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Richard Lewis Official Cause of Death Revealed

The official cause of death for legendary comedian and Curb Your Enthusiasm actor Richard Lewis at the age of 76 has been revealed.

Maine Lawmakers Urge Cabela's to Stop Selling 'Assault Rifles' After Attacker Bought Handgun There

Forty-five Maine lawmakers are pressuring Cabela's to stop selling AR-15s and other firearms Democrats describe as "assault rifles," noting the October 25, 2023, Lewiston attacker bought a handgun from the retail giant.

Groups Sending Congress Gun Control Pleas Via AI-Generated Voices of the Dead

March for Our Lives and Change the Ref are sending pleas for gun control to lawmakers via the AI-generated voices of people killed in shootings.

The Land of Ferrari and Lamborghini Has a New Speed Limit: 30 K.P.H.

Bologna has become the first major Italian city to impose the limit on most streets, citing safety and livability. But it’s too slow for some: “A city has to move,” one cabby complained.

Near the Piazza Maggiore and the tower of the Palazzo del Podestà, Bologna, Italy. Critics of the new speed limit say that traffic in the city has been slowing to a standstill since it started to be enforced.

Parisians Vote to Triple Parking Fees for Some S.U.V.s

The city authorities say that large cars pollute more and are dangerous for pedestrians. Opponents say the mayor is on a crusade against motorists.

Traffic around the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. The new parking fees aimed at S.U.V.s are expected to be approved in May and take effect in September.

London’s Highline Will Echo Its New York Inspiration, With Local Notes

Hoping to repeat the success of Manhattan’s park, London is transforming a disused rail line, elevated 25 feet above the city’s streets, into its own floating green space.

Crossing the road this month in London beneath part of a disused railway track that will form part of the Camden Highline.

South Korean Politician Is Attacked in Seoul

Bae Hyunjin, of the country’s governing party, was assaulted in Seoul and taken to a hospital. The attack came three weeks after another politician was stabbed.

Bae Hyunjin, a People Power Party lawmaker, at the National Assembly in Seoul last year.

Netflix Actress Ashley Park Hospitalized for 'Critical Septic Shock'

"Emily in Paris" star Ashley Park said she spent a week in the ICU after "what started as tonsilitis" spiraled into a serious health scare.

MSG Withdraws Bid to Build Vegas-Style Sphere in London

The American developer MSG Entertainment withdrew its bid to build a sister arena in Britain after opposition from Londoners and the city’s mayor.

The Sphere, an orb-shaped arena covered in LED panels, is illuminated along the Strip in Las Vegas.

Panda Diplomacy Might Not Be Dead Just Yet

President Xi Jinping of China said his country may keep sending giant pandas to the United States. The National Zoo in Washington sent three of them back to China last week.

President Xi Jinping of China said in a speech on Wednesday night that giant pandas might soon return to zoos in the United States.

Ann Coulter: The Central Park Rape Files

The election of "Central Park Five" member Yusef Salaam to the New York City Council warrants a review of all the evidence in Central Park rape case.

Gwyneth Paltrow’s Ski Trial Is Getting the Musical Treatment

Is there nothing that can’t be put to song? A small London theater production about the much-covered trial will ask the audience to be jury members.

A jury this year found Gwyneth Paltrow, the actress and Goop founder, not liable in a crash with another skiier in Utah in 2016.

Toxic Air Can’t Keep New Delhi’s Joggers and Yoga Fans Inside

In India’s capital, skipping exercise and the social routines that often come with it is seen as worse than going out and breathing poison.

Practicing yoga in Lodhi Garden with smog lingering over India’s capital city, New Delhi, on Wednesday.

How Tropical Parakeets Took Over Brussels

After a small group of parakeets were released from a zoo in Brussels in the 1970s, their numbers soared. A population increase has also occurred across the continent.

A rose-ringed parakeet roosting in a tree in the Flagey neighborhood of Brussels.

As Pandas Leave National Zoo, Is Panda Diplomacy Over?

The giant pandas have left Washington. Some fans find it unbearable.

The Smithsonian’s National Zoo in the heart of Washington has panda posters, panda mugs, panda pajamas, panda puzzles and even panda ice cream.

PHOTOS – Anti-Israel Protesters Desecrate Monuments to American Revolution Near White House: ‘Death to the USA’

WASHINGTON, DC – Photos taken by Breitbart News show that anti-Israel protesters desecrated statues near the White House gates, as well as the gates themselves, during Saturday’s protests in the nation’s capital. 

As Cars Have Grown Bigger, Parking Spaces Might, Too

Par : Yan Zhuang
Australians are grumbling about a recent invasion of American-style giant pickup trucks. But even before that, vehicle sizes were increasing.

Cars parked in Hobart, Australia.

Two More Arrests Made Over Destruction of Sycamore Gap Tree

More than a month after the tree was mysteriously cut down, the police in Britain said they had arrested two men in their 30s on suspicion of criminal damage.

Workers removed what remained of the Sycamore Gap tree along Hadrian’s Wall in Northumberland last month.

At UK Summit, Global Leaders Warn AI Could Cause ‘Catastrophic’ Harm

At a U.K. summit, 28 governments, including China and the U.S., signed a declaration agreeing to cooperate on evaluating the risks of artificial intelligence.

The mansion house at Bletchley Park, north of London. The country estate, home of Britain’s code-breaking efforts in World War II, is the site of a two-day summit focused on A.I. safety.

In Afghanistan, Fear and Despair After Three Big Earthquakes

Seemingly unending earthquakes in Afghanistan have killed nearly 1,300 people and amplified already troubling times since the Taliban seized power.

A temporary encampment in the yard of the Great Mosque in Herat, Afghanistan, on Thursday.

'South Park' Mocks Hollywood Trend of Recasting Characters as Minority Women

A teaser shows South Park boys Stan, Kyle, Cartman, and Kenny as women of various ethnicities. Fan favorite Butters also makes the transformation.

At Site Where Sycamore Gap Tree Fell, an Unanswered Question: Why?

Par : Rory Smith
A week after someone cut down the iconic tree at Sycamore Gap, the police and local residents appear no closer to answering the most persistent question: Why?

The fallen tree at Sycamore Gap in Northumberland, England.

Grizzly Bear Kills 2 People at Banff National Park in Canada

Park officials found the victims early Saturday morning, after receiving an alert from a satellite device hours earlier. A grizzly near the site displayed “aggressive behavior,” they said.

Park authorities in Canada said they received an alert from inside Banff National Park in Alberta, where two people were found dead.

A Little Portion of Land

Culture

A Little Portion of Land

Mobile homes put the dream of affordable housing within everyone’s reach.

1972 - New Trailer Park near Lake Travis in Texas
(Photo by: Hum Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

Making cheap, dignified housing available to poorer Americans is essential to ensuring that all Americans, as Donald Trump put it, are able to participate in “the American way of life.” The only financially feasible way to give every American family their own four walls and backyard is with manufactured housing units, often referred to as “mobile homes.” Mobile home parks have been mostly illegal to construct in the U.S. since 1990, but conservatives would do well to embrace them anyway—they encourage family formation, lower the cost of living, and put the Jeffersonian dream of “a little portion of land” within everyone’s reach.

Most of our housing policy discourse today centers around single-family homes and apartment complexes. Single-family homes are inherently unaffordable for many families. The average price of a home purchased by a first-time buyer was $215,000 in 2019, not even remotely affordable for an individual working full-time and making the federal minimum wage, or even double or triple that. Add in family obligations, and owning a single family home becomes a pipe dream for many Americans.

Apartments can be more affordable than single-family homes, but affordable apartments are generally not dignified places to live. Living in cramped quarters and sharing walls, floors, and ceilings with neighbors makes managing a crying baby or toddler difficult. Tenants have few options if their neighbors develop a penchant for loud parties or cheap cigars, a problem reinforced by the perverse incentives and eviction protections built into some low-income housing programs. And while affordable apartment complexes may not be ideal for families, they are ideal for rats and cockroaches.

Mobile homes are a happy medium. They are more affordable than single-family homes and often more dignified than apartments. Mass-production and economies of scale mean that mobile homes are around fifty percent cheaper than custom-built homes; compare having a Toyota Camry delivered from the factory to having one assembled in a customer’s driveway. The average new mobile home costs only $70,600 in 2016, not including land. Even in relatively dense mobile home parks, residents have some outdoor space to garden or let kids play; many mobile homes have attached porches as well.

Mobile homes are a good deal, which helped propel them to a brief moment of national popularity in the 1960s. The industry collapsed around 1975, however, due to lobbying from home-builders and aligned interest groups, helping to create a nationwide mobile home park shortage that persists today.

The 1950s included both a housing and baby boom. The federal government provided the most affordable mortgage financing in U.S. history, and suburban developers such as William Levitt built the most affordable homes in U.S. history. Easy access to housing encouraged World War II veterans to marry young and start families. Members of the Greatest Generation did not spend their twenties fretting about student loans and postponing major life events for financial reasons.

Mobile home developers took Levitt’s mass-production techniques even further and took control of the low-income housing market during the 1960s. Between 1960 and 1972, mobile homes surged from ten percent of total housing units produced nationwide to almost sixty percent. Traditional homebuilders lost a large swath of their low-end market share, and responded with a ferocious lobbying campaign, spearheaded by the National Association of Home Builders.

In the late 1960s, Congress passed laws excluding mobile homes from financing for traditional custom-built homes. Even today, many mobile homes are financed through more expensive “chattel loans” instead of through less expensive traditional mortgages. Congress dealt an even more severe blow to the industry in 1975, passing a strict national building code that decreased mobile home production by more than half.

Home-builders also lobbied local governments to ban mobile home parks through zoning. Pressure from construction interest groups is a major reason why the city of Chicago has virtually no mobile home parks, for instance. Since around 1990, new mobile home parks have been illegal or virtually impossible to construct in almost every American city, severely limiting the number of new mobile homes available. As of 2023, only eight percent of the American population lives in a mobile home.

Inflation is hitting American families hard. Both post-2020 economic quirks and long-term cost-of-living increases are contributing factors. Housing is the biggest line item on a typical family’s budget, making it a particularly critical driver of families’ economic hardship.

Housing pundits frequently call for improving housing affordability through either zoning reform or other land use deregulation. However, zoning is essentially land-use democracy: It gives local people control over what happens in their neighborhoods. Zoning is usually logical and broadly popular with voters, and no highly populated area of the U.S. has totally overhauled its zoning system recently, although some places have made tweaks, such as California’s recent ordinance forcing cities to approve granny flats. The loudest proponents of zoning reform tend to be progressive technocrats, who want to reform zoning so that they can force their unpopular policy preferences on individual neighborhoods.

Land-use deregulation is better than zoning reform because it gets closer to the heart of the problem: Non-zoning land-use regulations are a major reason why housing is hard to build in California but much easier to build in Texas. But deregulation is not a motivating issue for most voters. Small business owners and libertarian interns get excited about deregulation, but your average member of the Republican base does not.

Conservatives need to go beyond broad calls for zoning reform and deregulation; they need a compelling account of the good, the true, and the beautiful when it comes to housing. The American Dream of owning a home, and the older Jeffersonian ideal of the small landholder, gets closer to this. Owning property gives families resources, a sense of dignity, and a greater measure of control over their lives. It also encourages civic participation: Homeowners vote more consistently than renters, and they presumably feel more motivated to volunteer in their communities. Having some level of material security encourages people to vote for more stable political candidates rather than for demagogues out of spite.

Maybe Jefferson never lived in a single-wide, but he would still be proud.

The post A Little Portion of Land appeared first on The American Conservative.

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