The Download: US house-building barriers, and a fusion energy facility tour

Housing is an election challenge. However the US sucks at it.

Forward of abortion entry, forward of immigration, and manner forward of local weather change, US voters below 30 are most involved about one challenge: housing affordability. And it’s not simply younger voters who say hovering rents and eye-watering house sale costs are amongst their prime worries. For the primary time in latest reminiscence, the price of housing could possibly be a significant factor within the presidential election.  

It’s not arduous to see why. From the start of the pandemic to early 2024, US house costs rose by 47%. In massive swaths of the nation, shopping for a house is not a chance even for these with middle-class incomes. 

Allowing delays and strict zoning guidelines create enormous obstacles to constructing extra and quicker—as do different well known points, just like the political energy of NIMBY activists throughout the nation and an ongoing scarcity of expert staff. However there may be additionally one other, much less talked-about downside: We’re not very environment friendly at constructing, and we appear one way or the other to be getting worse. Read the full story.

—David Rotman

Inside a fusion power facility

—Casey Crownhart

On an overcast day in early October, I picked up a rental automobile and drove to Devens, Massachusetts, to go to a gap within the floor.

Commonwealth Fusion Techniques has raised over $2 billion in funding because it spun out of MIT in 2018, all in service of constructing the primary business fusion reactor. The plan is to have it working by 2026.