Should We Pay the NIMBYs w/ Adam Jentleson

Why do cities agree we need more housing and then fight every building that gets proposed?

In this episode of Everybody Gets Pie, we talk with Adam Jentleson, founder of the Searchlight Institute, about a housing idea that sounds radical and might actually work. What if residents got paid when their city built more homes?

Searchlight’s proposal would send direct checks to people living in cities that hit ambitious housing production targets. Not tax cuts. Not vague economic benefits. Real money in your pocket, explicitly tied to new housing getting built.

We dig into:

• Why people support affordable housing in theory but oppose it in their own neighborhood
• The fears driving NIMBY politics, including traffic, crime, and neighborhood change
• Why public education and messaging usually fail on housing
• How a “growth dividend” could reduce opposition without turning everyone into a housing activist
• Why policy design matters more than better slogans
• What Social Security and stimulus checks teach us about durable policy
• The real risks, including gaming the system and inflation

If you have ever wondered why housing fights feel impossible or what it would actually take to make building homes politically popular, this conversation is for you.

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