This is a particularly divine specimen.

The people pumping Matt yglesias into my feed make me realize that he should run for mayor or council because his weird obsession with insisting people triangulate would actually go over really well with the same voters who give us Mendo, Bowser, and Bonds repeatedly.

biz homies do be tiresome

whatever you think of Spanberger, the fact that her opponent ran a campaign based almost entirely on transphobia and is on track to eat shit in the biggest blowout the state has seen since 2009 is unambiguously a huge win

over the course of my life i’ve probably listened to the 10,000 Maniacs unplugged album at least once per maniac

are you kidding me

VIVRE EN VILLE EN ENGLISH. Adam is so cool. His organization is so cool. I am really excited that this exists, and very grateful that there is writing about housing like this out in the world, regardless of language:

I reread this every so often and I'm struck every time by how great it is unevenearth.org/2018/08/the-...

cleanse yr brain by listening to “judy staring at the sun” on your green line train home

This is a great short piece worth thinking about when it comes to transportation & urbanism. “We cannot optimise both proximity and mobility. Proximity and Mobility cannot be friends. We settle into one of two worlds: (a) high proximity, low mobility or (b) high mobility, low proximity.”

All these Abundance/Argument/Searchlight etcetc arguments are so frustrating because we know anything that confirms prior beliefs like "Dems can't win on climate/immigration/trans/etcetc" are going straight into the Dem group chat bloodstream. Clearly that's what they want to hear.

Didn’t get to say it at Yimbytown but state capacity at its most basic would be something like…a full-time legislature with full-time staffing in every state.

You can still get a big cheap McMansion but your neighbors will want a race war and think knowing calculus is a sin. Your kids will be poorer than you if any of these policies the hooting morons who make up the electorate now want actually get passed. Do you take that Texas job offer now?

And we off at yombocon. I’m on an 11 a.m. panel about transit advocacy’s relative losses moderated by my fellow AB, @amb.fyi, and a 2:15 p.m. very stacked looking-backwards-and-forwards history of the movement with longtime real ones Annemarie, Alan, Jesse, Brian, Jenny. Happy 2 be here.

In a working paper, my colleagues & I used statical analysis to understand TOPA’s impact on preservation. We found that it was incredibly effective in preserving both subsidized & unsubsidized affordable housing, particularly in areas where rents are increasing www.umdsmartgrowth.org/news/preserv...

“awful people don’t deserve to be killed, but they don’t deserve to be praised, either” is apparently a thought too complex for the pundit mind

“if u get the right policy mix” never works at any level of government!!!!!! that anything-left funders and my fellow advocates and pundits and electeds and advisers don’t know this in their bones is continually so weird to me.

happy 36th birthday to me. who wants 2 hear me talk on three panels at yombocon.

I’m excited to see my friends at YIMBYtown next week, but the movement increasingly bums me out.

Cleveland Mayor Tom L. Johnson (Mayor 1901–1909) holding his copy of Henry George’s “Progress and Poverty.”

i enjoyed my friend adam's travel diary

people

our local year of recalls presaged yesterday's fiat. crime chatterers do not care about little numbers. best you can do is psyop them.

It's worth emphasizing here that this is not a problem with rent regulations as such. Any change in the housing market that resulted in slower rent growth - including Abundance-style deregulation - would be causing over leveraged landlords the exact same distress.

We need to isolate the Calf-Length Dickies Shorts gene if we want to keep progressing as a species. We need to fund flame shoes

blackstone isnt why we have a housing crisis, its mostly your sweet old t ball coach who owns six properties and is very active in local politics

☝️ Important reminder: you shouldn't yell at me even if I say something stupid. That's actually when I need your support the most

We polled on the stadium over the weekend. People want the team back, but aren't crazy about the details of the deal—65 percent, for ex., oppose the Commanders not paying property taxes: ggwash.org/view/100325/...

i luv working harder at the blog i work for than "actual" "journalists"

my interior monologue every time I look at the D.C. zoning map, which I do like six times a day

However, they are a very important solution for a politically powerful market segment: households (e.g. families, dog owners) who want some separation, a little yard, etc. Tons of folks want a "house" but don't need a manor. These reforms are very helpful for them.

I've updated my views on these 2-4 unit initiatives: ADUs, triple-deckers, rowhouses, etc. They are not the answer to "the housing crisis" writ large. It's just too hard to build a serious number of homes three at a time, especially infill homes. Larger plexes are the workhorses for housing overall.

Disemboweling TOPA is not going to increase housing supply in the District, and I am extremely resentful that a select few of our elected officials have been bandying that about when they have done very little to *actually* increase supply.

during the climactic kiss scene in superman i couldn't help but lean over to my girlfriend and whisper, "they're in cleveland"

Swirlies - His Love Just Washed Away [US, Noise Pop] (1993) https://redd.it/5k2tii https://youtu.be/-rvg6XuD868

@cselmendorf.bsky.social and @profschleich.bsky.social are two of my faves and this is right. But voltsman worries too much in his thread, imo. It is not a hard political line to draw to say that we can talk aesthetics once we have the space to, which necessitates legalizing more housing.

My bias is extremely clear, but a decade for, eventually, more tax revenue seems like a totally reasonable tradeoff. The Commies can walk after 30 years, so that's the timescale, and subsidizing Nats Park didn't massively expedite new resi/retail around it—it's all still getting built.

People live in houses.

i like paying property taxes, actually. washington, d.c.'s are very reasonable compared to surrounding jurisdictions and for the most part i am happy with the goods and services i receive in return. but why will i be paying property taxes when the football man will not?

Busting Through - Vinny Lee & The Spunkys [Hartford, CT USA, Instrumental Surf Rock] (1963) https://redd.it/1czww1a https://youtu.be/AQkIh6P6Psk

We kicked off @ggwash.org's monthly happy hours (at the pizza shop) in June. July's is this Wednesday from 6–8 p.m.! Come hang out, don't be weird, and if you want to talk about the D.C. budget or the RENTAL Act or More Housing NOW we can totally do that: secure.everyaction.com/ufmeT4KZ00G8...

A couple of years ago I worked very hard to get a boondoggle capital project (the bus lanes in which would not have improved frequency) defunded to pay for a "free fares" program (structured as a fare buydown for WMATA), and I *still* think frequent transit is on the whole better than free transit.

YOU VILL SHARE COMMITTEE SEATS MIT ZE VINE MOMS, UND YOU VILL BE HAPPY!

i love summer in d.c. as like a general matter, but this weekend was an all-time starter: joyce manor friday, friend house party saturday, dsa/ggwash/atu/gnd network transit big-fun kickoff sunday. it's not all right but maybe it will be.

I am the Dead Animal Collection staffers' biggest fan and this makes me supremely happy. (My hierarchy of dead-rat disintegration is pelt, pancake, and parchment, and if you put in a 311 request at the pelt stage these people will scoop it before it gets to pancake. Absolute treasures.)

writer who's a) rightfully known on their own merits but who's also b) the spouse of an abundance guy not into a better system for managing an abundance of candidates (annie lowrey's piece—which said D.C. is getting RCV next year, which is not true at this time—was bad, kendra pierre-louis' is good)

Editing @peterodrigue.bsky.social's retrospective on the Lanier Heights downzoning tested me in many ways, namely because I read through the zoning-case documents for probably the fourth? time in my life. This is an insane post and Pete deserves many accolades for writing it.

Same thing elsewhere. The D.C. Council *reduced the increase* the mayor proposed for MPD in ~2020 (which is stretching the definition of "defund") and enough cops have been functionally on a wildcat strike since then that my extremely not-radical neighbors have noticed a decline in their service.