Pre-cleared blueprints, faster housing

Pew’s Housing Policy Initiative is making a splash with its new video explaining “address chain” filtering: How new market rate construction frees up housing opportunities across incomes and neighborhoods as occupants of newly built homes free up their existing, cheaper homes (not over decades but in just months). Pew also launched a new report on pre-approved building plans — reusable, pre-cleared design blueprints that let builders bypass discretionary design review. The report documents results from ~40 US jurisdictions running some version of the program, with the strongest outcomes in small and mid-size cities like South Bend, Indiana (223 new homes built, ~7% of permits over three years) and Seattle (ADU approval times cut from 160 days to 54). Federal interest is growing: the Accelerating Home Building Act, folded into the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, would launch a HUD pilot grant program to scale the model.