Rachel Cohen Booth
@rcobooth
Journalist @voxdotcom covering policy. writing CAPABLE with @penguinrandom, a book about agency and social change
I'm writing a book. After years of reporting, I realized we've come to expect too much from policy. CAPABLE is about how a well-intentioned distrust of agency has gone too far—sapping our prospects for structural change, and undermining well-being in the process.
A combination of high boomer wealth + people surviving a lot longer (but still having mental decline) + AI is going to make these scam risks very severe in coming years. Bank safe haven laws for stopping suspected fraud seem like a start but we’ll need more I suspect
Some “pig butchering” scam victims say banks aren’t doing enough to prevent the fraud. on.wsj.com/411yUOc
The US Department of Labor quietly ended its only nationwide job training program for low-income seniors just as tens of thousands must meet new work requirements to tap into Medicaid and food assistance. news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-re…
A 1998 HUD-commissioned report on manufactured housing found consumers "demonstrating a preference for new construction that is less spacious, has a simpler design with fewer amenities, and uses less expensive materials" vox.com/policy/420254/…
some would say manufactured housing could have used better Groups x.com/rcobooth/statu…
New: A 50-year-old federal rule has stifled affordable housing. Congress may finally, at long last, do something about it vox.com/policy/420254/…
Really love this @BW story about the world's largest zipper-maker, YKK, by @viajoshhunt. It's fascinating in too many ways to get into in a tweet. Gift link: bloomberg.com/features/2025-…
thread x.com/smilleralert/s…
1000 low income adults were randomly selected to receive $1000/month for 3 years, with a control group receiving $50/month over that same period. Many of them had children in the household. How did it affect how they parented and their kids?
“I don’t lose sleep over a lot,” Mr. Smathers said. “But I lose sleep over this — affordability. Hospitality jobs are great. Tourist jobs are great. But they are not high-paying jobs.” poignant reporting x.com/emmabgo/status…
I spent some time in Canton, North Carolina — a small town with some great characters, that lost its paper mill and then faced Hurricane Helene, and has had to figure out: What's a mill town without a mill? nytimes.com/2025/07/21/us/…
The permanent chassis rule and its history offer a window into how smart ideas that could solve real problems can still languish for decades. But it also reveals what it takes to move even obvious reforms from inertia to action vox.com/policy/420254/…
We love small legislative/regulatory fixes that pay big policy dividends.
New: A 50-year-old federal rule has stifled affordable housing. Congress may finally, at long last, do something about it vox.com/policy/420254/…
housing feels like a perfect case of punctuated equilibrium right now. a slow-moving crisis that exploded around COVID with decades of policy proposals being dusted off in a flurry of action
New: A 50-year-old federal rule has stifled affordable housing. Congress may finally, at long last, do something about it vox.com/policy/420254/…
today is the 15th anniversary of Dodd Frank. interestingly the chassis requirement wasn't addressed last year because Sherrod Brown didn't like that Tim Scott's housing package had a small-dollar mortgage bill that would have required small changes from the CFPB and possibly…
One of the most maddening aspects of this story is learning how many times experts and lawmakers have agreed eliminating this rule is worth doing x.com/mattyglesias/s…
More and more people are talking about permanent chassis regulation! Great piece from @rcobooth and you can really see what a big deal this in a place like Maine where density is low but lots of people are struggling with a surge in housing demand. vox.com/policy/420254/…
New: A 50-year-old federal rule has stifled affordable housing. Congress may finally, at long last, do something about it vox.com/policy/420254/…
"Polls don’t say you have to do anything in particular. People might, and you can ignore them if you want. You have agency" @charlotteeffect is such a sane refreshing voice to read cauldronllc.substack.com/p/do-we-have-t…
I guess you didn’t read study 2) because it has a list of six other RCTs, all legit, finding the opposite, and notes that it may be an outlier