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Ben Teresa

@benfteresa.bsky.social
822 followers 1.4K following 317 posts

Associate Professor VCU Urban and Regional Studies & Planning, Co-founder and director, RVA Eviction Lab

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Reposted by Ben Teresa
Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies @harvard-jchs.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
We are pleased to announce that Dr. Vincent Reina has been named the inaugural Nicolas P. and Joan B. Retsinas Faculty Director of JCHS and Professor in Practice at @gsd.harvard.edu. The appointment will take effect January 1, 2027. @harvardkennedy.bsky.social www.jchs.harvard.edu/press-releas...
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Arrianna Marie Planey, PhD MA @arrianna-planey.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
IMO, she throws educators under the bus while framing integration as a matter of parental choice (despite the handwaving toward structural factors like segregation and inequitable school funding)
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Chanea Bond @heymrsbond.com · 20/09/2026
Black parents have an impossible lot; I see that every day. But, as one of the most prominent voices on race in the public domain, this could have been much more introspective and analytical.
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Arrianna Marie Planey, PhD MA @arrianna-planey.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
I have so many questions archive.ph/mNtq3
archive.ph
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Arrianna Marie Planey, PhD MA @arrianna-planey.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
"I can write a check that's bigger than the annual PTA budget for the Black and low-income school my kid attends"
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Brian Goldstone @brian-goldstone.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
There are so many forms of violence here: the spectacular violence of last year's South Shore raid; the slow violence of profit-driven landlords allowed to let housing rot; and the violence of state abandonment, or what this story calls "a virtually nonexistent safety net for the working homeless."
wbez.org
Nearly a year after the South Shore raid forced him from his home, one former resident is still homeless
The military-style raid was one of the definitive moments of Operation Midway Blitz. It also set off a chain of events that laid bare the precariousness of Chicago’s housing system for low-income rent...
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Yonah Freemark @yonahfreemark.com · 02/09/2026
The National Zoning Atlas team is out with a blockbuster paper identifying major flaws with the Wharton Index, which has historically been the tool used by economists to make claims about zoning (e.g. Glaeser & Gyourko's 2002 paper on zoning & affordability, with >1200 citations, is based on it...)
papers.ssrn.com
It's time to retire the Wharton Index
Empirical research on land use regulation has a credibility problem. For two decades, studies linking regulation to housing costs, residential segregation, and
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Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
Landlord tech — from digital keys to intercoms — are a crucial part of the surveillance state.
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Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
They could always sign up to give comment at a public meeting.
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ryan cooper @ryanlcooper.com · 02/08/2026
“Aggregate outcomes are not in general or even usually interpretable as an aggregation of individual preferences.” @interfluidity.com www.interfluidity.com/v2/6846.html
interfluidity.com
interfluidity » Quick thoughts about airline economics
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Nathan Tankus @nathantankus.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
d) consumers do not choose the ownership characteristics of who produces media about consumer products, they only choose between the media offerings e) Consumers do not choose the media distribution channels that offer information about consumer products, they only choose a distribution channel
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Nathan Tankus @nathantankus.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
b) consumers do not choose how goods are distributed, they only choose between distribution channels. This is also crucially different c) consumers do not choose their incomes or overall income distribution. also crucial.
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Nathan Tankus @nathantankus.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
I think this is fundamentally wrong but in an interesting way I will need to write about sometime. The key is a) consumers do not choose what is produced, or how, they choose between what is produced. This is a crucial difference
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軽laura @keilaura.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
a big issue in the US seems to be that a big part of the rural working class cannot vote because they're not citizens
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Sarah Taber @sarahtaber.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
A very serious Rural Politico once told me "Dems have to go to farmer meetings! We gotta be where the people are!" I was in fact in a farmer meeting at that very moment! So I live-texted him the meeting. They were complaining that they want indentured workers that they don't have to pay or feed.
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Stephen Nuñez @socio-steve.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
Covid is simultaneously a nefarious Chinese bioweapon designed to kill millions and "just the flu." It killed millions because the deep state suppressed knowledge of the true horse paste cure and also killed nobody while millions died from the unnecessary evil vaccine.
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Nathan Tankus @nathantankus.bsky.social · 25/07/2026
Don't know when it will be published but just finished a draft of a piece I'm very excited about it: "Social Safety Net Cuts and Salient Price Increases Elected Trump in 2024: An Examination of the “Objective” and “Subjective” Causal Mechanisms behind the 2024 Election Results"
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Tony Zombie-ano 🎃 @tonydamiano.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
"The focus on housing affordability, however, ignores the issue of housing quality. These are not two separate issues, but rather, two sides of the same coin... [low-income famlies] rent or buy homes that are so deteriorated, that they have become “affordable.” progressive.org/op-eds/the-h...
progressive.org
The Housing Crisis You’re Not Hearing About
Availability and quality are two sides of the same coin.
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Nathan Tankus @nathantankus.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
BREAKING @crisesnotes.bsky.social from @juanhanes.bsky.social and I: HUD is planning to add "special conditions to grant awards” that will require grantees to submit all invoices & individual payment information from themselves, "subrecipients" AND contractors www.crisesnotes.com/breaking-hud...
crisesnotes.com
BREAKING: HUD is Planning on Hobbling Federal Financial Assistance for Housing by Burying it in Paperwork.
This is a free piece of Notes on the Crises. Please take out a paid subscription so that breaking news coverage like this can be kept free. Or leave a tip. Have non-public information about the Trump...
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David Dayen @ddayen.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
Lina Khan enters the Mamdani administration gothamist.com/news/mamdani...
gothamist.com
Mamdani to appoint antitrust crusader Lina Khan as chair of NYC economic development agency
As board chair, Khan will be able to scrutinize an agency that has been criticized over the years for being too cozy with business interests.
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Nathan Tankus @nathantankus.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
NEW @crisesnotes.bsky.social PIECE: Confused about the oil market's behavior while the Strait of Hormuz is closed? This is my long piece breaking down what's happening, with the help of @roryjohnston.bsky.social's excellent Odd Lots interview last month. www.crisesnotes.com/the-oil-mark...
crisesnotes.com
The Oil Market is a Conventional Wisdom Processor
I had so many thoughts about the run up to- and beginning of- the Trump-Iran war. My biggest thoughts were focused on how the ideas that I developed about the stock market as a “conventional wisdom pr...
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Andrew Lawrence @ndrew.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
hey does anyone know where i can read a profile of some dumb asshole that fell for a reality show hosts bull shit and it took a decade for them to realize theyd been duped? oh every day in every major publication? awesome thanks
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Danilo Pelletiere @dcpelletiere.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
Another way to say this is that a rising homeownership rate can result from rising distress among potential renter households.
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Eviction Lab @evictionlab.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
“Homeownership [in Houston] is on the decline, particularly among Black households.” www.governing.com/urban/is-hou... By @jaredbrey.bsky.social
governing.com
Is Houston Really an Affordable Place to Live?
A new report shows housing costs increasingly out of reach for Houstonians. Black homeownership shrank by the biggest margin on record.
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Dan Immergluck @danimmergluck.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
Wait, I thought big landlords were good actually?🙃 Gift article.
nytimes.com
Largest Landlord in the U.S. Accused of Widespread Fair Housing Violations (Gift Article)
Greystar turned away apartment applicants trying to use housing vouchers to pay rent, according to a watchdog group.
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Tom McAllister @tmcallister.bsky.social · 12/07/2026
remember, be careful what you post on a day like this. If you do it right, you can get illegally fired for being disrespectful to Lindsay Graham and then win a massive lawsuit about 10 months from now and retire with 2 million in your pocket
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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 09/07/2026
The next step will be for Republicans to force students to take courses at this indoctrination center, which is what they had to do in Iowa, because nobody actually wants to take courses at these centers.
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Ben Teresa @benfteresa.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
In most places in the US, renters have fewer protections to deal with inadequate, unsafe housing than a consumer who bought a defective toaster with credit.
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Michael Lange @michaellangenyc.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
NEW: The morning after the socialists swept, the establishment had its excuse ready: Claire Valdez and Darializa Avila Chevalier only won because of gentrification. It was a convenient narrative. It is also false. And we can prove it: open.substack.com/pub/michaell...
open.substack.com
When Narratives Meet Facts
The anatomy of a political earthquake — and the failed efforts to discredit it
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Kyle Griffin @kylegriffin1.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
BREAKING NYT: A New York City panel just voted to freeze rents for nearly one million rent-stabilized apartments — fulfilling one of Mayor Zohran Mamdani's key campaign promises and handing the mayor a major policy win six months into his tenure.
nytimes.com
Mamdani’s Rent Freeze Is Approved by New York City Board
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Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani @mayor.nyc.gov · 24/06/2026
Amidst a housing crisis and skyrocketing costs, we are creating the first City-backed program to reduce insurance costs for affordable and rent-stabilized housing. Housing providers will get support to improve housing while maintaining affordability. www.thecityreporter.nyc/2026/06/24/p...
thecityreporter.nyc
Search Begins for Operator of City-Backed Insurance With $100M in Public Funds
A request for companies to apply to run the program for rent-stabilized buildings opened Wednesday.
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Kate Howell @drkatehowell.bsky.social · 23/06/2026
I missed this when it came out - but excited to see @benfteresa.bsky.social more broadly exploring something we saw in VA. Some LLs did not file rather than take ERA $$ where applying for rental assistance was required to move evictions forward. As always, Ben brings amazing deep cuts together.
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Ben Teresa @benfteresa.bsky.social · 19/05/2026
During COVID, I heard landlords were turning down rent relief or otherwise being recalcitrant participants. The standard explanations (admin burden, slow bureaucracy) weren't convincing on this puzzle. New paper out today in @economyandspace.bsky.social on why: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
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Louise Seamster @louiseseamster.bsky.social · 23/06/2026
When I warned about the rise of institutional single-family rentals post-mortgage crisis in a 2018 workshop I did on racism and housing affordability, a developer then pronounced, "Everything Louise just said is true, but it's not the truth." and then proceeded to voice all these same tropes.
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Ben Teresa @benfteresa.bsky.social · 23/06/2026
I'm writing a book with a chapter on single-family rentals, and every prediction the 2017 elite consensus made about institutional landlords can now be refuted, from the Urban Institute's "Why the single-family rental merger won't hurt homebuyers or renters."
urban.org
Why the single-family rental merger won’t hurt homebuyers or renters
In a $4.3 billion deal announced last week, two of the country’s largest landlords of single-family rentals agreed to merge.
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David Singer @davidsinger.bsky.social · 20/06/2026
Hey this is a thing I would like you to investigate
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Alejandra Caraballo @esqueer.net · 19/06/2026
I've spent the last two months putting together this exhaustive analysis of the New York Times coverage of trans people. It covers 3,242 articles over 12 years. In 2022, the NYT shifted towards a hostile stance towards trans people in their framing. www.thedissident.news/exclusive-ho...
thedissident.news
Exclusive: How The New York Times Changed Its Coverage of Trans People
An exhaustive analysis of over 3,242 articles by the New York Times covering transgender issues from 2014-2026 revealed a stark shift towards hostile framing in 2022. In January 2015, the New York Ti...
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Tony Zombie-ano 🎃 @tonydamiano.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
Short answer- is it's not great! These two charts stood out to me the most. Homeownership costs have almost doubled since 2020. This AND crisis level cost-burdens for renters. It's not just lower-income renters either almost half of moderate income renters were cost-burdened in 2024!
4. High housing costs are also depressing demand  
Unaffordability is another factor dragging down demand by keeping housing costs out of reach for many households, as high home prices and interest rates keep costs near record highs. Median new and existing home prices are both over $400,000. Existing home prices are up 54 percent nationwide since 2020 and remain nearly 5 times median incomes—far above the standard ratio of 3 that held in the 1990s. Additionally, with interest rates holding over 6 percent, payments on the median-priced home are fully $3,100 in the fourth quarter of 2025, up from $1,700 in early 2020 (Figure 4). Households would need an income of over $120,000 to afford this payment, up from $66,000 in 2020.  8. Cost burdens remain at crisis level for lowest income households
Extreme shortages of low-cost housing are also evident in the high shares of households burdened by unaffordable housing costs. The number of renters with cost burdens reached a new record high at last measure in 2024. Cost burdens are on the rise even for lower-income households where rates are already sky high, with 83 percent of renters earning under $30,000 per year spending more than 30 percent of incomes on housing, and fully 66 percent paying more than 50 percent of incomes on housing (Figure 7). Low-income homeowners also have record-high rates of burden, along with rising insurance rates and property taxes, energy and utility costs, and inflation.
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Rebecca Burns @rebeccaburns.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
NEW: Can landlords act as a monopoly? We're about to find out: A merger between two real-estate behemoths is set to put nearly 200,000 apartments in the hands of one company. (🧵) inthesetimes.com/article/real...
inthesetimes.com
Real Estate Merger Poised to Create Several Local Apartment Monopolies
A combination between AvalonBay and Equity Residential would put close to 200,000 apartments in the hands of one company.
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David Singer @davidsinger.bsky.social · 15/06/2026
Hey everyone! I make a fiction podcast called Incoming that’s loosely based on the nuclear-missile-false-alarm that freaked out a bunch of Hawaiians in 2018, and our S2 started today!
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Nathan Tankus @nathantankus.bsky.social · 11/06/2026
NEW PIECE: After a very extended recovery from illness I'm back with a new piece, focusing in on the role of the OMB in our ongoing constitutional crisis. www.crisesnotes.com/the-ombifica...
crisesnotes.com
What Ever Happened to DOGE? The “OMBification” of the Trump-Musk Payments Crisis
Dear readers: My deepest apologies for my absence. I got the so-called “Super-Flu” that hit New York in December, then I followed that up with a very debilitating bout of food poisoning in January. As...
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Tony Zombie-ano 🎃 @tonydamiano.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
Case in point
Study from Harvard showing a map detailing how "Renter Cost Burdens Hit Another Record High"
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Ben Teresa @benfteresa.bsky.social · 19/05/2026
During COVID, I heard landlords were turning down rent relief or otherwise being recalcitrant participants. The standard explanations (admin burden, slow bureaucracy) weren't convincing on this puzzle. New paper out today in @economyandspace.bsky.social on why: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
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economyandspace.bsky.social @economyandspace.bsky.social · 19/05/2026
OnlineFirst - "The political aspects of “full housing”: What if paying landlords to house people doesn’t work?" by Benjamin F. Teresa: journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1...
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Dan Immergluck @danimmergluck.bsky.social · 15/05/2026
Important study that indicates larger single family landlords treat tenants more poorly. Consistent both with literature on larger landlords filing evictions more frequently, and with some. journalistic reports on institutional SFR owners.
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Tony Zombie-ano 🎃 @tonydamiano.bsky.social · 14/05/2026
4. Health and safety concerns were more prevalent in large landlord owned homes. Nearly two-thirds of large-landlord tenants noticed repair needs immediately upon moving in, compared to 39% of micro-landlord tenants. Large landlords were also 2x as likely to leave needed repairs undone.
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Tony Zombie-ano 🎃 @tonydamiano.bsky.social · 14/05/2026
3. We found tenants of large-portfolio landlords paid $180 more in rent on average per month compared to micro owners. Even after controling for other factors, large and medium landlords charged 16-17% more for similar homes in similar neighborhoods. This releationship held for fees as well.
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Tony Zombie-ano 🎃 @tonydamiano.bsky.social · 14/05/2026
New report from the Family Housing Fund written by @curaumn.bsky.social based on a survey of over 1k tenants living in single-family homes in the Twin Cities. Big takeaway: Large landlords (inclduing private equtiy, and REITs) scored worse across all metrics even after controling for other factors 🧵
report cover page
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Desiree Fields @desireefields.bsky.social · 27/04/2026
New paper with @jmigozzi.bsky.social! What kind of financial subjects emerge at the intersection of investment platforms and social media narratives of financial freedom? Come for our critique of fintech's 'democratization', stay for our innovative computational+qualitative methods!
journals.sagepub.com
Platform freedom: Financial subjectivity at the nexus of investment and social media - Desiree Fields, Julien Migozzi, 2026
Platforms enabling individuals to invest in stocks, cryptocurrency, real estate, and other assets have proliferated globally. Meanwhile, narratives of financial...
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Asher HELLbein @asherelbein.bsky.social · 22/04/2026
The number of Republicans crashing out about getting nakedly gerrymandered is, unironically, a sign that we need to do more of it. You guys are correct! This shit sucks! Welcome to the party, pals! We can all stop doing it any time you like!
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