upzone the coastal elites
@about_dave
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Patent attorney, astrophysicist, & Stack-and-Packist 🏙️🥑🔋⛷️. Ready to help enforce state housing law. @about_dave @sfba .social
Walnut Creek, CA
Joined December 2014
Don't wanna be here?
Send us removal request.
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State law: cities must determine if CEQA reports will be required within 30 days of completeness.
Walnut Creek: there's no deadline to determine if a project is exempt, because the law doesn't recite exemptions and we don't understand the concept of negative implications.
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No, people in economy do not have less legroom so that first class can have more.
People in economy have less legroom so that their airfare is cheaper.
Sorry to break Conover's grand conspiracy theory.
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"he’s a republican with one good opinion."
That's the entire point. He's an Republican who still manages to be more progressive than exclusionary cities like SF.
Adopt his good opinion, jettison the rest.
very annoyed at twitter urbanists praising this guy so much while nobody mentions he also signed a near-total ban on abortion and a near-total ban on gender-affirming care for minors. he’s a republican with one good opinion. important to remember
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He just admitted it. Journalist are either on the YIMBY side or are unqualified to write about the economics of urban housing. Exactly.
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Housing shortage. Housing shortage. Housing shortage. Housing shortage. Housing shortage. Housing shortage. Housing shortage. Housing shortage. Housing shortage. Housing shortage. Housing shortage. Housing shortage. Housing shortage. Housing shortage. Housing shortage.
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A senior advisor to the White House on housing:
"I think the new elites like the younger folks who work in tech need to refuse to stop paying ridiculous amounts of rental housing. For their own good and for the market as a whole."
Ummm... No...
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Housing inflation did not spike in the 70s because of rising union wages.
It spiked in the 70s because racists turned to downzonings in the wake or the fair housing act and we stopped building in the job centers.
.
@roundhouse208
Wow
This is why inflation got so bad in the 70s… effect will be limited this time due to lower level of private sector unionization.
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"corrupt real estate developers" are not the people who downzoned cities.
Bernie is absolutely horrible on housing.
Corrupt real estate developers are gentrifying neighborhoods and forcing working families out of the homes and apartments, only to replace them with fancy condominiums and hotels that only the very rich can afford.
We need affordable housing for all.
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Nothing could make me happier than Sen̓áḵw in a major California coastal metro region.
Land preservation examples are cute, but so short of the goal.
Native tribes are getting a slice of their land back — under the condition that they preserve it
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Imagine thinking housing in San Francisco was unregulated.
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The Ford Maverick bed is exactly 1 cubic foot bigger than the cargo space in my minivan, with all seats up.
33.3 cubic feet versus 32.3.
With third row down, minivan grows to 87.5 of interior storage, then 140.5 with all rear seats down.o
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Bike lanes should have hard barriers. Emergency vehicles can use car lanes to park, for whatever purpose they're engaged in.
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My favorite silly example of unenforced parking laws:
In the bay area, it's extremely common for garages to be non-car storage.
In Berkeley, if you don't actually use your garage for a car, it's technically supposed to be taxed.
I'm willing to bet money no homeowner pays.
One option not mentioned in this tale of sidewalk parking persecution and woe: parking in one's own garage.
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The difference I see between "progressives" and left-yimbys like myself, is I want high taxes on the rich to pay for affordable housing, while the "progressives" want high taxes on new housing to pay for affordable housing.
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meant to help address the racial wealth gap
"Program was disproportionately used by white homeowners."
Loan officer estimate that 30-50% of users could have bought without it.
Just legalize housing already! Stop it with these dumb demand subsidies.
NEW: Who got down payment money from California's new, $300 million 'Dream for All' homeowner program (which tapped out after less than 2 weeks)?
@FromBenC
& I have an exclusive look in today's
@CalMatters
.
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There's a 2% vacancy rate on a home I rent out. No reasonable set of public policies would ever get that lower.
We had tenants that stayed for 3 years. And there's a 3-week gap because the new tenants wanted to do a long road trip across the country before arriving.
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What if flex posts were covered with sandpaper?
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A clear example of climate-denialism from
@GeoffHanmer
:
"increasing density beyond about 80 people per hectare is not a positive"
reality:
@yhdistyminen
Increasing density beyond about 80 people per hectare is not a positive. Few people in Australia want to live in a high rise apartment, which is one reason houses are much more expensive than apartments. The solution; medium density up to three storeys.
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To the Berkeley officials who plan on turning this land over to the Native peoples, if you're going down that route, do it seriously.
Remove all zoning limits.
The city of Berkeley has reached a landmark agreement with the developer who owns a parking lot on top of a sacred Ohlone site that will see the land transferred permanently back to Native peoples after years of litigation and community outcry.
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@urbenschneider
So the housing that NIMBYs oppose for being "luxury techie dorms" turned into naturally affordable housing.
And all it took was for there to be more supply than demand.
Interesting.
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Blackrock was founded in 1988.
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Daniel advocated against ab2053, the bill to establish a public housing developer in California.
Don't let him lie.
Yes I want green homes. For everyone.
A recent refresher for those curious why a Berkeley professor hates nice green apartments. Oh wait—I don't hate those. I've been doing research and supporting campaigns for affordable density for over a decade.
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There's one fact I found intriguing in the underlying story. They studied 10 story limits.
10 stories seems like a very awkward height. Too tall for conventional wood framing, not really tall enough to pay for steel framing.
It's almost like they wanted infeasibility.
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$4,000+ in zoning fees to add a door to a dining room in Berkeley.
Because if it had a door, it'd be a legal bedroom, and the 5th bedroom on the lot.
Stupid stupid tax that I'll probably end up paying anyway.
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Reminder that UC Merced is getting a medical school and is a top university in the nation at exceeding expected graduation rates. They're admitting huge numbers of low income and first-in-the-family college students, and getting them degrees!
Don't pretend Merced is nowhere.
More than 15 years after a high-speed rail linking SF and LA was pitched to voters for about $40 billion, state officials say it will cost as much as $35 billion just to connect Bakersfield and Merced, with $100 billion to complete the rest.
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@JeremiahDJohns
I recall the income limits on that program went up to $300,000 in rich counties. Absurd program. We need to build more supply, and these demand subsidies need to be reserved for the truly needy.
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$560,000 in public subsidy per home...IN FRESNO!!?
We're not a serious state.
Supported by more than $23M in HCD funding, including $16M from the Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities program,
@FresnoHousing
's Arthur @ Blackstone will continue its site’s legacy of serving the community.
@CAbcsh
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Build the tower.
For west side S.F. officials, there is a concrete threat looming over the effort to pass legislation to streamline state-mandated housing: A widely disparaged plan for a 600-foot tower proposed for the Sloat Garden Center property near Ocean Beach.
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His analogy would work for housing though.
Our housing policies have long prevented the construction of lower cost housing in order to subsidize the housing of the rich.
Just doesn't translate to airlines, where first class flyers generally pay more per bit of space they use.
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2700 Slowly getting built would be an absolute win. Not sure why Robert is repeating implying anything negative about building tall on or near ocean beach.
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BOS annoyed that the entire rest of the state doesn't believe their grift.
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2. Tech workers should avoid the region entirely. Given the displacement concerns, perhaps this was the intended meaning.
Of course, telling the people building the economy to stop doing that... is well let's call it "questionable economic policy."
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Everything in California insurance is broken right now.
These driver monitoring programs are banned, so I have to subsidize speeders.
And in home insurance, I'm simultaneously not charged enough to keep my insurance company in business, while also subsidizing fire prone houses.
I was shocked to read the story of a man being unable to get car insurance because GM sold the driving history from his 2021 Cadillac to data brokers used by insurance companies.
It looks like this has become a PR disaster for GM and they’re stopping the practice.
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Apparently, Berkeley recently refused to intake/invoice a housing development application for about five months. They apparently did this to delay the date they "received" the application, which triggers the first deadlines in state housing law around completeness.
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How do you write such a long thread and fail to mention zoning, fail to mention the underlying classism of the exclusionary zoning favored by so many Democrats?
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@CarterLavin
Begging the homeowner NIMBYs to just not be NIMBYs is not exactly a strong plan.
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In the year 2022, Berkeley plans to use
@SFBART
money to subsidize residents of single family homes who park on the street.
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@sfchronicle
The land is not being transferred to the Native peoples if they're still subject to the city's zoning.
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Pro-housing means when someone proposes a higher level of density on an infill site, you thank them and give them discounts on permit fees rather than forcing them to subsidize affordable housing.
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"skyscraper condos surrounding Golden gate Park"
@DanFleming99
@LondonBreed
Fake compassion, you see easy money. There will never be enough supply to keep up with demand without skyscraper condos surrounding golden gate park.
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While Porter is finally realizing YIMBY policies are necessary to win statewide elections, she's still not getting it.
5 was her "best" supply policy, and all it amounts to is carrots, easily ignored by rich Nimby cities.
5. Break down local barriers: We need every level of government helping on housing. Washington should reward and incentivize cities and counties to stop blocking housing and especially stonewalling projects that our workforce can afford. 6/
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Phil Bokovoy buys a home in an area next to campus, is annoyed that students live near him.
After adjusting for inflation, Phil has made approximately $700,000 on his home.
Under prop. 19, he can move with his low tax basis.
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@AlecStapp
Driving rates do not equal independence.
Lower illegal alcohol consumption does not equal "more risk averse."
etc.
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Imagine being a public information office for a state-level California org and bragging about building "hundreds" of homes a year.
@AaronGuhreen
@drvolts
@DanDjsacramento
Aaron, I respectfully disagree. Enviros don't oppose infill housing. Hundreds of units of multifamily housing are built every year in the Coastal Zone.
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This is sprawl.
It's farmland. It's wildly disconnected from the current urban environment.
It might still be good, if it could be an independent low VMT city. But I'm extremely skeptical of that.
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Newsom's grand CEQA reform comes out.
Nothing for housing. An attempt to speed up, but not even stop, lawsuits against infrastructure.
Newsom has hinted at permitting and CEQA reform for the last week. Today, he'll unveil a package of legislation and sign an executive order to make it easier to build transportation, clean energy, water and other infrastructure across CA. w/
@dillonliam
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Here's the problem.
The act: "The state may not limit the right of any city, county, or city and county to maintain, enact or expand residential rent control."
Exclusionary cities: "ok, so our new housing element requires all new housing to be rented for $1."
NEW: Top California Democrats and two unions come out against rent control ballot measure
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I see two interpretations.
1. Tech workers should skip what little new housing is in the region, and bid up the naturally affordable housing. Considering the advisor started with concerns about displacement, I'll assume this wasn't the intended interpretation.
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Had an interesting conversation with a San Franciscan over the weekend. She was convinced the city had been significantly building since it downzoned it in the 1970s
Then I showed her the anemic population growth of less than 10% over the 5 decades. That seemed to make the point
San Francisco permitted 1,151 housing units over the last 15 months. Austin permitted 1,248 in January alone.
Austin averages 28+ units per day this year. San Francisco has allowed 15 units total in all of 2024.
Is it any wonder why people are moving from SF to ATX?
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"strongest vacancy tax in the nation"
Oakland didn't exempt 1 and 2 unit buildings.
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"We don’t have time to wait on a trickle down myth", "so we should instead wait for money to grow on trees and the socialist housing revolution that's coming any day now"
Let's just build more housing.
How many market rate units does the
#yimby
bro crowd think SF needs to create in order to magically make housing affordable for janitors and teachers? The truth is we need to set aside or convert space for housing that is affordable from the get go. We don’t have time to wait on
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Why is San Francisco broken?
Because of people like
@michelletandler
and their horrible views on zoning.
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I want this so badly - low-interest public loans to infill developers.
- should be available to market-rate builders
- giant side-bonus: when the projects are inevitably delayed beyond state law limits, the state will have that much more motivation to override local process.
Tip for California: stop handing out "down payment assistance" (which just increases housing costs) and start giving low-interest construction loans to infill developers. We should be constructing thousands of small 3 to 6 story apartment complexes every single year!
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I'm really enjoying SF progs' attempts to spin doctor their anti-housing votes. They're just so bad at it.
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So to recap, UC can't build dense housing at People's Park without spending millions on police, can't build dense housing elsewhere without spending millions on lawyers (bc Bokovoy et al), and the city refuses to upzone except on polluted car sewers.
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@katieporteroc
It's primarily a zoning problem. Rich homeowners and NIMBYism.
Porter's Wall Street comments are a red flag that she is unwilling to challenge the exclusionary homeowners.
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The $20 billion dollar fund for affordable housing would be funded on the backs of younger homeowners while again allowing older whiter homeowners in the richest, most exclusionary districts to pay the lowest rates.
Call me skeptical.
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@mollycrabapple
"Its like YIMBYs want New Yorkers to ignore the last fifty years."
you mean the last fifty years where housing production lagged housing demand growth?
Pretty sure it's not the YIMBYs trying to ignore that...
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Every YIMBY I know has been upset about the Fed raising interest rates, which obviously makes new housing harder to build.
We're in a supply shortage, and the Fed's actions are harmful to labor and harmful to housing.
#DensityBros
are melting down.
After capping for capital by pushing deregulation & winning, new starts are down due to higher interest rates. Their heroes (developers & banks) are just sitting & these really very smart bros can’t mentally handle that they’ve been wrong.
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An absolute banger letter from the
@California_HCD
's Housing Accountability Unit.
Berkeley called out for violations of the Permit Streamlining Act. Told in no uncertain terms their application for the pro-housing designation is dependent on reforms.
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The campaign manager for "Ms. you just need a good realtor" asks "how does this help anyone in need of affordable housing."
"38 of the 189 units would be dedicated to low-income households."
The real issue? Kou wants to preserve the status quo for drivers.
Another developer taking advantage of California's Builders Remedy law... How does this help anyone in need of affordable housing? Time to support and
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How does she not see it?
Why must YIMBYs always be strawmanned into absurdity? YIMBYs are the party of advancing healthy housing supply, not the party of zoning reform.
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Can we not with this BS? Everyone supports good building codes and a robust construction review and inspection process. Stop trying to make everything about your hatred for YIMBYism. It undermines your credibility.
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San Francisco 's land use attorneys are so unfamiliar with state law that they are routinely outclassed by random YIMBYs who don't even specialize in housing law professionally.
Ask me how I know.
Reading
@urbenschneider
's piece about San Francisco's apparent misunderstanding of state housing deadlines, I couldn't stop thinking about how it had been a civically engaged resident, not the city itself, that'd caught the mistake. Enter
@derivativeburke
:
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@DeanPreston
It's simple...
Pro-housing: supports market rate, affordable housing, & public housing
Not pro-housing: anything less than that, we're in a severe crisis and can't afford to block anything.
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San Francisco refused to raise general taxes to pay for public goods, instead puts all tax burdens on new housing.
It doesn't work.
Pictured below is a S.F. & California housing policy failure unfolding in my neighborhood.
The corner lot, upzoned in 2009, was designated in city's housing element for up to 72 units of housing.
It's now being gut-renovated for 2.
1/🧵.
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@Surfrider_CA
@DaveMinCA
You need to be supporting infill housing in the urbanized portions of the coastal zone. The coastal act has been used as a tool of exclusionary policy. We can protect the beaches while not being reserved for single family mansions.
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TIL, Contra Costa County has been denying builder's remedy applicants, claiming their HCD-rejected housing element is actually substantially compliant.
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What could happen to the economy if young workers are unable to afford the major job centers?
Oh .. those are some huge hits to GDP.... Yeah....
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@CohenSite
"Ran out of land" is just code for intentional shortage.
LA was the fastest growing region until it decided to be racist instead.
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As someone from the central valley, getting real sick of urbanists complaining the phase 1 HSR (system backbone) only serves agricultural towns (and the newest UC).
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Tenants and workers of color are already YIMBYs.
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Excited to be moving forward with my first pro-bono housing effort. A group of engineers is proposing to replace a SFH with 8 townhomes (18 homes/acre), one being affordable.
Walnut Creek is not processing their application with any sense of urgency and I hope to speed things up
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@CabotageEnjoyer
Yup, that's why his remarks are so off.
And why it'd be so much better applied to housing, where the "economy" class does actually subsidize the "first" class.
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The Harlem left-NIMBYs councilor who voted down a mixed income development and got a truck stop instead has apparently deleted her account.
Good riddance.
What authority does the state have (absent some new law they could pass overruling local zoning, I suppose) to stop a private owner from leasing their land for truck parking, as is allowed by local zoning?
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It's not "shocking" that the pro-housing crowd is open and honest about the challenges of building more housing.
Just because the anti-housing left refuses to acknowledge various problems with their policies doesn't mean the rest of us stick our heads in the sand.
This is frankly a shocking concession from the just deregulate housing crowd, after all these years.
You can’t cost cut your way out of this, tax wealth and spend it on social housing. It’s the only way out.
Or you can keep praying for the modular gods to deliver you reality.
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@mollycrabapple
"no upzoning here has ever led to rents falling in that neighborhood." - YIMBYs call for broad and substantial upzoning. Minor upzoning of a neighborhood is not the YIMBY approach. NYC has never had a broad and substantial upzoning.
So no, you don't get to claim YIMBY failure.
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@Ahsha_Safai
Your housing element is due soon. Don't even try to claim this as significant new feasible homes. It's not and we will push back hard. HCD is not exactly SF's friend right now.
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I would love to see a prop. 13 reform that limited the discount on assessment to $1 million below market value (with that discount increasing with inflation). I think that could pass. Yes, it's weak reform, but it could pass.
We also need to bring back commercial split roll.
Walked by this house in San Francisco today that was listed for sale for around $10MM.
It’s appraisal value for property taxes is $300,607
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Fact 1: when there is a "protected" bikeway (as here), bicyclists are NOT REQUIRED to use it.
Fact 2: it is illegal to operate a handheld device while driving (as here).
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Today I learned, our state legislature hates mobile homes so much they excluded mobile home parks from sb330's no down-zoning rule.
That's right, it's perfectly legal to down zone mobile home parks to zero residential use, without an upzoning to compensate.
Been saying this. NIMBYism against trailer parks is huge in suburban areas with plenty of space. The proliferation of trailers in urban places like Oakland is the direct result of nearby suburbs that have mid 20th century era trailer communities banning more of them.
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@SenJeffMerkley
On the one hand, we could build more housing.
On the other, we could just pretend that tiny market actors magically gained monopolistic pricing powers.
Why did you choose the latter?
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@IDoTheThinking
something that bothers me about the pushback to the idea of traffic enforcement, it always assumes the working class "victims" wouldn't be smart enough to just not break traffic laws.
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Evolve CA wants to repeal prop. 13 so they can "fully-fund public education in California." Cool.
Evolve CA also thinks the UC is over enrolling students and that building affordable and student housing at People's Park is bad.
How they got from one to the other is beyond me.
It's NOT RIGHT for the University to exacerbate the housing crisis by over enrolling students, and then try to demolish limited greenspace as a "solution." We must preserve this symbol of people power and respect those living there!
#PeopleOverProfits
✊🏽😡
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First time using the downtown Walnut Creek Bart station.
It's very weirdly disconnected from the nearby shopping district. Lots of stroads and weird crosswalks with beg buttons in between.
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@rjfos
Imagine learning about red-lining, racially-restrictive convents, exclusionary zoning, and all of the other nakedly racist and classist practices of land use, many of which were born from local democracy, and then not being skeptical of local democracy.
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Oh hell no, cities don't get to override the regional planning process.
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@PatrickRuffini
It is ridiculous that drivers with unpaid speeding tickets that they clearly deserved are allowed to renew their registration and continue driving. We shouldn't let that happen.
We should also have day-fines, with the fine scaled proportional to income.
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This badly needs a community note.
What happens: rent goes down.
"the problem is not landlords, it's that we need to build more houses"
Ok and what happens when the landlords use their existing properties as collateral to get really cheap mortgages to buy those houses to let out
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Also, sometimes it really does feel good to be a landlord.
"Wanted to write to say thanks so much for everything. The place was such an awesome spot for us for the past 3 years and we will miss it! Thanks for being great landlords!"
They were awesome, and had cute doggos!
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If he actually cared to engage with YIMBYs, he'd know we actually are fine with zoning rules that discourage overly large houses ("literal mansions").
Nobody needs 10k sq. ft. Not even multigenerational households.
Me:
Surely YIMBYs won't get mad at being asked to differentiate between a $1500/month unit and a literal castle.
YIMBYs:
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I guess I'm not surprised that this is what passes for analysis from Dean Preston.
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