Why does California have 123,974 people sleeping on the street? I hate to break this to you, but it's not because of billionaires, private equity, or venture capital. It's because of your neighbor Frank -- who is big mad at a 5 story apartment for low income senior farmers.

We recently ran a massive natural experiment on this. Covid 19 collapsed demand for urban housing in 2020, sending vacancy rates over 10% in new York and San Francisco for the first time in decades. Landlords desperate to fill their units slashed asking rents and loaded on concessions.

I like to check the prop. 13 discounts of the anti-upzoning crowd. This guy, an author, is upset that the council is upzoning commercial streets.

How little do you have to know about housing politics in California to believe the California Association of Realtors et al are interested in housing abundance?

the best way for California to tax the rich is to simply abolish prop 13

Edmonton, like Auckland, seems to be proving that in many North American/Australasian contexts if you legalize townhouses in lots of places, they will meet a lot of housing demand. Dispersed rowhomes reduce pressure on how much housing you need to get out of larger apartment buildings

Lately, there has been a lot of frank discourse about what YIMBYism has accomplished in California. I think this impatience, even after big wins, is good and healthy—but it misses the early signs of success in front of us. In a new post, I offer a YIMBY hopepill: open.substack.com/pub/mnolangr...

Ah, we've been got

Just five years ago, Nithya Raman opposed SB 9, a bill that made it legal to split single-family lots into 2-4 plexes, because it didn't mandate subsidized units for low-income households. What an incredible transformation. Total YIMBY cultural victory.

A Terner Center roundtable with homebuilders found that rezoning alone doesn't produce missing-middle housing — design standards, lot rules, and approval processes must also follow. Builders reported that 8- to 12-home buildings are where projects start to make sense. cayimby.org/blog/wheres-...

This is a INCREDIBLY pro-housing bill. Passing this would completely unlock the condo market, making homeownership affordable for hundreds of thousands - maybe millions - of California families who can’t afford to buy today. Best bill of the year by a mile.

Sadly the current right-wing coalition government in Finland has foolishly cut the funding for the nation’s “Housing First” success story, and homelessness is predictably now on the rise again. That just reinforces the fact that such programs work, if lazy political ideology doesn’t get in the way.

oh look at that www.pew.org/en/research-...

Yes it has. www.pew.org/en/research-...

Wow, that market rent data in Austin. The oldest/cheapest apartment buildings have almost completely reversed their post-pandemic rent spike, without even adjusting for inflation

Another reason we need mode shift to rail - with steel wheels, not tires. Fewer cars and trucks on the road = less plastic in your lungs.

lmfao Thomas Keller showing up to a community meeting in his chefs jacket to complain about affordable housing being built near his 3 Michelin star restaurant is just beyond parody. what a piece of shit

This is like the tenth research group using a totally new dataset to reach this same conclusion: building new market-rate housing helps low-income tenants. "These findings demonstrate that housing supply expansions benefit lower-income households through moving chains"

TL;DR: Adding housing actually cuts costs for those who need it most. 📉 Didn't think we needed it, but still grateful for the solid data (again).

An Austin or Minneapolis-scale YIMBY victory in California would cut poverty by as much as the Child Tax Credit Already in Minneapolis, *unsubsidized market rate apartments are affordable at federal LIHTC rents* bsky.app/profile/nisk...

Great analysis here from @edmendoza.bsky.social & @pewresearch.org correcting a poorly framed Georgetown report New housing construction moderates Class C rents the most! <60%AMI families will always need income supports But YIMBYism helps all incomes www.metroabundance.org/adding-more-...

Rents are declining nationwide because the United States is building more housing. www.apartmentlist.com/research/nat...

🚨BREAKING🚨 KATHY HOCHUL AND ZOHRAN MAMDANI ANNOUNCE PUSH TO REFORM OUTDATED “ENVIRONMENTAL REVIEW” LAWS THAT BLOCK HOUSING NIMBYS OFFICIALLY FRAMEMOGGED BY HOUSINGMAXXING GOVERNOR AND MAYOR

One house turns into 17 homes in Seattle. (2014➡️2017)

Many people are saying the public sector should operationalize urban land rents.

Vacancy rate go up, rent go down. Believe it or not, there are dozens of non-profit "housing" organizations who collectively receive hundreds of millions of dollars per year from billionaire philanthropists who simply do not believe the law of supply and demand. www.latimes.com/california/s...

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

It's funny to me, how many people seem to think that NIMBYism in California is principally a fiscal zoning phenomenon. Basically all of the Los Angeles downzonings were finished by the time Proposition 13 took effect.

I'm standing at the corner of Market & Van Ness in #SanFrancisco, atop a subway station and next to a bus rapid transit stop. Still thinking about the retired planner who vowed to block 984 homes here, so he can preserve a defunct car dealership and his faded memories of a few shows he saw in 1971.

🎯🎯🎯 "If Los Angeles is exempted from SB 79...Metro will continue building expensive infrastructure through low-density neighborhoods while ridership lags, housing costs soar, and access to homes near transit remains scarce. That is not a transit success story. It is the status quo, reinforced."

America has a housing shortage. Every single housing proposal you see that is not "build more housing" will have the primary effect of pushing up the prices of existing housing, and is therefore, in reality, a plan to enrich current homeowners. In conclusion, build more housing.

There are only 2 real policy responses to a housing shortage. You can either get to work building enough housing for everyone or start making a list of the types of people you want to exclude. I know which side I’m on.

Pretty wild that there is no coverage in major American media of what is either the most transformative technological breakthrough since the steam engine or the most embarrassing business failure since the Segway.

Begging and pleading with more blue state politicians to figure this out. There's been a lot of progress, but red states are still on track to outgrow blue states before the next Census. (And no, that is not going to inexorably turn those states blue.)

A heck of a chart: in every single one of the 10 major US cities that built the most housing between 2017 and 2023, rents for older, existing units fell—often by quite a bit.

“Deregulation with socialist branding” is no-sarcasm the most fascinating political development of the last decade. Will this work? Fuck if I know but I’m entranced.

"America’s Housing Crunch Has the Wrong Villain" www.aei.org/economics/am... "Institutional investors aren’t the cause of housing distortions but a response to them."

I would love to see the state become a developer and start building housing itself. Not whatever bullshit study bills have been passed so far.

It’s been half a century and it seems like this still isn’t widely understood. (from Robert Caro, 'The Power Broker', Vintage: 1975, p. 897)

Call it Schrödinger's affordable housing project — both dead and alive at the same time. Now after nearly a decade of dispute the fate of a 120-unit, low-income apartment building along the iconic canals in Venice Beach may affect all development in LA www.politico.com/news/2025/12...

Courtesy of my sister-in-law

If the worst single-family house in your n’hood costs over $1 million, then your n’hood should be zoned for apartment buildings. (It’s pretty much that simple)

On the theme of, "American planners regulate the wrong things," we should have much stricter regulations on noise-proofing apartments. It's the sort of issue regulation is meant to handle: it's difficult for most consumer to assess it before making a decision, and it really impacts qualify of life.

US building codes requiring two stairs in multifamily buildings: not only worse living environments, but also more dangerous in fires! What a combination.

No such thing as an "Orphan Lot" any more. Single stair stacked flats can fit on small lots (like this 50x70 corner lot). This could be 12 small 1Br, or six family size flats. Just allow 50% lot coverage and 3FSR and away you go.

Your home value appreciation is someone's housing costs

California YIMBY is thrilled to announce our first round of endorsements for the 2026 Assembly election, which are in this thread by district number. If you want to support our political work, please donate to the California YIMBY Victory Fund, which you can do here:

We came pretty close to significantly reforming the commercial portion with 2020's Prop 15, and it's probably about time to try again.