Apr 9: Using the DPA for clean energy projects; immigration raised rents
New Legal Research on Building Abundance
Highlights
⚡️Energy: The Defense Production Act could accelerate clean energy over state objections
🏠 Housing: Unauthorized immigration explains 30% of the 2021–2024 rent surge
🏠 Housing: Zoning allowed mixed-use density until federal slum clearance programs discouraged it
🏛 State Capacity: Public-sector unions held Patent Office output steady during DOGE cuts
⚡️Energy
The Defense Production Act could accelerate clean energy over state objections
Trump Wields the Defense Production Act to Promote Fossil Fuels. It Could Instead Be Used to Promote All-of-the-Above Energy Abundance—Joel Dodge and Todd N. Tucker (Roosevelt Institute)
Trump’s DOE used DPA Title I to override California regulators and force a donor-connected oil company to resume production—establishing that priorities and allocations authority can compel new production and preempt state environmental law. That same playbook could unlock nuclear, geothermal, offshore wind, and green hydrogen past state permitting bottlenecks.
🏠 Housing
Unauthorized immigration explains 30% of the 2021–2024 rent surge
The Impacts of Unauthorized Immigration on U.S. Labor and Housing Markets: New Evidence from Administrative Microdata—Daniel J. Wilson and Xiaoqing Zhou (Dallas Fed)
Individual-level immigration court microdata indicates that the 2021–2024 unauthorized immigration boom raised house prices 2.2% and rents 1.4% per one-percentage-point employment-share inflow, explaining roughly 30% of average metro area price growth. Housing supply didn’t respond—unauthorized immigrant inflows acted as a pure demand shock against inelastic short-run supply.Zoning allowed mixed-use density until federal slum clearance programs discouraged it
Reform and Consequence: The Mid-Century Roots of Twenty-First-Century Zoning—Christine Quattro (Journal of Planning History)
Archival and spatial analysis of Philadelphia and San Antonio shows that early zoning codes permitted walkable, mixed-use development by default—single-family exclusivity emerged from 1960s overhauls funded by Urban Renewal grants. Mid-century reformers used federal money and eminent domain to demolish mixed-use neighborhoods and replace them with auto-oriented, single-use codes that persist today.NIMBY-proof tactics quietly deliver affordable housing to wealthy suburbs
From persuasion to evasion: anti-collective action and the making of affordable housing in suburban Chicago—John N. Robinson III, Lillian Leung (Social Forces)
Interviews with 68 developers who built Low-Income Housing Tax Credit units in suburban Chicago’s lowest-poverty areas show that where persuasion fails, developers use “anti-collective action”—exploiting by-right zoning, converting foreclosed properties, and cultivating municipal officials while sidelining hostile homeowners. Most suburbs still have none of this housing.
🏛 State Capacity
Public-sector unions held Patent Office output steady during DOGE cuts
Institutional Buffers and Administrative Capacity—Christopher A. Cotropia & David L. Schwartz (draft)
Using USPTO’s granular real-time event data and a difference-in-differences design, non-unionized patent staff suffered a 35% per-employee productivity drop after DOGE’s January 2025 launch, while union-protected examiners showed no significant change. After Trump’s August 2025 EO stripped examiner union protections, examiner output began declining too.
🧪 Innovation
Abolishing patent injunctions could unlock 95% of dormant patents for active use
The Compensatory Patent System: replacing injunctions with economic compensation—Juan Antonio Nuñez Triguero (Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice)A Compensatory Patent System that replaced patent injunctions with preset royalty rates by patent class, with infringement and validity challenges handled by the patent office rather than courts, would cuts enforcement costs from millions to roughly $60,000 per party, addressing both chronic patent underutilization and the chilling effect on implementers.