, but it's it's more
the like actual yes in my backyard. No, not in my backyard.
Those dynamics are are more powerful and most than partisan affiliation. Yeah. No,
And it's you know, as I said of mentioned, I think a
lot of it started to grow in these deep blue cities New York City,
uh, you know, DC, San Francisco started to be the hotbeds of
the Yimbi movement. Yes, in my backyard movement precisely because there were a
lot of sort of i'll say, you know, neoliberal folks who saw that
supply constraints and really oppressive affordable housing mandates and environmental regulations, all these sorts
of things were making it really difficult for developers to build housing to accommodate all
these people who wanted to live in those blue cities. So, you know,
just economics one O one. When you have supply constraint and growing demand,
prices are going to rise. And so that's kind of where things started.
But again we're starting to see this even in places like Montana and Utah,
you know, not deep blue places at all, but recognizing that there's
growing demand to live there, especially in a post COVID landscape. And so
there's they're starting to be a Yimbi movement you know, across the US,
which is in my opinion, great to see. And and again I think
the most natural marriage on the sort of yes in my backyard side has been
between sort of market friendly progressives and more libertarian types on the right who are
sort of opposed to government regulation in general and especially in housing, saying let's
just, you know, rip up the rule book and let the market do
what it does best. And I think, you know, the opposition the
Nimbi crew and not in my backyard has again been these people with maybe a
more I think to put a chart of a more burkeyan sense of change right.
Well, you know, I'm not opposed to new housing, but can
we really find somewhere else to put it right? Or or you know,
what's this going to again? What's this going to do for traffic or my
kids school? These are all valid concerns, and I really get annoyed with
some of the more vocal yimbi types on Twitter who say, well, all
opposition to new housing is just based on racism or based on classism or something
like that. No. I mean, if you're if you're a homeowner in
a good neighborhood or a decent neighborhood, and you want to protect your home
value, which is for a lot of people the biggest source of your wealth
and a nest egg for retirement. These are all valid concerns that I think
policymakers and you know, advocates need to be grappling with a figure out how
we can address some of these things and make people be a little less worried
about what the long term consequences is going to be. And I think the
story there has to be pointing out that if you want your kids to be
able to grow up in the same neighborhood that you did, you know,
the same quality of life unless we're going to have negative population growth. Just
as a matter of pure mathematics, we need to be increasing the housing supply
to accommodate more families and more kids, because again, a world in which
we have stagnant population growth and one in which housing is incredibly expensive is one
that we're going to continue to see the US fertility rate declining. And uh,
you know, for a conservative, for a social conservative, for myself,
that's that's a that's a more permanent value to cherish. That's something that
we I want to fight against as hard as I can. And if it
means you know, sometimes you know, again reforming zoning or loosening some land
use restrictions or getting rid of some community input on certain projects just because it's
going to help things get build faster and cheaper and expand housing a little bit
easier than that to me is a value that that's worth, that's worth kind
of putting out over some of these other ones. But again, we shouldn't
be just totally dumping on the names, because they've raised valid points, and
ideally there'd be a way of balancing these interests. I think in practice,
once you have lots of communities all with their different restrictions and zoning and that
sort of thing, you end up the case where I think some of these
state laws trying to trying to override certain localities restrictions makes sense just because if
you think about subsidiarity and the idea that authorities should evolve down to the lowest
appropriate level of political authority, well, if cities aren't able to manage their
housing market in an appropriate manner, maybe the state is the lowest level of
appropriate authority. And I think I think we're starting to see some states move
in that direction. Correct me if I'm wrong. But I thought Trump,
like out of nowhere, waited into this conversation once about multi family. What
wasn't he doing something to like prevent multifamily or he waited on the development of
multifamily buildings in the suburbs and remember that. Yeah, and this is where
I guess a little tricky because that there's a there's a federal regulation about Without
boring everybody with the technical details, basically there was a move under Secretary Ben
Carson, who is the head of HUT at that at that time to encourage
sub herbs, especially you know, richer suburbs, to proactively embrace multifamily developments
and apartments and that sort of thing. And before that regulation was finalized,
uh, some folks on the right kind of got President Trump's here and got
him to to sort of squash that and uh, you know, there was
a minor uh back and forth on the right about the the wisdom of that
move, you know, and in some cases, like you would hope President
Trump, with his background as a real estate developer, would would understand the
benefit of having you know, sort of freer markets for housing and more opportunities
to build more factive housing. But again, these touch on really important questions
about what kind of character we want our community to have. And I think
that's where those of us sort of on the pro family right need to need
to make the case to our our fellow conservatives and say, look, again,
these are valid concerns. You know, your your your your your home
value is again is a big source of wealth for people. Your kids school
is really important, all these kind of things. But at the end of
the day, if we're not if we're not expanding the housing stock and we're
not making it easier for people to build. We're going to be faced with
the situation where too many young people feel like they have to put off starting
a family because they just simply can't afford it. And that, to me,
is a large part of the reason why we're seeing marriage race decline and
fertility race decline. And that is something that I think a lot of conservatives
can understand at a gut level that this is not an economic model that is
conducive to family formation. And so you know again, yeah, I like
to think that if that debate comes up again, there might be a little
bit more recognition now a couple of years later that housing has this important role
to play in family formation, that we could we could maybe have some friends
of the White House under a second Trump administration who could convince them to take
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that you're just making is you're making it easier for the supply to grow,
and that's not stretching or even challenging free market orthodoxy and the way that it's
sort of been wedded to conservative orthodoxy. And obviously you're part of this conversation.
We talked about it all the time here about how some challenges do really
demand a return to this conversation about why markets exist, what good do markets
serve? But in this case, I don't know. You're the one who's
out here writing about it till you wouldn't know because you've gotten responses. But
I don't really even see this as a challenge to the sort of orthodoxy.
At the end of the day, this is a simple matter of supply and
demand. Well, right, I mean, I think that's the cleanest case
for it. And to point out that we used to have a much more
you know, uh, let it wild lest I guess approach to housing construction
in the fifties and sixties, And it wasn't until the nineteen seventies, when
you have high inflation and the rise of the environmental movement that all of a
sudden you start to see states and localities really clamping down artificially, restricting supply.
And you know, I'm not a market fundamentalist, I guess it's fair
to say, you know, I think markets are incredible tools that need to
be you know, pointed in the right direction, and in this case,
I think the right direction has to be making it easier for people to afford
a home, and we know that homeownership is uh, you know, correlated
with all sorts of positive social outcomes. And if if people are you know,
living their early you know, twenties, thirties, even into their forties
renting, that's again that's that's they're not building equity and that's going to make
it harder for them over the long term. But also they just feel less
stable financially and they're more you know, subject to the whims of a landlord
or the market going crazier or whatever, and of course that's going to have
an impact on people's ability to have a family. And so yeah, in
some respects it is sort of getting back to basics approach to what the market
can do. And you know, the market is a tremendous tool and something
like housing that I think, you know, the US had this experience with
housing boom in the post World War two era where we were building millions of
housing units and we and today, when our population is twice as big as
it was, we're actually building fewer housing units. So that's to me a
sign that we kind of overcorrected that you know, people were concerned about the
environment and all these different things. But they they they kind of froze the
system and amber and they made it too hard to build apartments and build smaller
homes. Right that The decline of the starter home is another story here where
because developers are constrained on what they can build. Well, if you can
build something, you want to make as much money as you can off of
it, and so that means building a luxury unit, right or building something
with a big yard or granted countertops and all that kind of stuff to be
able to charge a premium for people who are who are buying a new house,
which means that you know, again this idea of the you know,
two bedroom starter home or something like that has really effectively disappeared from the market
in terms of new building. And so again, if you're a new family,
if you're a young family, a couple thinking about having a kid,
you can't afford a seven hundred thousand dollars home on you know, on a
starting off salary. That's that's really difficult to do. And so having a
diversity of supply coming out of home builders and apartments and that sort of thing
is part of the story here too. So you're a father and a husband
and are in some ways much more qualified to speak to this than I am
as a you know, an apartment dweller for the last decade, which,
by the way, these buildings in DC are there are no children unless you're
in one of the more working class. Uh. You know, when when
I first got out of college, I was in one that that had a
lot of kids, but it was in a more working class neighborhood. But
the ones that are in the sort of fancy neighborhoods that I think of as
like millennial Disney Worlds because they just started this weird, like almost prefab strange
universe that extends only a few blocks in LA parts of like New Jersey probably
now and DC and other places, they're just there are no children. And
I wanted to ask why it is that ownership of your space and of your
home. It is something that's so important to people who are are thinking about
family formation, and that is an abstract question, but I think it's actually
a really interesting part of this discussion because there are surveys that show things like,
for instance, student loans, housing prices prevent people from getting married,
prevent people from starting families. Uh and and just you know, as as
deep as you want to go on this, Patrick, why do you think
that looms so large when people are making these decisions. Yeah, I mean
you think back to the you know, nineteen tons, nineteen twenties, people
were having nine kids in New York tenements, right, I mean people made
it work and back in the day. And now I think the the the
bar that the threshold at which people feel like they need to be able to
provide for their kids has risen as our economy has grown and as as you
know, all sorts of consumer goods have increased. It's if you raise your
kid on a nineteen forties or nineteen fifties standard of living today, you know,
you'd feel like you were going to be called in by CPS. Right,
I mean people want to have their kids have their own space and room
to run in the backyard, all these sort of things. And then that
doesn't touch on questions like school quality, crime, you know, the amenities
of life. You know a lot of times you're living in cities, right,
Afford college is great. I did it until I get married, but
then you know, it's it's sort of the life cycle. Right. You
quote unquote, settled down, moved to the suburbs. You have your own,
your own space to call home. And you know, not always the
you know, sometimes when things break, you wish you had your landlord back
again to help fix things. But uh, you know, for the most
part, there's a reason why America has such high rates of homeownership compared to
the rest of the world. We have a lot of space, we have
a lot of money, we have a lot of freedom. And that's wonderful.
And and you know, the sort of idea of the white picket fence
in the yard and all that sort of stuff. You know, a lot
of people aspire to that. Now. You know, a lot of people
make in work and cities. Obviously there's there's couples in in Washington, DC
and elsewhere that that have kids and make it work, and that's that's great.
There's a lot of you said to that, a lot of you said
for that kind of approach. But when you just ask people what they're looking
for, a lot of a lot of people say, I want a yard,
I want you know, multiple bedrooms and space for my kids and all
that sort of stuff. And you know, the nice thing about a sort
of housing abundance agenda is just is not saying everybody needs to live in an
apartment or everybody needs to live in a single family home. Is to say,
look, people have different preferences. Let's expand the availability of different types
of housing, and you know, recognizing that. You know, again,
when you're single and child list, maybe you want to live in the city,
you move back to the tubers when you have kids. Then when you're
an empty nester, you can downsize and move back to an apartment and you
know, enjoy all the DC or wherever has to offer. These preferences aren't
consistent over time, but when you have a supply constraint on housing, then
you lock people into where they are. You have a lot of seniors who
feel like, you know, I got to hold on to this this place
because I can't sell right now or whatever. These kind of dynamics kind of
freeze up the housing market and make it harder for Again, my concern is
family information, helping people get married, helping people have kids, and a
market that is artificially supplied and strained. You're never going to be able to
subsidize your way out of right. You can't. We've seen from higher at
right. How the how if you try to subsidize demand, all that does
is just inflate prices. Right, you give people more student loans and what
do you know, the colleges turn around and raise the cost or tuition by
that amount or more. Similarly, on the housing kind of things, if
we were to try to subsidize home ownership, sort of similar to how the
Georgia of you Bush administration attempted to do stuffs along these lines in their time
and office. If you try to do that too heavily, you end up
with perverse and centives and people underwater with their mortgages all that sort of stuff.
Not great. But if you allow for the supply side of the equation
to expand, then again you have more options at different points along the spectrum,
right, so people can find a cheaper house when they want to,
that sort of thing. Those those you know, there's no one right way
to live, right. You know, my boss Ryan Anderson lives out on
a farm way out in Virginia somewhere. And you know, I got other
friends who who raise kids in the big city. That's all great, that's
all wonderful, But the point is we should be trying to allow people to
achieve their purposes, whatever that looks like. And to me, the fundamental
question is is there enough housing in those places to a lot of people who
live where they want to? And to me, at a lot of places
in the country, not just in big cities, but in Raleigh, North
Carolina, and uh, you know, Nashville and all these places, Austin,
Texas obviously, all these places that are growing, the answer is increasingly
no, there's not enough housing, and that's going to have perverse effects down
the line. Yes, Ryan Anderson, homestead influencer for the masses. No,
No, that's that's all very interesting and helpful, Patrick, because there's
a stunning contrast. I think when you look at how Republican politicians and democratic
politicians and the conservative movement and the progressive movement talk about these the two issues
in particular that I raised, healthcare and housing. But housing you hear all
of the time, not just from the progressive left, but from you know,
kind of middle of the road democrats the extent that exists anymore, but
you know you're you're sort of mainstream democrat. They're talking all of the time
about housing prices, healthcare prices, and when you look at poland you do
see how heavily this ways on the average American. You don't even need to
look at polling to understand that. You know, you can look at the
contours of the Biden economy, but you can look at the numbers that you've
raised here, Patrick, and it's it's fairly easy to understand this is a
huge problem, not just for people's pocketbooks, but then for the ripple effects
that it has culturally. Why is it, I mean, maybe you know,
you're you're hearing more of this from Republican politicians than what I've seen.
Why do you think it is that it hasn't really gotten onto the radar?
I mean, is it because a lot of Republicans are a lot of people
in the conservative movement tend to be the people who have you know, sort
of climbed the ladder already. Uh, not a you know, flood of
young activists like there is on the left. But it's it's a lot of
people who have already formed their families and you know, made decent livings,
etcetera, etcetera. What's going on? Why is that a blind spot?
If it is a blind spot, yeah, no, I think I think
that's part of the story that Republicans in general will tend to be older.
I don't think that's a secret. And if you're older, you're more likely
to own a house, you're more likely to kind of have a vested interest
in in keeping your house price high, and you know, keeping your community
the way you like it. And again, conservatives are sort of averse to
change to begin with that. You know, I get that I have those
sentiments as Bill, and so I think that's that's part of it. And
you know, but I think that, you know, comparing this to health
care for example, you know, we could have another lengthy discussion sometimes on
healthcare policy, because I do think you're starting to see that conversations shift a
little bit on the right. When you think about what Senator jd Vance has
talked about, and this idea of making childbirth, you know, more affordable
or even free for some parents. Certainly a lot of the conversations around uh,
you know, health and the well isn't and and uh, you know
what that's looking like in in more trad circles online that sort of thing.
But I think part of the shift that's happening is a younger generation feeling the
effects of these artificial supply constigens on the economy, and we know that.
You know, for example, since two thousand, the share of young adults
living with their parents rather than starting out on their own, it has gone
up about fifteen percent, which you know, isn't isn't you know, it
doesn't sound like a lot, but that's millions of potential you know, homebuyers,
potential, spouses, potential you know, people you know getting involved in
the community that are just sort of failing to launch because house prices are so
high. It doesn't make sense to go out and pay for an apartment in
downtown you know, Portland, Oregon, when you can be living with your
parents in the suburbs, you know, at a discount, right, And
in previous generations people were more willing to do that because there were more,
you know, cheaper options available. And you know, again, I think
this, this idea that the economy is sort of skewed towards the interests of
of you know, older voters, is you know, pretty pretty evident.
In housing, This idea that you know, well, we just need to
make sure house prices never go down. You know, the benefits people who
already bought their house twenty thirty years ago. But if you're somebody who's just
starting out, oh, that's that that really sucks for you. Right.
And similarly, you know, we can talk about entitlements and healthcare, so
these other things where the status quo is clearly set to benefit, you know,
the people who were sort of bought in from the get go and in
you know, benefiting from the status quo. And again, I don't want
to make all those concerns sound like you know, they're they're irrelevant. Obviously,
they're tremendously relevant politically, if nothing else. We want to make sure
that our seniors are taking care of on that sort of thing. But when
it comes to our political priorities, it's very clear that that we I think
we've we've over emphasized the amount of social and political resources that were that we
we wanted to guarantee to our seniors. When you're talking about uh, you
know, medicare that sort of thing, and and under under focused on how
these questions affect family information and kids and families and that sort of thing.
I do think that conversation is shifting on the right, But you know,
it's it's a it's a it's a long battle. It's not going to be
you know, it's not going to change over ninety times again. The Washtout
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and you know, the student loan question, I think is a parallel one
in some ways. And of course your first and foremost because of the subsidy
issue that you mentioned, and then that brings us to the feasibility issue.
You know, it's it's so hard to really imagine save for you know,
a potentially like a president run to Santis or someone we're really getting into and
maybe a President Trump would do it too, but like really being willing to
challenge or to take on entrenched interests that are are completely embedded in our economy
and our government forces and housing subsidies. Especially the political feasibility of starting to
disentangle some of those programs and to pull them up by their roots locally nationally,
that is seems like a Sissippian like an uphill climb, for sure.
What is the feasibility of, you know, whether it's a Republican or a
Democratic politician coming into a state level, local level, federal level, and
you know, being willing to kind of bite the bullet on some of these
policies and say we're gonna make housing more affordable. It's going to involve taking
some tough steps. Yeah, I mean, I'm actually cautiously optimistic, and
you know, in some respects, I think Blue states have have sort of
done their own version of this, where they're they couched all of their sort
of housing affordability measures in this language of systemic racism. Right. Oh,
we have these legacies of disinvestment and racism that we need to uproot, and
that's why we need to let the housing market work more efficiently. You know,
I wouldn't agree with the narrative, but I'm happy to see the result
in other in red states. In Montana is my favorite because they have this
a very aggressive slate of pro housing reforms. They pushed through with the slogan,
don't California, my Montana right, This idea that California is the poster
child for what happens when you set the policy decision making apparatus in stone in
the early nineteen seventies and then never touch it because you're too worried about what's
going to happen to the homeowners who will come back and bite you. You
don't want that. You don't want that if you're Montana or Tennessee or Utah
or Texas, right. You want a system that's dynamic, that's entrepreneurial,
that let's the economy work. In California is the perfect example of what happens
when you sort of say you hit the pause button and say we're good.
This is the amount of housing we want. We want to make it really
difficult to build unless you're going to be building a way out in you know,
a baker's field somewhere where nobody wants to live. If you're around Orange
County or Los Angeles, San Diego. You know how just I bleedingly expensive
it is to try to afford anything out there, and that's because a lot
of people want to live there and and the the development has just not been
allowed to to adjust to that. So I think that conservatives in at the
state level are starting to recognize this, and we're starting to see said movement.
And again, this is where this sort of our more hardcore limited government
friends on the on the libertarian right, can you know, work together with
with I think, you know, sort of pro family conservatives in this in
this approach that getting government out of the way and allowing the market to work
more efficiently can make housing more affordable and make life easier for families. I
think I think, I'm I'm cautiously optimistic that that's going to happen to the
sea level. At the federal level, you know, obviously, you know,
housing policy is largely set by states and localities, so there's a little
bit of a limited nexus. But the bully pulpit matters a ton. And
as we saw, as we talked about when President Trump kind of came out
really hard against this idea of you know, and again this isn't the proposal
itself. I wouldn't necessarily fall on indoors. But but the conversation was directionally,
should we make it easier or harder to build apartments in wealthy suburbs?
And he came very hard down on the side of no, we don't want
to do that. I think the right kind of leadership could change some of
the conversation and help people be a little less concerned maybe about you know,
the gramifications of a looser approach of some of these questions. Obviously, once
you start talking about you know, affordable housing and public support and that sort
of thing, I think that does, you know, make the conversation a
little tougher. And obviously there's there's some trade offs there, but there's enough.
There's there's enough low hanging fruit just by making it easier to build houses
without even getting to the end of the government programs affordable housing side of things
that I think that's where the emphasis needs to be right now. Yeah,
you've wrote about this. I think it was for the public discourse. It
was a great piece there. You've written about it for some other places.
Where can people just follow your work? Patrick? As you're you're writing on
all of these things, whether it's child tax credit, housing, just general
pro family policy stuff, realignment stuff. Where can people follow you? Oh
yeah, well I'm still on x I guess Twitter. At PTB Rights,
we've got a biweekly newsletter, so we won't clutter your own box. But
if you go to EPPC dot org you can sign up for that there.
And I try to, you know, compile all the different things I'm writing
up because you know, pro family policies is great because everything kind of touch
us on a family. So things like housing, healthcare, you know,
obviously tax policy, those all matter tremendous lead off families pocketbooks, and you
know, more importantly, they're the values and the kind of lives they want
to live. And to the extent that we can get Republicans and conservatives recognizing
that, you know, the economy needs to be oriented towards providing for families
and working towards that end of making it easier to get married and have kids,
I think that's the future for the Considerative Party movement, I hope,
And that's where I hope Republican politicians will continue to be pressing forwards on.
Patrick Brown of the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Thank you for joining the
show again. It's always grace to talk Emily anytime. Thanks so much.
You've been listening to another edition of The Federalists for radio hour. I'm emo
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