Announcing the Center for Land Economics

Greg Miller & Lars Doucet launch the CLE and commit this substack to a weekly posting schedule

Hello everyone, we have three big announcements today:

• A new national organization

• A new posting schedule for this blog

• A new open source software library

A new national organization

First, we’re proud to announce the launch of the Center for Land Economics, founded by Greg Miller and Lars Doucet.

Greg Miller is formerly of Housing and Urban Development, and Lars you’ll likely recognize as the author of the book Land is a Big Deal, as well as a contributor to this blog. The Center for Land Economics is a new non profit think tank dedicated to the mission of solving the housing crisis with Georgist principles and policy, especially LVT. Greg and I will be leveraging our skills and connections to bring rigorous data-driven policy analysis to the national housing conversation and beyond.

A new posting schedule

The Progress and Poverty substack has always been a group blog and we will continue that tradition with the added change that now Greg & I will be committing to a regular weekly posting schedule as part of our duties at the CLE. As of today, this very substack is the place to be for a unified place to track the progress of land value tax initiatives, as well to discuss new ideas and share insights. Tell all your friends.

We'll provide updates on land value tax legislation and movements, alongside columns that delve into everything from the technical details of assessment policy to broader visions for the future of housing. The Substack will continue to welcome guest contributors, and we'll be actively reaching out to organizations with innovative approaches to land policy that align with Georgist principles.

A new open source library

Land Value is the LV in LVT, and there can be no progress towards it without first laying a firm foundation of accurate, consistent, fair, and trustworthy land assessments. In the coming weeks, Lars will release a new free and open source python library that addresses many core needs in the field of mass appraisal for property tax purposes, ensuring clean data pipelines, rigorous statistical measurements in accordance with IAAO standards, and automated report generation. This will allow anyone with sufficient coding experience to not only be able to assess the quality of existing assessments, but also to build their own predictive models, all from one unified framework. We will be collaborating with academics, researchers, and working assessors throughout the country to constantly improve valuation methods.

The library is nearly done and ready for release. When it is, we’ll post a launch announcement right on this substack.

A new way forward

The CLE has charted out a particular path — to align incentives, prove what’s possible, and bring the necessary people to the table. To do this we will model the effect of policy changes, work with local movements, and build local and national coalitions.

We will honestly grapple with the best objections and discover the best replies. We will nerd out and calculate the before and after changes of implementing LVT. We will analyze related policies like Universal Building exemption, split-rate property taxes, and others. We will talk to anyone and everyone who will listen and do the hard work of coalition building.

All that said, the CLE is but one actor in this larger mission, and we do not stand alone. We are already collaborating with our friends at the Progress and Poverty Institute (formerly the Robert Schalkenbach Foundation), and will be actively reaching out to all organizations with innovative approaches to land policy that align with our shared Georgist principles.

Let’s go!

• Are you interested in land value tax in your jurisdiction and either associated with a nonprofit or government entity or willing to lead a movement? Fill out this form.

• Are you interested in funding our work, or do you have connections to potential funding sources? Email Greg at greg@landeconomics.org.

• Do you have a unique insight into Georgist principles and land policy that you want to share on P&P? Pitch us your story at greg@landeconomics.org.

• Do you want to help in literally any other way? Email Lars at lars@landeconomics.org.

• Leave a comment on this blog and share this post with all your friends!

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