Build Back Better, Hold the SALT
As negotiations on President Biden’s Build Back Better plan continue, the spotlight is shining on a proposal by House Democrats to roll back the $10,000 cap placed on the state and local tax (SALT) deduction by the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA). Opponents of the SALT deduction cap rollback claim that SALT primarily…
California Zoning Reform and Housing Justice
On Sept. 16, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed off on a variety of new initiatives designed to address the state’s housing affordability crisis, including the California Comeback Plan and Senate Bills 8, 9, and 10. In this post, I offer my thoughts on Senate Bill 9. This new law, in conjunction with several laws passed…
The Domains of Spatial Justice
Lately, I’ve been thinking about the various kinds, or “domains,” of justice that we often discuss in urban planning: spatial justice, environmental justice, transportation justice, housing justice, etc. How are these domains of justice related to one another? To make things even more complicated, we tend to equate “justice” and “equity” without necessarily probing deeper…
Why I wrote Just Housing
My book, Just Housing: The Moral Foundations of American Housing Policy, was released earlier this week. Why write a book about housing justice, why now, and what can readers expect to take away from the book? The book’s origins can be traced to my work in the fair housing policy arena, where community developers have…
Is Gentrification Slowing Down in Portland, Oregon?
I’ve been digging through the 2020 Census Redistricting Data, and the population changes by race and ethnicity in Portland, Oregon, fascinate me. Figure 1 displays the percentage of nonwhite persons (those not identifying as non-Hispanic white alone) by census tract in 2010 (left) and 2020 (right). The 2010 Portland Urban Growth Boundary (UGB) is in…
The Dispossessed and Alone
Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed is best known for its space operatic portrayal of moon-dwelling anarcho-communists, but what fascinates me most are Le Guin’s meditations on communal living arrangements. On the utopian world of Anarres, no one owns property, and Anarrestis rarely inhabit private rooms. Most dwellings are organized into dormitory-style living arrangements that…
Welcome to my blog
I’ve never written a blog before. Blogs seem appropriate for shareable thought fragments, ramblings that are too long for twitter, and the germs of ideas that may eventually blossom into something more. I am not sure yet if my blog posts will fall into any of these categories. Topically, most of what I will have…
Casey J. Dawkins 
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