I know I’m supposed to keep this to the group chat and not let up on main, but this could be a game changer IF it’s actually buildable (does SB 79 have an IZ requirement at these densities?). The modern US city is so throughly zoned out that this could be a big increase in buildable sites

The iron-ish law of YIMBYism: Markets that spend decades below 6% rental vacancy are almost always expensive. Markets that maintain healthy vacancy rates are usually cheap

I tried to get a bigger outlet to charge my car in 2019 and the estimates escalated from just that, to a new main panel, bigger main service, excavating the street, and replacing the subterranean transformer for $250k. At least the state of CA outlawed that last bit a few years ago.

plus people most primed to not care about range anxiety (big city living) are most likely to not be able to charge while parked (street parking, shared garage, etc)

The lack of three-phase residential service and electrical panel limitations (real or imagined by code) in the US are also a big issue for getting Americans to accept plug-in charging compared to Europeans. Actually Japan has a similar issue, and, coincidentally, hasn’t embraced EVs either.

Donald Trump's war on cars continues www.yahoo.com/news/article...

I regret to inform you I have learned how to use Claude Code. I used it to load a big NYC DOB approved permits file into Postgres, to search for buildings that have avoided sidewalk sheds through the new netting allowance (www.nyc.gov/assets/build...). Unfortunately this is the only one I found:

When I was a kid, gas stations had huge candy aisles (not ebt eligible). Now kwik trip has an enormous selection of self service donuts and muffins (ebt eligible). The whole place is set up to absorb massive amounts of Snap dollars.

When you buy iced coffee or soda from a self service counter, or bottled coffee drinks from the fridge, that's ebt eligible. When you buy from dunkin donuts, that's not.

As an aside, it's pretty obvious that the rise of buccees, wawa, kwik trip, etc is highly related to Snap/Ebt policy. Kwik trip is a masterclass is ebt eligible foods, with exempt hot foods priced as daily special/loss leaders.

😭 Schumer et al. fucked us by ensuring the plants were here under mere Buy America, and now the protectionism is harder to resist than even if they were one state over.

This could free the MTA up to avoid the higher costs of Buy America procurement rules, if they were willing to take advantage of that flexibility

many people are mocking this without reading the article: "Despite being better known for its bidet washlets that have defined the Japanese toilet globally, Toto is also the world’s second-largest producer of electrostatic chucks used in the manufacturing of Nand memory chips."

“Japanese toilet maker Toto’s shares surged 18% to a five-year high on Friday after unveiling plans to boost production of semiconductor components and posting record annual profits. Its advanced ceramics business has turned [Toto] into an AI play…” www.ft.com/content/3896...

“One analysis, by Wakely Consulting Group, a firm with access to detailed insurance industry data, estimates that [health insurance] coverage in the marketplaces will drop by as much as 26 percent this year compared with last year’s average enrollment.” www.nytimes.com/2026/05/01/b...

BIA cannot articulate an actual housing-related reason they are spending heavily to oppose Steyer. - they oppose his commercial Prop 13 reform - which doesn’t apply to residential - they “pan” his modular housing plan (which is similar to Buffy Wicks’ plan) - gnostic policy they cannot describe

HOA Reform clears MN House with a critical provision banning HOA mandates and common property requirements www.house.mn.gov/SessionDaily...

Riders Alliance wants to cut driving in NYC by 40% by emulating Paris’s “growing toolkit of carrots and sticks” (nyc.streetsblog.org/2026/05/01/o...), so why are they supporting state legislation to require two employees on each subway while Paris is going driverless (www.amny.com/news/nyc-tra...)?

So are these batteries unsafe and presenting an unacceptable fire risk, or are FDNY’s solar storage rules overkill?

There is no version of MHA that won't impede new homes coming to Seattle. Oregon learned this lesson and in March they banned unfunded mandates like MHA.

This chart tells a pretty incredible success story MHA funds are the smallest slice of this graph and yet MHA is the only funding source that directly hurts renters by blocking new homes from being built @mayorofseattle.bsky.social let's use this success to undo the damage from MHA!

Come join my team! We're hiring an Analyst to join AV's housing team. This is a great opportunity for early-career folks interested in the pro-housing ecosystem to support philanthropic investments, advocacy, and policy engagement. Details below: www.arnoldventures.org/careers/infr...

At first glance this new autonomous vehicle policy from California looks good, with one issue -- AVs routinely break traffic laws (they're programmed to break laws), so importance of automating enforcement just went up. But, many cities oppose automated enforcement. www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/news-...

I have lost faith that OMNY is even technologically capable of doing this with the 99.999% accuracy that is required to maintain political support for inspections. Hopefully I’m wrong, we’ll see.

My unpopular urbanist opinion is that America is too rich to bring back old school SROs, and the future of low-cost independent living is microstudios with private bathrooms and little kitchenettes (two-burning induction cooktop, minifridge, microwave), sink maybe shared with bathroom

Freezing home insurance premiums will destroy the insurance industry in California. The few remaining home insurers will exit the state entirely, making it impossible to get a mortgage and forcing more people onto the FAIR plan. This will eventually bankrupt the state. Do NOT vote for Becerra.

Kathy Hochul seems to be nearing victory on environmental review reform for housing in New York State. Credit to @rachelmayny.bsky.social and @annakelles.bsky.social for pushing on it. gothamist.com/news/hochul-...

I agree. This should be done at a state/federal level with funding and working groups etc. We're not equipped at the local level, even in a large city, to get it as correct as it should be. Maybe in the end it's good enough, but i'd feel better with more dedicated experts, time and money involved.

…even state code development expertise has atrophied with increased deference to the model codes over the generations.

This kind of thing is why I’ve always been wary of local multifam-in-IRC amendments. It’s not just rewriting a few code sections – it’s rewriting an entire code to work with a typology it was not designed for. The process is at high risk for oversights like this, especially given that local and…

Two buildings with 4 units each would have to be 30 feet apart regardless of fire rating but 8 units in one building is ok. Two buildings with 4 units each would also be fine 5 feet apart if they were on different lots? Seems like an oversight resulting from mashing IBC/IRC rules together.

Digging into the 1-8 IRC edits and the first weird thing is that it requires a 30 foot separation for each building with 3-8 units if they're served by a single exit. It's clear they're assuming this will be a multi-story building, but what about units on the ground floor with each having an exit.

as an actual undecided voter in NY-7 — fun new experience for me! — I gotta say I am putting some real weight on this bad answer on housing from Valdez (it's a very good interview and I like most of what she says, I'm undecided for a reason, but, eesh) nyeditorialboard.substack.com/p/claire-val...

Both sides seem bound and determined to provoke a strike. Which way will Hochul jump? Pull a Cuomo and force the MTA to cave in to the 5 unions? Or back MTA mgmt's effort to peal back these insane work rules for engineers? gothamist.com/news/mta-bra...

Visual impacts analysis strikes again! The Cesar Chavez Foundation pushed through design changes that added nearly $1B in costs to CAHSR, in order to reduce its "visual impacts" at a park that sees dozens of freight trains per day. www.sfchronicle.com/california/a...

Does this ruling mean that proportional legislation, at-large councils, and multimember districts are no longer legally questionable? www.nytimes.com/2026/04/29/u...

Hedge funds that have bought up most of Brightline’s debt are circling to take it over after a possible bankruptcy filing www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

It's such a breath of fresh air to see @aoc.bsky.social stand against gutting our tax base.

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 coalition of builders called the Seattle Housing Roundtable is pushing a temporary three-year 90% break on MHA fees to spur homebuilding in Seattle, which has been lagging recently. They call it a "Housing Accelerator." www.theurbanist.org/builders-pus...

IBC 1023.4: “Elevators shall not open into interior exit stairways and ramps.” Gotta do something about that.

Minnesota has removed the sprinkler requirement from its building code for R-2 buildings (i.e., multifamily) below 4,500 sq. ft. in size www.revisor.mn.gov/rules/1305.0...

CCD for their part still understands this: "Incomplete tax reform has suppressed growth and discouraged the relocation of firms to Center City from other places" centercityphila.org/research-rep...

You will reverse commute to UCity or Navy Yard or Conshy or KOP or Malvern or Chesterbrook or Wilmington and you'll like it (otherwise you move to the suburbs to have a bearable commute and Philly loses out on everything)

The MPO that covers Detroit and Ann Arbor is opposing a package of YIMBY bills that (among other things) legalizes ADUs and reduces parking requirements partly on the basis that they risk "exposing residents to E.coli..." Truly bizarre taxpayer-funded lobbying.

Monthly passes are one of the strongest ways to encourage transit ridership and reduce fare evasion, but the MTA retired the pass when it retired the MetroCard last year. Read ETA's latest report: www.etany.org/reports/mont...

Pedestrian Observations: The RPA Publishes Bad Report Against Through-Running pedestrianobservations.com/2026/04/28/t...

I would simply go to Talk Kosher in South Williamsburg and buy them a flip phone. Unless you’re worried about them calling in to those Yiddish recorded news lines and having the phone permanently affixed to their ear while they walk around the neighborhood at a leisurely 4 mph.