Cities that block housing near transit shouldn't get federal transit money. Workers are paying twice — once in rent, again in commute time. Congress can fix this. Reward cities that build, not ones that don't. thehill.com/opinion/cong...

How does #Switzerland, where the average annual wage is HIGHER than in the US, manage to build apartments for just $300K per gross sq. ft.? Is it by cutting corners on fire safety? Nope. America’s fire death rate is five times higher than Switzerland’s.

ICE as TSA again making the case for high-speed rail. Transportation is not a niche issue, and the left needs to start taking it seriously. So many transportation systems we have set up are foundational to the division, suppression, and collapse that we are witnessing.

Great single stair article on Fast Company today highlighting Seattle and the broader movement around the country to change building codes www.fastcompany.com/91513043/the...

I love when NIMBYs accuse me of having “done no research” on housing as if I didn’t literally work in the senate on housing policy and write extensively on this exact topic

California has TWO building codes. One is very strict, but the other? Not so much. The very strict one applies to commercial & multifamily (except duplexes). The lax one applies to single-family houses & duplexes only. That’s why we build light wood frame houses in extreme fire hazard zones!

every one of these homes is a 3-bedroom. served by a single stair. with daylight on opposite sides. no windowless bedrooms no dozens of units on the same floor more privacy not looking into homes 10-15' away and 100% illegal in ever city in the US our building codes are *trash*

Mary Fong Lau, the 80 year old woman who killed four people including a baby and a toddler after crashing into a bus stop going 75mph the wrong way down a 25mph street, has been sentenced to probation and will not permanently lose her drivers' license. This is a despicable miscarriage of justice.

Everyone who owned the first Velvet Underground record started a band. Everyone who read Stephen Smith's Elevators report is running legislation on it.

“First of all, American engineers receive almost no academic training about traffic, and even less training about safety. A student can graduate college with a civil engineering degree and pass a licensure exam while having taken no courses related to transportation (p. 307).“

From the weekend: Why it makes sense that housing is where Trump and Mamdani can find common cause and how Mamdani and LA's Nithya Raman and seeking to upend a half century of urban housing politics and a decade-long fight on the left. www.politico.com/news/2026/03...

If you’re pushing housing in lowrise n’hoods, eliminating useless sideyards is the unlock for the urban design everybody says they want. In exchange for sideyards that no one uses, you get better units, lush interior courtyards, space for trees and play, higher density and lower energy use.

loved this quote from Senator Pham: “I believe in inclusionary zoning as a mechanism to economically integrate neighborhoods, not as a tax on all new housing.”

Yesterday, Oregon's legislature voted to ban underfunded inclusionary zoning from the Portland metro area. It's a big turnaround, and I hope a path forward for other states too. www.sightline.org/2026/03/05/o...

R U #elevator pilled yet? Cecelia Black: "I have navigated the housing market from a wheelchair...in 15 yrs as a renter, I never found an accessible apt in a bldg w/ fewer than 6 stories" It's no oincidence; it’s a design failure of WA’s codes" Attn: #WAleg www.seattletimes.com/opinion/miss...

new from me: a story about VACANCY CHAINS, the idea that underlies the argument that more housing is good even if you can't afford it www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

How to identify American fascists as stated by our own US government in March of 1945.

Operation Breakthrough, a HUD project in the 1960s, produced some significant advances in prefabricated building construction methods and also exposed the need for building code reform.

Wow - again, if you build separated, protected bike lanes, people will use them. The better and more connected the routes are, the more ridership increases.

A friend in Minneapolis just sent me this video. Looks like thousands have come together for a vigil after an ICE agent shot and killed 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good. This was my neighborhood for several years before coming to Portland.

Just an annoying reminder that the unquenchable American thirst for oil, and the conquest and subjugation of other nations in futile attempts to satiate it, is brought to you in large part by our land-use patterns

The Americas see about 3% of global elevator installations as of 2020. The U.S. & Canada: even less. But we've stuck with our own unique set of elevator codes, as if elevator companies still have no choice but to beat a path to our door. Nope! "Everywhere else" is a bigger common market now.

Countries that have adopted the International Building Code

In many advanced nations that have better fire safety records than the United States and Canada, construction costs per square foot do NOT increase as density increases. If US planners want to make housing more affordable, they should fix our mediocre building codes.

*staring directly into the camera*

This week UCLA Housing Voice is joined by @muhammadspeaks.bsky.social to talk about construction defect liability, a consumer protection law that can create big barriers to condo development, taking one of the most affordable ownership options off the market. www.lewis.ucla.edu/2025/12/17/1...

the compactness of point access blocks means that even on tiny sites, you can fit affordable family-sized homes with daylight on multiple sides and ability to cross ventilate. www.espazium.ch/de/aktuelles...

You can look at all the finalists for the National Single-Stair Competition's Austin Award here: drive.google.com/drive/folder...

I'm so fucking tired of so many people being killed in traffic crashes. I'm so fucking tired but I'm also so, so fucking angry. I use obscene language because what is obscene is over 40,000 people/year dying in preventable crashes in the US, 7,000 or so who are merely walking, and society just 🤷🏻‍♀️

“In medical research, there’s a practice of ending a study early when the results are too striking to ignore…When an intervention works this clearly, you change what you do.” www.nytimes.com/2025/12/02/o... (🎁🔗)

Really thorough history. Why the West was downzoned www.worksinprogress.news/p/how-the-wo...

“Between 2010 and 2022, structural fires in Berkeley injured an average of 2 people per year, while between just 2017 and 2022, traffic accidents injured or killed an average of 694 people annually.”

new south wales (sydney) govenment's pattern handbook - which fast tracks permitting applications - features 4-7 story single stair buildings shop-pattern-book.planning.nsw.gov.au/collections/...

NEW PAPER w/ @cselmendorf.bsky.social & @jkalla.bsky.social: An under-appreciated reason why voters oppose dense new housing, especially in less-dense neighborhoods: they think it looks ugly and want to prevent that, even in other neighborhoods. Some of what we think is NIMBYism might not be!

Relegalize SROs. Relegalize single stair buildings to enable larger, family sized homes. Legalize townhomes everywhere. Legalize ADUs everywhere. Legalize apartment buildings in more places. Yes to all the homes. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/25/n...

in q&a, the kelsey's allie cannington mentions they are excited about single stair and elevator reform - and mention how it can help get elevators into smaller projects. wow. cc @edmendoza.bsky.social @stephenjacobsmith.com @markasaurus.bsky.social thekelsey.org/learn-center...

our solar costs are significantly higher our infrastructure costs are significantly higher our elevator costs are significantly higher our healthcare costs are significantly higher our housing costs are significantly higher (for far lower quality) i wonder if we'll ever address this

Guillermo del Toro on wealth: "a wealthy man is a man who has enough, not a man that needs more. If you have enough to invite someone for a beer? You're rich. If you have a yacht, planes, islands, and you still need more? You're not rich."

the 3-bedroom apartments in this 46-home project w/ a kindergarten and 5 commercial spaces rent for $2,200 in zuerich no windowless bedrooms. dual aspect - can cross ventilate, daylight on multiple sides. kitchen separated from living. balconies. shading. www.nimbusarch.ch/portfolio/ne...

Pew finds something that everybody in codes and standards knows but few will say out loud: we apply far stricter fire safety standards to apartments than to houses. www.pew.org/en/research-...

The wait is FINALLY over! Our new book “Women Changing Cities: Global Stories of Urban Transformation” is NOW AVAILABLE worldwide through RIBA Publishing wherever fine books are sold. From Paris to Bogota, from Manila to Montreal—when women lead, cities thrive: www.modacitylife.com/women-changi...

I was shocked when I heard Scott Wiener say LA City Council's divided SB 79 vote helped convince state reps to vote yes on the bill. So I mapped it - sure looks like he's telling the truth! The only state reps from LA who voted for SB 79 overlap with city councilmembers who supported the bill. A 🧵:

The world is divided between supply skeptics who believe high hard costs are an intractable problem and those that have looked at US codes and buildings in other developed countries.

SB 79 now stands as the largest pro-housing land-use legislation in this nation’s modern history.

A uni in Aus did a study that showed that over 50% of drivers see ‘cyclists’ as less than human. We use ‘people on bikes’ to try and help humanise them. There’s a fair way to go! www.monash.edu/news/article...

The coalition behind Measure ULA just released a report attacking UCLA research on the tax. They’re claiming it “debunks” the research. It doesn’t even come close. 🧵

'more homes were purchased last year by the Silent Generation (aged 79 to 99) than by Gen Z' also i hate that the rent image is an apartment - when the 'buy' image could be too. www.newsweek.com/gen-z-rentin...

Not building housing screws young people, pushes them out & tanks future economic success. We need to make it easier & faster to build the homes we need for a bright future. Our current vetocracy need to change & we’re working to change it.

Jon Lovett’s face when LA City Councilmember Imelda Padilla said she forced an affordable housing project to go down from six stories to three stories and add in EV charging spaces