Unpopoular opinion: these looser rules for buildings with more units are too cute by half, and are weaponizing affordability concerns in the service of NIMBYism

Every single person with their hands on the “housing cost driver” elephant manages to convince themselves that their cost driver doesn’t matter because it’s marginal. “It’s not CEQA! Market conditions changed! Building costs are high!” But everything adds up!

sorry didn’t post live posts but i did finally finish today….

Futurewise, a statewide pro-housing/anti-sprawl organization, is one of the prime advocates of rent stabilization in Washington State and one of the very many reasons it stands a chance this legislative session.

Absolutely. Political economy is completely absent from these conversations! I support “abundance” but pundits haven’t engaged with actual existing politics and frankly offer no real roadmap to get us there.

RHNA is a PvP server where local governments pay consultants to lie to state regulators and regulators mostly let them. It produces very little housing. It pales in comparison to ADU reforms.

Basically every single left org in the month after Feb 24, 2022 was saying one of the following: 1. This was caused by NATO expansion 2. Ukraine needs to surrender to save their own lives 3. The Russian and Ukrainian people need to pick a secret third thing and overthrow their capitalist leaders

feeling a deep urge to get into riichi mahjong

Yes, *and* there are a lot of reforms -- state and local -- that can reduce bureaucracy in the planning and housing approval process. City planners spend so much time managing meetings about projects their cities' plans already say they want, entitlements that could go straight to permitting, etc.

I think the “Mod v Prog” split falls apart on housing stuff. Moderates and progressives are both terrible on housing in kind of similar ways tbh. There are also good mods/ progs on housing, but they’re in the minority.

i'm the perfect balance between market urbanist and left yimby

Hard to miss how many admin positions also float in far left waters: - vaccine skepticism - attacking antidepressants - cutting the military by 50% - parlaying on Atlanticism with Russia - red-brownism - producerism / anti-consumerism - liquidationism - anti-PMC vibes - hating low rates

Land value tax would fix this www.businessinsider.com/over-half-of...

More and more evidence is emerging that modest fourplex-level upzonings don’t result in new construction and higher densities, 6+ units per parcel, are the bare minimum to see any missing middle housing to be built. This is especially true in a place like California where land values are so high.

ADUs are the only state reform that has lead to any significant increases in housing production in CA. They are: by right, have no affordability requirements, and are not subject to the commercial building code. Worth reflecting on for policymakers imo.

if i beg really hard will someone give me an internship for the summer

Urbanists advocate for missing middle housing without adopting "large is bad" framing of anti-housing advocates (e.g. "gentle density"). Difficulty level: apparently quite hard!

Seattle’s tree preservation movement was never about trees. It was always about preserving low-density zoning and abundant curbside parking.

we are experiencing a Kaleckian reaction to a relatively brief period of full employment and worker power. one fascinating thing about this is that a bunch of people who identify as workers but who act primarily as consumers and bosses to servants hate this too.

they should make a film like la chinoise but instead of mao they’re really into francis fukuyama

im bleeding out in the marketplace of ideas, if you even care

You thought design review is bad now? In the 1920s, an East Bay Ku Klux Klan threatened an Albany store owner because he painted his grocery store red.

Any YIMBYs who offer up collaboration as a legitimate option will be on my shitlist until the end of time. You’d have to be a total moron if you think the Nazi crypto hawkers are offering a viable path to good governance reform.

i’m sorry guys but i just saw a Heat (1995) x girl, so confusing edit on twitter and unfortunately you don’t see that on this site

Dog Day Afternoon rocks because you constantly have frames of Al Pacino doing this

Just one more tiny house in Seattle bro just one more

When Americans say “decommodify X” what they mean at least half the time is “distribute more control of X to petite bourgeois smallholders”

This is the incoherence at the heart of all housing policymaking. Lifelong practitioners: planners, advocates, and reformers alike refuse to square this circle. Homeownership can either be a market-beating investment to build generational wealth or it can be affordable.

unreal!!!!!!! youtu.be/5E4ytUW8g_0?...

sometimes i like to drive around in my little red car to the Drive My Car soundtrack and feel really melodramatic open.spotify.com/track/2tFwft...

How destroying 10,000 homes at the top of the market causes rents to balloon all the way down the income ladder should feel intuitive and yet people resist the idea that building new homes at the top of the market can lower rents for middle class people even tho its the same process in reverse

There are actually too many conversations about urban design and not enough about the specifics of program design and governance. I’ve reviewed a lot of social housing proposals that are, frankly, very light on the details on construction, financing, and management! Architecture is less important.

listened to kyoto by yung lean for the first time in a while…. actual goosebumps…

i know watching the brutalist this weekend will save me

There’s no real radical politics in the U.S. There are only different shades bourgeois politics. Some are better than others but we shouldn’t delude ourselves that there’s a truly liberatory tendency represented in the US Senate of all places lol

here are my most listened to albums during the last 365 days!!!! 😀

Any argument about free transit in the U.S., a country with with almost exclusively underinvested transit systems, is essentially an argument for less operating revenue. Revenue that would be better spent paying more operators.

I also question the framing of market-rate housing as "speculative" housing. I suppose any business investment is speculative in a sense. But the thing that makes housing in particular susceptible to big-ticket speculation and massive returns is the scarcity itself!

Local governments literally set their transport policies based on the prejudices of small business owners, who drive at high rates and believe that so do their customers. These aren't on-book subsidies, but in terms of inefficient government policy at business behest, it's huge.

ur neoliberal enough ❤️

feeling a little masochistic, so i've been reading urban theory slop from some journals, but i feel like Imbroscio's anti-anti-exclusionary zoning really takes the cake. like you're telling me this is being academically published? www.researchgate.net/publication/...

In David Harvey’s “Right to the City” essay (easily the most overrated piece of urban policy writing of all time) he claims “loose monetary and fiscal policy” are to blame for a variety of urban problems lol

what if i got a phd

i did not go beastmode i’m afraid

final interview on tuesday for an internship i really want... time to go beastmode im afraid

gonna start reading gravity’s rainbow over winter break. tune in for some live posts.

had a group project where a group member compared northgate to new jerusalem (don’t ask) and all i could think about was this album open.spotify.com/track/7M7lWO...

While broadly legalizing and streamlining ADUs has been a big step forward, we are not going to get infill housing at scale without major reforms to zoning, permitting, and construction defect law. Even just making missing middle financially viable requires legalizing dramatic increases in density.

The other thing I'll say about community engagement is that it's something people love to talk about while strategically avoiding any concrete definition of The Community or the nature of the engagement.

Inclusionary zoning—the practice of requiring developers to rent new apartments at a loss to low-income tenants—is bad policy that exacerbates the housing shortage, increases housing prices, and leaves most poor people worse off. We should stop doing it!