The Johnson Administration had fought off ward-based restrictions on ADUs because of a 2023 federal ruling that aldermanic prerogative leads to segregation. Trump’s HUD freed the mayor to wheel & deal with alders. @danielkayhertz.bsky.social on this: illinoisanswers.org/2025/09/25/c...

Expect way more from the newly eligible RT and RM zones in Pilsen, Garfield Park, Lincoln Park, and Bronzeville than the commercial corridors

Illinois

Milwaukee, 2025

Compromise ADU ordinance PASSES City Council in a 46-0 vote, ending a 7-year legislative battle over a modest affordable housing tool already common elsewhere in the country. Story TK

New from me at @rooseveltforward.org Building economic security will require major upgrades to our forgotten and threadbare programs for people with disabilities. I describe the decade of neglect that have left millions on SSI languishing in poverty...1/3 www.firesidestacks.com/p/ssi-reform...

So mad this is $350

There have been over 100 miles of bike infrastructure improvements made in the past two and a half years in Chicago There's still a long way to go (see those huge gaps, hello Aldermanic prerogative!)

At some point people need to learn that the poverty rate is mostly about the safety net or lack thereof and not the economy. The economy was doing historically well, real wages rising for the first time in decades, etc. And poverty rose because pandemic safety policies expired.

Some thoughts about policy work daniel-kay-hertz.ghost.io/some-thought...

This is a really revealing and rich passage in what is overall a really good piece. The reason nonprofits aren't producing more affordable housing isn't that they "can't operate at the scale of the federal government"—they literally are operating at the scale of the federal government('s subsidies)

This is a really revealing and rich passage in what is overall a really good piece. The reason nonprofits aren't producing more affordable housing isn't that they "can't operate at the scale of the federal government"—they literally are operating at the scale of the federal government('s subsidies)

I wish people who made this cultural argument would be specific about what the mechanism is by which it would prevent, eg, HFAs from issuing revolving loans to finance mixed-income housing and meaningfully increase the production of homes not priced by the market

Some thoughts about policy work daniel-kay-hertz.ghost.io/some-thought...

Not an exaggeration to say that the prerogative piece of the ADU ordinance is only possible because Trump essentially ended civil rights enforcement at HUD—it’s exactly what the Biden admin was investigating/pursuing a settlement around

This week's Zoning Committee includes a bevy of proactive rezonings along arterial streets in the 21st ward on the far South Side to B2-2, moving from more restrictive designations to one that allows ~4 stories as well as ground-floor residential use!

Evanston

HARDEST PHOTO OF 2025 JUST DROPPED

Officially back on my bs

The loser energy that radiates off "it's illegal not to like me" shit like this is palpable bsky.app/profile/zack...

D is the easy answer, but southern US, all of Mexican regional cooking, Caribbean, and Andean/Peruvian is nothing to sneeze at

This year we finally got into the final design and development phase and I think we’ve done something really special here. Three screens in each of the new RPM station entrances (Lawrence to Bryn Mawr), that give status, alerts and elevator info right from the web, which is our best source of truth.

Long but hopefully fulfilling transit nerd thread incoming: I want to talk about that I’m super proud of, and which is a culmination of things we’ve done in the past as well as things I’ve seen elsewhere that I wanted to bring home to Chicago: New digital at RPM stations that we hope to expand!

Amazing

I actually think the political fallout of this incident is extremely convoluted on both sides of the pacific, and that you can't really explain it without explaining america's new eugenicists, prevalence of redpill shit in korea, and transpacific rhetorical conflation of china/left

the world is watching in horror as the US racial regime (and its public performance) shifts from "colorblind racism" towards the naked supremacy more commonly observed pre-1968

Today, the Center for Building published “Beyond Zoning” by John Zeanah, Memphis’s Chief of Development and Infrastructure. He chronicles the non-zoning barriers faced by Malone Commons, a low-rise multifam/mixed-use project, and how they worked through them www.centerforbuilding.org/publication/...

Sick of this happening again and again with nothing changing.

62nd and Ellis, 2019 and 2025

Scott Jennings, in an emotional moment with Tapper, mentioned a bunch of political violence directed at GOPers and Tapper had to remind him that Dem MN lawmakers were assassinated just three months ago. Jennings said a line was crossed today and Tapper had to remind him it was *already* crossed.

The professor has been fired and senior administrators removed from their post. No mention of this in the New York Times, The Free Press, The Atlantic or other outlets who drove the campus speech moral panic.

I sent a letter too!

Sent a letter in support of this common-sense upzoning adjacent to the recently renovated Red Line. This change will densify a vital transportation and commercial corridor within the city, which will provide more housing, support local businesses and careers, and strengthen communities.

Sure seems like Big Pharma spent way way more energy, money and lobbying capital on fighting Dems on prescription drugs than doing anything about the Secretary of HHS casually, and without any real evidence, telling everyone their products kill kids and give them autism.

This is the official spokesperson for the White House, stating that the President hopes to deploy the United States military to occupy every city controlled by the political party that opposes him. Explicitly.

Amazing turnout for a march just organized yesterday. ICE and the Trump troops are not welcome in Chicago!

One parking space per unit is a pretty hefty impediment to urban-style multifamily, but nevertheless Plano, Texas now puts meaningfully fewer density limits on housing than most neighborhoods in Chicago

A vast, barreling metropolis filled with the greatest architecture of modernity, set on an ocean of freshwater. There is nowhere like Chicago

Holy shit…You can’t make this up: a plane is circling Soldier Field before the Bears home opener with a banner that reads— “HEY ICE, MASKS ARE FOR CUCKS.” Also the trolling is incredible for those that told us to stop wearing masks during the pandemic.

I wrote up my thoughts about Abundance Conference publiccomment.blog/p/when-is-a-...

thank you all for your support

Wild how normalized the words "safe parking lot for unhoused schoolchildren" have become in this country.

It's been a pleasure to be involved in this important project!! Huge congrats to @amyqin.bsky.social @estheryjkang.bsky.social and the rest of the @wbez.org team and our collaborators at @miurbanchicago.bsky.social The work @writeralejandra.bsky.social and I began with #TheTenantTrap continues!

I know it's easy to lose the details in the overall horror of what's happening, but this particular decision is going to have really severe impacts. It was already getting harder to successfully bond out of immigration detention, but now this closes that pathway to release for countless people.

this is exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about, whatever you want to call it: the need to make it easier to build clean energy infrastructure. it's genuinely doable! other places are doing it!

I’ve done this for 2 weeks now and it *absolutely rules*. Best class discussions I’ve ever had. Best engagement with readings. They write in this worksheet for 15 minutes, then talk about their responses in groups of 3-4, then groups share with the whole class, and *then* we talk about the readings

Chicago: We proactively upzoned a few miles of Western Ave! Woohoo! Toronto: Hold my beer.

This is the type of thing we actually need abundance thought for, but a political tendency oriented around these issues cannot have room for policy elites who call for things like "deportation abundance."

The percent of zero-vehicle households in Chicago has barely changed in the past 15 years, hovering between 26-27%.

This of course is exactly why NIMBYs don't like it!