This excellent story Dave Rand posted on Twitter is a perfect illustration of the kind of person Nithya Raman is:

The level 2 EV charging at my local library is like 1/3 the cost of overnight home rates.

Nithya Raman voted against the city's silly opposition to SB79. She has pushed for a big fix to ULA (15 year new construction exemption). She's awesome!

A pragmatic pro-housing leftist candidate running for mayor of the biggest city on the west coast against one the most vociferous NIMBY elected officials in the state? Be still my heart! www.latimes.com/california/s...

Was just watching this otherwise innocent video on the bay area. But I laughed so hard at the claim that SF has among the "most innovative urban planning in the world." youtu.be/vNpgsPnbCoE?...

Los Angeles is America's second biggest city. Basically anyone paying recognizes that the city is broken and that the people running it have failed. And yet, as of today, there is not a single serious challenger to the incumbent mayor. Why have Democrats just given up on the cities they run?

We have acquired a mushroom log....

@mattmahansj.bsky.social undermining his gubernatorial campaign by seeking excessive exemptions from sb79. sanjosespotlight.com/san-jose-wan...

NYTimes not earning my subscription with this garbage. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/05/r...

Simple test for whether there is a housing supply shortage: if you remove all constraints on supply (zoning, height, FAR, etc), does the quantity of homes increase? If yes, then supply was constrained. If no, then it wasn't.

This would be a great opportunity to use a CEQA lawsuit for good

"Local officials worry that building more apartments around transit centers could change the character of their communities with the potential for more traffic and less parking." 🙃 calmatters.org/politics/202...

It's pretty simple, you can care about preserving free curbside parking or you can care about housing costs, homelessness and climate change.

These Scott Weiner bills are too complicated and, politically, they have reached their limit. A new approach is needed. Instead of micro-managing the definition of "a bus stop", the state should broadly condition Caltrans and other state spending on actual housing production attainment.

Did anyone watch the gubernatorial debate?

I don't think the average Californian fully appreciates how bad this situation has become. We're essentially sitting on a ticking time bomb.

The public bank and low cost loans to housing developments are great ideas. A gross receipts tax of this size is not.

CEQA attorney Richard Drury behind this terrible lawsuit. Curious what the fee structure is, because I can't imagine he's taking these on contingency anymore. Prediction: he's gonna lose, and the NIMBY homeowners will have a huge legal bill. www.pressdemocrat.com/2026/01/31/s...

I wish that more people on the left understood that their supply denialism and opposition to denser market housing is a big gift to wealthy homeowners, investors, and the Republican Party

Another paper that looks at the misleadingly named "inclusionary zoning." Takeaway appears to be that unfunded IZ mandates worsen affordable housing supply.

Given that there are multiple proposals to get the California public on the hook to insure the uninsurable: I feel there is a strong necessity for a grasstops advocacy organization that speaks out against this insanity and has no ties to industry associations. Much like the YIMBY movement.

I'm going to take this clear hallucination from Google's AI as a sign that.... It is absurd that Matt Mahan didn't actually endorse sb79, he should have. Pictured, hallucination and irrelevant linked "evidence" it relied on.

Recognize this problem is pervasive in policing. Try getting local police to enforce bike lane laws. The system is built on discretion, and it has very ugly consequences.

It is indicative of the state of Los Angeles politics that Karen Bass's only response to this is, "don't worry, there are no plans to build affordable housing in Palisades."

Small earthquake.

My main problem with tenure is it enables people who deny reality, like Storper, to continue collecting a paycheck from my public tax dollars.

What do you MEAN the president audibly SHIT himself live on camera and they immediately cancelled the press conference and rushed everyone out of the room like it's a fire drill, and it happened two days ago, and I'm just hearing about it NOW?

More and more people are saying this.

If only there were other places the city of Los Angeles could zone for additional housing that would have less concern over gentrification. If only, oh, if only! www.latimes.com/california/s...

The LA Times has turned very NIMBY. Here, they try to gin up sympathy for a family being displaced by redevelopment. One big problem? The family doesn't appear to be low income. www.latimes.com/california/s...

Any California law enforcement agency that decided to do their jobs and enforce the state's ban on masked police would not meet with violent resistance, but instant capitulation because DHS agents are universally morons, cowards and degenerates.

San Diego Unified School District has quietly embarked on a massive program to build educator housing. The focus has been on maximizing the number of units affordable to staff, not on deepest means-tested affordability. voiceofsandiego.org/2026/01/29/w...

Prop. 13 is the worst on this. Rich people buy more expensive homes, hold them longer, and fight infill causing faster price appreciation. Rich cities have the lowest average tax rates, working class the highest. www.trulia.com/research/pro... www.spur.org/sites/defaul...

2026 is sure to be remembered as the year Euclid turned 100

Fingers cross that Trumps' nonsense will end up pushing the Dems into real action on housing. We've seem some minor progress from Dems, but nothing like the major reforms that are needed.

"He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without Consent of our legislatures ... sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people ... “For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us: For protecting them, by mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they commit ...

To put a finer point on this, upzoning single-family neighborhoods would probably make a lot of homeowners wealthier by enhancing the value of the land underneath their homes. But it would also raise the specter of apartments (and maybe even non-white apartment-dwellers) on their block.

I don't think there's any plausible scenario in which a big spurt in homebuilding wipes out the wealth of incumbent homeowners, but that's not really what Trump is talking about when says he wants to protect property values. It's a segregationist dog whistle, always has been.

Not surprised that Trump is not actually concerned about affordability. What's really scary is how many Democrats push the same nonsense.

LA city's left-flavored NIMBY policies are a great way to get the State to strip your local governing powers. 1/🧵

At some point, we're going to need a new CA law on residential parking permit programs. Issues to resolve, ranked: 1. Allow cities to charge market prices, not just cost of admin 2. Reiterate explicitly the eligibility rules, allowing no discrimination among residents, no circumvention either

Just realizing that probably every residential parking permit program in CA is illegal (was looking at East Palo Alto's proposal). State law says permits must be made available to all residents, allowing no discrimination between residents. But I think most, if not all, limit the number per home.

Re-upping my thread that on a paper by economists that, under pretty plausible assumptions, the LA "mansion tax" was revenue *negative* because it stops the flow of Prop 13 reassessments and new construction bsky.app/profile/sadb...

Outrageously stupid decision by the LA City Council, perhaps the worst governing body in the United States of America.

Love how the foundation funded nonprofit moron they quoted in this piece flatly admits it’s not really a “mansion tax” and taxing housing construction was a feature not a bug. calmatters.org/housing/2026...

CM Nithya Raman @cd4losangeles.bsky.social says we "sabotaging ourselvess" by stalling housing production. We're addressing hunger through a program that increased food shortages. Tune in here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=yV55...

“San Francisco taxes new housing at about the same rate that it taxes cigarettes.” www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/open... by @dbroockman.bsky.social

Private equity: we're buying SFHs and other housing to rent out in these areas that have strong demand and opposition to infill construction Way too many on the left: ok, let's just ban corporate landlords and do nothing else.

Oh woe me, a poor Berkeley landlord struggling to make a profit as rents fall from new development.

Bay Area congestion pricing when www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/d...