Don’t worry, this is not true. The city of LA and the state of California are ensuring that nothing except luxury single-family mansions (with the occasional guest house ADU for visitors/the help) can be built in Pacific Palisades.

I cannot recommend this piece by @maxdubler.com enough. It articulates very well some of the key differences between the YIMBY and Strong Towns movements regarding housing. It mostly comes down to state preemption and political strategy. Ideology vs. pragmatism.

I am not a crazy ideologue. I just think that the richest society in human history has a moral responsibility to welcome the stranger, feed the hungry, treat the sick, and house the homeless. If doing that requires forcing comfortably-housed people to accept neighborhood change, I'm ok with that.

"While strengthening local government is an admirable goal, I do not believe that preserving local control over land use is more important than building homes." Good faith discussion of strategies and stakes in housing shortage vs. local control debates (mostly California content, but BC-relevant!)

"What does prioritizing millionaire homeowners’ aversion to change over the needs of the poor and unhoused do to our souls?" is a truly ice cold line from @maxdubler.com www.maxdubler.com/blog/2025/11... #yimby

Good write up. Honestly as someone who reviewed housing elements at HCD, I found that time and again local planners and consultants used sneaky tactics to reduce the feasibility of multifamily housing. I find the insistence on local bottom-up reform to solve the housing crisis hopelessly naive.

I really enjoyed this breakdown of the implications of the Strong Towns approach, and this counterpoint to Marohn is very compelling. A supposedly socialist former city council member in Sacramento repeatedly spoke of the need to prioritize these millionaires over more housing. Why?

After doing over a decade of activism on the ground to get more homes built here in California. This line is the crux of why purely local reforms do not work. You can have hundreds of hours of community meetings and still will not convince a critical mass of people to build an apartment complex

I wrote about state-level ADU reform and the differences between @strongtowns.org and YIMBYism. www.maxdubler.com/blog/2025/11...

It is completely maddening that you can find 1-3 block examples of fantastic street improvements like this planted median in the Richmond all over San Francisco but they never get built at scale. See also: bulb outs on Noe street, raised crosswalks and stamped concrete paving on Pearl street, etc.

A large share of politics coded as “left” on this site is in fact reactionary nostalgia - an inchoate belief that times were better in the good old days and nebulous forces have taken that from us.

In 2018, then-Mayor Ada Colau called Barcelona’s new 30% inclusionary housing requirement for projects over 600m^2 a “paradigm shift,” making housing “a right and not a commodity.” It was supposed to produce 330 affordable units a year. The reality: just 31 affordable apartments in all these years.

While I don’t ride or die for Pete Buttigieg, the vitriol directed at him is completely insane. “When I was younger I wished that I could have taken a pill to turn me straight; but I have accepted and embraced my identity now” is an *extremely* common sentiment from Millennial and older gay people!

Architects are excited because they know that under glorious communist regime of Comrade Mamdani, brutalism is so back

I think we should make it legal and easy to build starter homes like townhouses and condominium apartments in more places so people can get on the homeownership ladder affordable without having to sign up for 50 year loans they’ll probably never pay off.

I think we should make it legal and easy to build starter homes like townhouses and condominium apartments in more places so people can get on the homeownership ladder affordable without having to sign up for 50 year loans they’ll probably never pay off.

pre-writing a devastating obituary for your enemy is god-tier hating of a kind you don’t often see anymore. renaissance haterism. beautiful stuff.

Happy “big ass coat season” to all who celebrate.

oh so these people do pay attention to who politicians follow on social media, they just don’t care that the vice president follows a bunch of actual neo-nazis

Freedom of movement is a universal human right, get over it chuds

Dear Urban Land Institute members, Welcome to #SanFrancisco. Let me apologize in advance for the lack of ample free parking. But now that we've removed all our minimum parking regulations, we hope you will enjoy the flowers instead.

It’s fun that every type of idiot converges on this opinion about housing policy.

“Cities are good, people want to live in dense walkable neighborhoods, and urban governance should prioritize city residents’ quality of life over suburban drivers’ convenience” remains a genuinely radical political program in America.

this is why ending the filibuster is good

virtue signalling is good actually

A white gay man who grew up in Virginia and moved to New York to attend NYU for acting and comedy writing has been having a multi-day crash out in my twitter mentions about how the city does not need more housing for "gentrifiers" and like, baby, the call is coming from inside the house!

Don't break up the massing. Ornament the surface of your plain box with a decoration at the ground floor for the pedestrians, some stuff in the middle, and a fancy cornice molding at the top.

California legislators and their staff should make 3x their current salaries.

There needs to be trials and there needs to be people sent to die in a prison cell. Consequences must fall on the people who issued the orders and those who carried them out. We must make the punishment of these people a national spectacle that will be remembered for generations.

CALIFORNIA! This is BIG if true @buffywicks.bsky.social! As @scottford.bsky.social & I championed in our “Downtown Sacramento Livability Strategy,” the way Cali (and OTHER states) does liability/construction deficiencies is a HUGE barrier to building apartments! Read: indd.adobe.com/view/54b2070...

This is so much better than the broken massing.

Does this look like a representative sample of the community, or a room full of older homeowners who are disproportionately likely to oppose new housing?

Why does this dude always wear that Barbour waxed cotton jacket indoors?

Trump take family holidays.

Before I went back to school and got a job in housing policy, I spent ten years working as a downhill skateboarding photographer. Here’s my friend Justin Rouleau skating in Norway in July 2015.

Right-NIMBYs already have what they want, which is the ability to institute zoning that excludes poorer people from their neighborhoods. Left-NIMBYs want the power to pick and choose their neighbors on different criteria, admitting only people who they deem deserving. This is why they like co-ops.

💯

For those new to Housing Discourse, in 2020 Robert Reich notoriously wrote a letter in support of designating a junky old house on his block as an historic landmark to block its redevelopment as townhouses.

Oh great more of these cookie cutter luxury units for textilebros

There is truly nothing new under the sun.

We cannot welcome foreigners and refugees into our communities when we refuse to let anyone build new homes.

The haters said they couldn't do it. And they were right. Honestly, great call from the haters.

Single-stair plus multifam zoning on single-fam lots might be what prefab needs to take off. Manufacturing processes require scale and repeatability; only single-family lots deliver those. Homeowners want too much customization in ADUs, but developers might be profit-minded enough to see the vision.

you're stuck with the nerds if you want to actually accomplish anything, sorry, deal

Lindsey should never have been put in the position where she had to display the courage she did, but she still absolutely did. I have nothing but the deepest respect for her. There are a lot of reasons I am glad Mamdani beat Cuomo but this picture right here, the joy, top of the list for sure.

This guy is a photojournalist who posts nothing but gorgeous images of New York City. Strongly recommended follow.