Los Angeles really can’t help itself.

Why are we shooting ourselves in the foot to bail out Republicans for losing a stupid war of choice?

"LA is not getting…economies of scale that other parts of the world, like Asia, are hitting. Even European countries, which have strong unions & environmental protections…do it cheaper because they build transit regularly and have…agencies…do it, as opposed to contracting and subcontracting it out."

Wow! Unanimous support for AB 1903, which aims to end the onslaught of frivolous litigation that makes it impossible to build condos in California—key to reviving homeownership. Still a ways to go, but @buffywicks.bsky.social has a way of making the impossible seem inevitable.

California YIMBY (@cayimby.bsky.social) is proud to be a co-sponsor alongside a great coalition—learn more about the bill here: cayimby.org/legislation/...

Spending time in France and Switzerland, it’s clear that the “missing middle” in North America isn’t townhouses and duplexes. It’s mid-rises. Especially mid-rise neighbourhoods. Our denser urban fabric (Montreal, Chicago, etc.) is still mostly 2-3 storeys, not 4-8 like is so common here.

“Someone with a 1-hr car commute needs to earn 40% more to be as happy as someone with a short walk to work. On the other hand, if someone shifts from a long commute to a walk, their happiness increases as much as if they’d fallen in love.” #CityMakingMath 50 reasons for more walkable streets.

This is REALLY important. The main thing that makes it hard to achieve integrated nature/green in cities ISN’T the density of buildings or the density of people — it's the density of CARS. And the better designed your density of people and buildings is, the fewer cars you need or want. #UrbanTruth

#WALeg legalized scissor stairs this year! The efficient design conserves square footage and helps buildings fit onto smaller lots. @markusja.bsky.social www.sightline.org/2026/05/13/w...

(4/5) Unlike townhomes, which have a stairwell in each unit, stacked flats have a single central stair. This means less stairs to get around your home, in addition to the ground-floor accessible units. 👩‍🦽👨‍🦯

19 social housing apartments in Paris with a stone facade, and timber structure Budget €2.6m (though I doubt this includes everything!) By CQFD Architecture

The median single-family detached house in Los Angeles is over $940,000. The median condo? $650,000. That’s nearly $300,000 less, so why aren’t we building them? Builders have walked away because a broken process made condos too risky to be worth it. AB 1903 (Wicks) is the fix.

“The right to have access to every building in the city by private motorcar, in an age when everyone possesses such a vehicle, is actually the right to destroy the city.” - Lewis Mumford

The Big Four is becoming the Big Three, with Kone buying TKE. Oligopoly is converging on monopoly. The only way to reverse this is to harmonize with global standards to open our market up to mid-sized European and Asian players. www.kone.com/en/news-and-...

A Boston University study of 10,000 elected officials found 89% of city council members own property vs 51% of their constituents. Renters aren't less likely to win when they run; they're just less likely to run at all. cayimby.org/blog/the-nee...

Please support Nithya. All of her stances are incredibly strong and they come from a place of listening and analysis.

Los Angeles’ housing crisis is self-inflicted.  For decades, city leaders have taken deliberate actions to limit new housing. Today, we announced our plan to fix this and triple housing production.

Not only does this video detail Jackie Dupont-Walker's *extreme* conflict of interest that is driving this whole crisis, but I've also obtained Bass's motion, which she claims will 'not delay,' but which - fun fact! - will cause a huge delay. Full-on doublespeak territory.

oh hey single stair in the CNU's public square :) www.cnu.org/publicsquare...

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... (🎁🔗)