By resolving code compliance questions upfront, cities can reduce delays that add carrying costs and risk to housing projects.

If this were a clean, easy case for tax-exempt financing, officials wouldn’t be managing expectations this early. That they are should prompt serious scrutiny—not just of the numbers, but of the whole public-private model on offer.

Over the last half-century, we’ve built a governing regime designed to stop government from doing harm. And it largely succeeded. But it also made government far less able to do good, especially at scale.

From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch