"When the Dust Bowl set off an exodus out of the Great Plains, 300k migrants showed up in California, a place seen as the land of opportunity. The welcome was not warm." This was talked about a bit in the book "Stuck" by @yappelbaum.bsky.social:
Deputy Executive Editor, The Atlantic. Author of "Stuck: How the Privileged and the Propertied Broke the Engine of American Opportunity." https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/700580/stuck-by-yoni-appelbaum/
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"When the Dust Bowl set off an exodus out of the Great Plains, 300k migrants showed up in California, a place seen as the land of opportunity. The welcome was not warm." This was talked about a bit in the book "Stuck" by @yappelbaum.bsky.social:
From Stuck! by @yappelbaum.bsky.social, some great history on U.S. building codes and Lawrence Veiller's work on tenement laws:
5. The post-1970s changes to zoning have, in effect, returned to city governments a "license law" regime, in which local governments are now consumed by these decisions, to the detriment of everything else they could be doing—and with the same invitation to corruption.
4. Prohibition failed, but the three-tier system of alcohol distribution introduced in its wake was intended to address the same problem—and largely succeeded. Retail owners still needed licenses, but the big money was in distribution and production, and they no longer cared who got the licenses.
3. One major (and largely forgotten) impetus behind the disastrous experiment with Prohibition was the desire to clean up city governments by removing the corruption spawned by the license laws, taking the liquor money out of local politics.
2. The saloon owners—and the beer and liquor distributors who supplied them—had more to win or lose in city elections than anyone else, and they spent accordingly. Officials catered to their interests, more than to voters. And corruption ran rampant.
1. In the decades before Prohibition, many municipalities experimented with license-laws, regulating the sale of alcohol. Such licenses swiftly became the most valuable things dispensed by government, with profoundly distorting consequences.
You will never think of Jane Jacobs the same way again after reading this book: bsky.app/profile/torr...
10/10, no notes
Sounds like a big problem! www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/700580...
We used to be a country, a proper country
It makes me genuinely sad that if, as he says, he read the book, this is the impression he formed of the history it presents: www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/700580...
Jon, thanks for reading, but you've left me a little puzzled. Where did I write what you quote here?
Full story, from @matteowong.bsky.social www.theatlantic.com/technology/a...
"On its own accord, Grok dug up the demographics of previous winners of Nobel Prizes in the sciences—disproportionately white men—and determined a set of “good_races”: white, caucasian, Asian, East Asian, South Asian, and Jewish."
I talk to Yoni Appelbaum on declining mobility and the future of American economic growth, how the abundance movement is changing the tenor of this debate, and some solutions on how to help Americans live where they want and build a more prosperous future: riskgaming.substack.com/p/how-jane-...
NEW: Culture war, with real troops. What I saw during three days in downtown LA www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc...
I agree that the issue is cost. But the paper takes pains to quantify the roles of materials, labor, and regulation—and finds it's mostly the last.
You didn't read the study, AND you're confident it's wrong? www.nber.org/papers/w33876
I know I'm a broken record on this, but the inability to move toward opportunity is a profound shift in American life, it's taken place within our lifetimes, and it's *rapidly getting worse.* www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/700580...
This is hugely underplayed in the housing discourse. We're not running out of land for suburban starter homes. What's changed—and it really has changed!—is that in the last states where it was still possible to build them, the regulatory landscape has choked off development.
"If the U.S. housing stock had expanded at the same rate from 2000-2020 as it did from 1980-2000, there would be 15 million more housing units." From this very good NBER paper by Ed Glaeser and Joseph Gyourko. www.nber.org/system/files...
The most important graph you'll see today. As large blue-state metros choked off growth with zoning, red-state metros kept building cheap suburban housing. But now, that's changed, as homeowners in those states have mastered the art of blocking development, too. The result? Prices are spiking.
With happy timing, here comes my book extract -- on why having a high IQ can make you an outsider, rather than a genius. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...
Sunday read: How has zoning historically been used to segregate cities? 1885 Modesto, CA made it illegal to operate laundromats in certain areas for one racist reason. We can’t discuss zoning bills, like the AZ Starter Homes Act, without acknowledging this history. ℹ️: Stuck by Yoni Appelbaum
5. And often as you say, that means that places are eventually able to rebound. Sometimes, they don't. But either way, the _people_ who were born in places in decline fare better, over the course of their lives, for being able to choose where to live.
4. So I think there's strong empirical support for the claim that mobility allowed us to absorb previous economic shocks and waves of deindustrialization, and that today, the lack of mobility has significantly worsened these effects.
3. But if you think about the people, and not just the place, it's a much less grim story. Instead of remaining the 33rd largest city—which today, would mean 550k people—but being devoid of jobs, the city shrank as people pursued opportunity.
2. Take Fall River, MA. In 1900, it was the 33rd largest city in the country, thriving on textiles, with a pop of 105k. Today, it has only 94k. The textile mills moved south at the beginning of the 20th century, and the city has never wholly rebounded.
1. That's often been the story. But also—and it's important to face this directly—some places just declined, and never rebounded.
The housing market now dictates settlement patterns, rather than following from them. Americans move to find housing they can afford, not to seek economic opportunity. Does it really have to be that way? @ad-mastro.bsky.social reviews @yappelbaum.bsky.social's "Stuck":
This First Things review is either going to be a blurb on the paperback edition of "Stuck," or the ad copy on my new, exclusive fragrance.
"Appelbaum very probably represents the Democratic future. He can bring in libertarians and capitalists with his YIMBY economic policies...but he keeps the coastal activist base happy by including just a touch of racial identity politics and a whiff of lavender identitarianism."
The Dillingham Commission
The point—in context—was that reformers assumed tenement life to be a trap immigrants could never escape, and so sought to ban apartments. But every empirical study showed it was, instead, a launching pad.
There had been some new construction within the area over the previous decade, but not enough to alter the topline finding of "roughly half"; it had been remarkably dense even at the outset.
Key passage from Stuck by @yappelbaum.bsky.social. New York tenement housing was a temporary step ladder for newcomers saving up for something better (and conditions were mostly fine). We see snapshots of where people are in the moment but not how they move up. Observing dynamism is tricky.
Join us this afternoon as we talk housing
Nicely done
SCOOP: three days after Kilmar Abrego GarcĂa’s family sued the govt for his wrongful deportation, US officials began working on plan to fix the mistake and ensure his safety in El Salvador until they could bring him back. Then the Trump administration dug in www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc...
One of the joys of writing a book is finding out all the things that resonate with readers in unexpected ways
Thank you so much!
Your beach reads are here
The Economist calls "Stuck" a "fascinating new account of the decline in Americans’ geographical mobility." www.economist.com/united-state...
Thank you, Josh!
From my Q and A about "Stuck" with @shiraschoenberg.bsky.social www.bostonglobe.com/2025/04/14/o...
People keep asking me why I'm so skeptical of the democratic input from community hearings. And the simplest answer is—it's incredibly undemocratic!
Blue cities are supposed to be bastions of opportunity. But as @yappelbaum.bsky.social says, “We’ve driven the housing costs up so high that instead of moving toward opportunity, Americans now move toward cheaper housing, if they move at all.” Stuck in scarcity, we're all suffering.
“People used to move toward opportunity. We’ve driven the housing costs up so high that instead of moving toward opportunity, Americans now move toward cheaper housing, if they move at all.” @yappelbaum.bsky.social www.bostonglobe.com/2025/04/14/o...
The political appointees on the Interior Secretary's staff have been asked to do some unusual things for taxpayer-funded roles, including ensuring a daily supply of fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies. From @ashleyrparker.bsky.social and @michaelscherer.bsky.social
Great reporting here from @aaronwiener.bsky.social on the quarter-century fight to build multifamily housing on a Metro station parking lot in Takoma. You will not find a better example of systemic dysfunction: www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/202...
Has there every been a more 🔥 paragraph about zoning than this from @yappelbaum.bsky.social's Stuck? Holy guacamole. (Everybody should read this book)
NEW: In a court filing this evening, the Trump administration said that it had mistakenly deported a Maryland father to a notorious Salvadoran prison due to an "administrative error." www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc...
A deeply reported story about Ayn Rand's most slavish follower—and the perils of living a life in service to self-interest:
This is the case that chapter lays out, in elaborate detail. I'm sorry that he chose not to engage with it beyond, "Oh please."
Hard to believe this is real—but it is: www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc...
This Wed, Mar 19: How did America cease to be the land of opportunity? @yappelbaum.bsky.social @theatlantic.com will discuss his new book with our @dluberoff.bsky.social at @portersqbooks.bsky.social in Cambridge. In person only, registration required. www.jchs.harvard.edu/calendar/stu...
Thanks so much to everyone who came out, or watched the livestream. They told me we set a record for questions tonight, as we ran well past the scheduled ending.
🎯 FASCINATING revelation: The secret link between America's housing crisis and political polarization. Join Yoni Appelbaum as he breaks down his groundbreaking book "Stuck" and why we should all care 👍 Tune in here: bit.ly/abstuck
And on to Seattle! I'll be @townhallseattle.bsky.social on Wednesday at 7:30pm ticketing.townhallseattle.org/events/01946...
Then across the bay at Berkeley with the fabulous @jerusalem.bsky.social, Tuesday at 4pm: besi.berkeley.edu/events/housi...
If you're in San Francisco, I'll be at the Commonwealth Club tomorrow at 5:30pm www.commonwealthclub.org/events/2025-...
Yes! I think this is precisely correct, and why it's a huge problem we need to fix!
New #TalkingHeadways! @yappelbaum.bsky.social drops by the show to talk about his new book Stuck. Lots of great history and ideas about how we got to where we are today. bit.ly/3QDkVIR @usa.streetsblog.org
I'm hardly the first to point to Modesto as the original zoning ordinance, but I couldn't find any detailed account of what had happened there. So I spent a lot of time trying to reconstruct it from the available records and contemporary accounts; I think you'll enjoy that chapter.
The book tour starts tonight—hoping to meet many of you in person over the coming weeks!
If you're in DC, come hear @jeffreygoldberg.bsky.social grill me about "Stuck" at @politicsprose.bsky.social on the Wharf, at 7pm
There's a big opening for public policy here. If you want to help people suffering involuntary displacement, the best way to do that is to ensure that there's an abundance of housing available to absorb them in places that offer greater opportunity. (Helps to pay for coaching, to help them find it.)
The odds that someone will make such a move following a disaster or foreclosure are less correlated with their goals than with an array of sociodemographic variables, for all the reasons you'd expect.
It's a good question! There's some good research on these questions; the tl;dr is that housing instability and involuntary displacement are really bad, but when they lead to moves to higher-opportunity neighborhoods, the longer-term outcomes turn positive on almost all metrics.
Really excellent interview by @chrislhayes.bsky.social with @yappelbaum.bsky.social. The thing that blew my mind: America’s very first zoning law was explicitly designed to move Chinese people out of white neighborhoods in Modesto, CA by moving the laundries. open.spotify.com/episode/506I...
keenon.substack.com/p/episode-22... @yappelbaum.bsky.social on how the biggest American problem is one of mobility, especially in housing
Great books on the shelf, stunning layout, 10/10
Had a great conversation with @chrislhayes.bsky.social about "Stuck"—he'd actually read the book, and kept me on my toes: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/w...
“Racial zoning covenants first gained traction in Modesto after the Gold Rush… When Chinese immigrants began to move into predominantly white districts, locals tried intimidation. When that didn’t work, Modesto’s city fathers in 1885 enacted an ordinance to force laundry services into Chinatown.”
Thank you, Danny!
My review of the new book “Stuck” by the great @yappelbaum.bsky.social. It’s a wonderful history of mobility in America and all the barriers that have been put up. My only real quibble is that I think mobility is more alive today than he does and in new places. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
This week's post on @dailykos.com/Black Kos of two weeks of newly published books of special interest to Black readers, but also recommended for ALL readers! www.dailykos.com/comments/230... Mentioned authors/illustrators I've found on Bluesky listed in following comment. #Booksky #blackbooksky 🧵
ICYMI, @yappelbaum.bsky.social says progressive policies have unintentionally restricted mobility/opportunity in America: www.wnyc.org/story/whats-...
“A Migratory People,” The Atlanta Constitution, January 21, 1892, 4. And thanks so much!
Thank you, Sarah!
The @latimes reviews "Stuck," calling it "insightful," and saying it "skillfully blends zoning history with ... reportage." www.latimes.com/entertainmen...
I realized, sitting down to do @kqedforum.bsky.social today, that I was on the block where my grandfather delivered the mail for 30 years. I'm glad America let him move toward opportunity, and I hope he'd be proud of "Stuck."
I found this conversation with @yappelbaum.bsky.social on @npr.org (and @kqednews.kqed.org) radio this morning VERY interesting. www.npr.org/2025/02/17/n...
TUE at 9AM: Deputy executive editor of The Atlantic @yappelbaum.bsky.social joins to talk about how progressive policies have frozen social mobility. âť“What policies do you think prevent people from moving to a new place?
Talked to @patrickcsisson.bsky.social about mobility: www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...
On this Monday, the day that the Cambridge City Council likely votes to end exclusionary zoning, it's great to see this excerpt published from one of my fellow co-founders of A Better Cambridge, @yappelbaum.bsky.social www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...
Thanks, Bill. There's a lot on California in the book—I only wish I could've packed more into this story, too.
Thank you, Javier, it's beautiful!
Thanks for this thoughtful response, Tim - I appreciate the engagement.
I would encourage you to read the book, and its chapters on the Great Migration!
Thanks, Helena. I think you might be interested in the chapter of the book from which its drawn that addresses Turner—and how his frontier thesis was based on audaciously fraudulent statistics pushed by immigration restrictionists, trying to convince Americans the country had no room.
Really interesting thesis: that the decline of American democracy and prosperity is driven largely by our declining mobility. www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...
America doesn't have an affordable housing crisis—we've got a mobility crisis. The first excerpt of my book "Stuck" is out this morning, as @theatlantic.com's March cover story. www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...
A first excerpt from @chrislhayes.bsky.social terrific new book, published this morning: www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...
A crisis a half-century in the making. This is why I wrote "Stuck"—which explains it all—and is out on February 25. www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/700580...
