Reminder: Sale ends tonight. Great chance to pick up @holz-bau.bsky.social outstanding "Building for People", @veronicaodavis.bsky.social excellent "Inclusive Transportation" and some how even better "Trains, Buses, People," Second Edition by @christofspieler.bsky.social!

This is *exactly* what happened in my South Austin neighborhood- we now have great restaurants, bars, coffee shops, stores, movie theatre, etc because of the 10-15 nearby apartment buildings built since early 2000s. Almost all of which were opposed by the local neighborhood associations.

The difference between the sociopathic and non-sociopathic takes is really quite stark

Essential viewing for your Sunday. On individuals & families pushed into homelessness: “This is an engineered neglect and at every turn, there are entire business models that are set up to capitalize on their predicament.” - @brian-goldstone.bsky.social

This is nauseating: “As the emails stretch through the years, they show how that protected realm vanished into the mists of time, pulled under by the rising forces of the internet and the #MeToo movement.” A “Gone With the Wind” framing for sexual abuse and harassment.

Congress just killed the 28 billion dollar THC and hemp market. Alcohol lobbyists getting their money’s worth.

Many people in Houston are asking this:

No more big city mayors who hate big cities.

9/🧵 What does this mean for Democratic strategy? All those debates about choosing between identity politics and economic populism? False premise. Young working-class voters with low racial resentment aren't choosing. They're ready for Medicare for All AND Black Lives Matter. Lean into the tide.

Meanwhile in Egypt ... www.cnn.com/travel/egypt...

Best panel @texastribune.org Trib Fest every year! Mayors of Austin, San Diego & Jacksonville discussing key issues - let’s see what they say about housing!

Fantastic news this morning for the LBJ School at Women in Public Life Symposium with the announcement of a $1 million endowment from Lynda Johnson Robb!

At *Vanderbilt* they had to create a board committee to monitor Gee's spending, which included $6 million to renovate the Chancellors house and $700K for parties: ordinary-times.com/2023/08/29/t...

Anyhoo, here's a paper about "the centrality of housing concerns in facilitating the Holocaust and the complicity of individuals in the exclusion of Jews for economic, ideological, and geographic reasons." journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1...

I cannot wrap my head around how cruel and destructive this is. This is what comes of years of rhetoric demonizing and blaming the unhoused on the part of politicians (including big city Democrats) instead of seeing them as neighbors who need help

It’s looking like the Trump admin is going to go through with its cuts to HUD’s continuum of care program with an announcement later today. Its vital source of funding to house the homeless and HUD’s own estimates are that it could push 170k people onto the street. calmatters.org/housing/home...

US fire codes are getting out of hand. Its bad enough they're nerfing projects left and right. American fire departments refuse to learn from other countries with lower fire deaths on whats safe. Its ruining our cities and turning them into stroad-based suburbs www.berkeleyside.org/2025/11/13/b...

Higher Ed students are members of your community, PERIOD. If they work in your city, they pay local taxes & as residents they are spending their money *locally*. Stop treating student housing as some sort of burden and start putting some respect on them as part of the citizenry of your city.

Ha! Austin stays winning the (totally fake) bachelorette wars!

in retrospect the metoo movement did not go too far and in fact should have been given spanish inquisition levels of power and authority

“By cutting aid for permanent housing by 2/3 next year, the plan risks a sudden end of support… beginning as soon as January. All are disabled — a condition of the aid — and many are 50 or older. The document does not explain how they would find housing.”

Today is a good day to remember, and to say, that the #MeToo movement was right, and was righteous, and has been vindicated over and over again. There was no overreach. There was no excess. There was no they-went-too-far. So much work remains to be done.

Here’s your annual reminder that the housing crisis is a women’s issue.

Fantastic update from Dallas and great news for their voters - November elections are a big step forward for local participation & representation! Special thanks to @nathanjohnsontx.bsky.social & @rafaelanchia.bsky.social who championed this change at the #txlege.

The price of housing is set by supply and demand. Building enough new homes keeps the price of existing older homes affordable. This is very straightforward.

But seriously, Austin Planning Commission had a Pickle Ball zoning case last year!! With >competing< sound studies! and we took over an hour to discuss!!

The Republican Senate majority is built on minority rule, enabled by unequal representation & the two-party system. The GOP hasn’t won more total votes or represented more people than Dems since the 1990s. They’ve won the Senate in 7 of 13 elections since 2000 anyway docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

The ACA made my whole self-employed life possible. For almost ten years, I was able to build a career that actually worked for me AND keep receiving necessary care to address the consequences of childhood medical neglect. And I still deserved better. We all do.

Every single Dem that caved and agreed to this deal needs to be primaried and voted out. They are cowards who wasted the last month for a half baked promise vote a month from now.

Would love to see some reporting on how the airline lobby put on the pressure.

This is not a deal — it's an empty promise. Trump and his Republican Congress are making healthcare more expensive for the middle class and ending it for working families. Time for Democrats to stand tall for affordable healthcare. www.politico.com/news/2025/11...

Sanders: Let’s be clear… If this vote succeeds, over 20 million Americans are going to see at least a doubling in their premiums… if resolution is passed tonight, we are on a path way to throw 15 million Americans off of medicaid and the affordable care act, 15 million.

Important to understand this. There's a reasonable chance that your Dem Senator who voted against it and is acting mad now was in on the play. It's the same reason why they scheduled the surrender for AFTER the election this week. They didn't want people pissed at Dems right before an election.

See, I think the counterpoint is people elected a government, they should get the government they elected. Requiring a super-majority of a chamber whose representation is already unrepresentative leaves the government unable to respond to changing needs or demands and breeds cynicism.

Dems backed Trump into a corner where he’s advocating for starving Americans and hemorrhaging support. If they vote to let him off the hook in exchange for nothing it’s a cataclysmic failure. I know people are in pain but insulating Republicans from political consequences is not the answer.

Maybe important to note it was the disruption in air travel that Democrats couldn't stand and not, you know, 40+ million people not knowing where their next meal was coming from.

In case anyone has forgotten, the destruction of Gawker was absolutely intentional because they used to post headlines like this:

Big win for KCMO! Right-on-red banned in school zones. Thank you @mayorq.bsky.social #VisionZeroKC #VisionZero www.kshb.com/news/local-n...

I have long argued that the single best thing you could do to improve the functioning of the US government is double the salaries of everyone working on Capitol Hill. Serving Congress shouldn’t involve poverty wages in DC. You could attract a much wider set of perspectives netting a better result.

The Mayor of New York only makes $260k. I bet there are police that make more than that in NY with overtime. We need to pay elected leaders more money and stop pretending it's some sort of calling. They're managing hundreds of billions of dollars in investments and millions of people's lives.

Totally not the point, but that chyron is wild and 100% part of the reason why we are in this situation today.

Highly recommend this series of Housing Voice podcasts for everyone who has been interested in technical building code issues but wasn't sure where to start. And yes, the episode with @jessezwick.bsky.social which explains why we have these rules is both very enlightening & totally maddening.

Today's @houstonchronicle.com piece unironically lamenting Houston's low voter turnout & low voter information, brought to you by the exact people paywalling their voter guide when they could simply give Houstonians free access to basic info about what's on the ballot & when

Excellent episode that really goes into the specific differences between IRC/IBC that raise costs on small projects. When we did Dallas' "8-units under the IRC" code change this year, we consulted with Memphis officials to help scale our building code to the risk level.

BREAKING: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center is illegally closing 13 campus buildings (including ~100 laboratories). Report coming from GESTA, the Goddard employee union

I am really trying to get people to understand how much what is happening to our children in Chicago with regard to ICE abductions is like school shootings/gun violence: the random and massive exposure to this particular violence will imprint on a generation and no privilege can fully shield you.

Congrats to our next door neighbors on these results! Looking forward to some great new housing policies from The Land of Enchantment in the near future. 🏘️

Fun fact: It's already state law. Also fun fact: The Texas State Constitution is littered with absolutely performative nonsense provisions. And, it's 92,000 words long and with more than 500 amendments. Second longest in the U.S.; only outdone by Alabama.

NEW: ALL FOUR PRO-HOUSING BALLOT QUESTIONS PASS!!! For the first time, New Yorkers had the chance to choose more housing at the ballot box—and they chose it overwhelmingly. This is a historic victory for housing that will help make NYC more affordable. 🧵