Why tiny homes could be a big deal
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- This post originally appeared in the Insider Today newsletter.
Ever considered putting up a tiny home in your backyard?
The most recent California budget includes a $50 million fund to encourage homeowners to build accessory dwelling units, or ADUs, in their backyard. The guidelines for this new ADU grant program aren't set, but a previous program in the state handed out grants up to $40,000.
It's easy to look at these tiny homes as undersized gimmicks, but there are real use cases.
Take Joyce Higashi, a San Jose homeowner who built an ADU in her backyard. She now rents out her 500-square-foot abode for $3,000 per month to traveling nurses.
Katie Sandoval-Clark, a nonprofit exec, split the cost of a retirement home with an ADU in the backyard with her mother.
Maggie and John Randolph run a senior-living center in New Hampshire, and are building a tiny-home village so employees can afford to live where they work.
Others are leaning on tiny homes to house homeless veterans. You can even buy ADUs on Amazon.
The program in California is another example of cities and states using novel approaches to encourage construction of smaller houses. Denver changed its zoning laws to make ADU construction easier, allowing two-story units in some parts of the city. Austin's city council approved a resolution that cuts the minimum lot size for a single-family home by half.
The housing market is a huge source of economic anxiety. Tiny homes won't fix that, but innovation in zoning and construction, taken with recent data pointing to a surge in residential construction, offer reasons for hope.
Why tiny homes could be a big deal
This first appeared in the Insider Today newsletter. Here's the rest of the the newsletter.
Harvard professor's empire crumbles
Karl Maasdam; Lawrence D. Thornton/Archive Photos/Getty Images; Rebecca Zisser/Insider
Francesca Gino met many of the requirements to be considered a superstar in behavioral science. Best-selling books? Check. Thousands of social-media followers? Check. Tenure at Harvard? Check. On the back of this success, she built a million-dollar empire.
But that empire is crumbling. Gino was placed on administrative leave following an investigation into allegations that she falsified research data. Now she's suing Harvard and several bloggers who accused her of fraud for $25 million, saying they "worked together to destroy my career and reputation."
Researchers in behavioral science told Insider that Gino's fall from grace highlighted a wider problem in the field: a clout-chasing culture that pits professors against each other in a mad dash to publish the next "Freakonomics." Scholars are now eyeing whose downfall could be next.
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Morgan Stanley succession
Arantza Pena Popo/Insider
Who's next in line to succeed James Gorman and run one of the largest financial firms in the world? Even five years ago, that was a question with a straightforward answer: Ted Pick.
The Morgan Stanley copresident has spent his entire career at the bank — and he's come to represent the firm's legacy businesses and perhaps even old-school Wall Street itself, Insider's Hayley Cuccinello writes. But while Pick remains the front-runner, his fellow copresident, Andy Saperstein, represents a real threat to his bid for the throne.
Big Pharma's big tax dodge
Tyler Le/Insider
Something isn't adding up with Big Pharma. Americans pay the highest prices in the world, so it stands to reason the US's big pharmaceutical companies should earn far more in the US than they earn elsewhere.
But the corporate disclosures of America's large pharmaceutical companies indicate they made very little in profits in the US — in some cases they reported making nothing at all. Of their $100 billion combined profit, a paltry $10 billion came from their US operations. What's going on?
As Brad Setser and Tess Turner write for Insider: "Tax avoidance, of course."
Death by LLM
Stack Overflow
OpenAI released the world's most powerful AI model in March. A few weeks later, Stack Overflow's CEO spotted a worrying trend: traffic to the Q&A website for software coders had begun to slip.
Welcome to the future of the internet in an AI world. Online communities like Stack Overflow and Wikipedia thrived as hubs for people to share information freely. Now they're being pillaged by tech companies prowling for human data to train their large language models.
And with less incentive for people to go online and answer questions, the human data that AI needs for training will wither — and the quality of these models could degrade.
Inside Stack Overflow's fight for survival
This week's quote:
"Almost anything goes — I don't think I've ever seen anyone wear a suit or tie."
— Jasmine Hyman, 23, a commerce producer and writer in New York City, on the dress code at her office. From Doc Martens to pocket squares, see what 11 Gen Z workers are wearing to the office this summer.
More of this week's top reads:
- If you want to know where the economy's headed, don't watch the Fed. Track this interest rate instead.
- Employees are secretly using AI to get ahead at work — and duck out early.
- There are way too many crappy real-estate agents, and homebuyers are getting screwed.
- Wall Street landlords are selling homes back to Main Street. Here's what that means for runaway housing prices.
- Google ended a controversial system that warned employees they were at risk of being labeled low performers.
- Goldman Sachs' summer internships are coming to a close. A former intern turned partner breaks down the five secrets to successfully snagging a return offer.
- The price of a typical starter home fell in San Francisco and Austin, bucking a national trend.
- Lip fillers and laser hair removal are plumping up private equity.
Curated by Matt Turner. Edited by Hallam Bullock and Lisa Ryan. Get in touch: insidertoday@insider.com