Technology companies are major employers in the Bay Area. They got into housing politics because they want to be able to hire and retain employees without having to pay them enough to afford $4,000 apartments and $2,500,000 houses.
Posting for California YIMBY about housing, and for myself about skateboarding and cameras. Tradeoffs are real. he/him 📍 San Francisco
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Technology companies are major employers in the Bay Area. They got into housing politics because they want to be able to hire and retain employees without having to pay them enough to afford $4,000 apartments and $2,500,000 houses.
East coast NIMBYism hits different.
It rules how everyone who hated "Pell Grant recipients with student loans who start a business that operates for three years in disadvantaged communities" exclusively wants to legalize Subsidized Housing for Qualifying Households Making Between 65 and 80 Percent of Area Median Income.
The insane amount of actual no-shit gilded age corruption going on makes the revolving door project’s bizarre obsession with bloggers they don’t like look so absurd.
Pinging @robertcruickshank.com on this.
More people should know about The Graph.
Also, Los Angeles’ city government has had plenty of time to address its housing shortage and homelessness crisis. It has not done so because *most of Los Angeles’ elected officials do not actually want to build housing.* As such, SB 79 *is* solving the problem at the most local level achievable.
The key difference between Donald Trump sending troops to LA and DC and Scott Wiener overriding local zoning to legalize housing near transit is that the supposed crime wave that Trump is claiming to address is fake and LA’s housing shortage is real.
The median eu resident very much does need cooling. news.un.org/en/story/202...
Hello and welcome to my profile!
The building on the left.
Yeah, for seniors and adults with disabilities.
I’m sure people were mad then—SF had a vicious growth revolt!—but it’s just part of the background now.
Once again thinking about how this 1970s brutalist affordable housing building in my neighborhood breaks every sacred zoning rule—it’s much taller than its neighbors, it’s built in a wildly different style, it’s mid-block on a side street instead of on an arterial, etc—and literally nobody cares.
RIP to my all time favorite piece of graffiti, painted over this week after making me smile every day for 3 years. You will be missed, “GIRL WEED!”
Not a single one of these words is in the Bible.
This absolute banger
I think our blue state leaders need to begin preparing for this, in part by making it much easier to build less expensive homes in our blue state cities because we cannot provide refuge to people fleeing red state oppression at scale while appeasing every objection to new housing.
How does charging market prices for parking create a barrier to the middle class commuting for work?
Yeah maybe you just don’t know that many people? Idk. bsky.app/profile/swoz...
fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1M26l
Two thirds of American households own their homes.
If you agree, use our tool to contact your legislators in support of SB 79. actionnetwork.org/letters/supp...
Florida builds three times as many homes per capita as California. I think this is a very bad thing; and that we should pass SB 79 to do something about it.
Define “live comfortably.”
It’s a lot!
That is median household income, not average.
This is a 10/10 piece of pedestrian and cycling infrastructure. I would recommend it to a friend.
The median American household makes $80,000.
California can keep our NIMBY housing policies and continue losing population to states like Florida where people suffer under crazy right wing governance or we can reform zoning, build homes, and be a refuge from that craziness. The choice is ours.
You should do it! It’s a 12/10 party vibe.
We chartered an historic streetcar for our Friday night party and it was awesome. You can BYOB! www.sfmta.com/charter-cabl...
Maybe the biggest moral test facing the second America is: Will we decide to create more room for people to live here? Or will we continue forcing our citizens to move to the other one because of our refusal to build homes for them? Pass #SB79. @cayimby.bsky.social @scottwiener.bsky.social
Actual working class people own fewer cars and drive less than rich people. I think the parking revenue should fund public transit.
I have no idea. The listing is here: www.zillow.com/apartments/o...
Remember how a ton of people, most notably the CEO of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, were vocally anti-PrEP because they thought it would undermine their safer sex campaigns? www.nytimes.com/2014/11/17/u...
The NIMBY argument against replacing single family homes with apartments on affordability grounds asks you to believe that a 100+ year old $895,000 fixer upper with $4,750/month mortgage payments is somehow *more* affordable than a larger brand new $3,425 apartment nearby.
I think we should charge a lot more for street parking in places where demand outstrips supply.
I used to be a professional downhill skateboarding photographer but I had to quit because life was too expensive. www.maxdubler.com/photography
We need cheap rent so idiosyncratic weirdos can make a living pursuing their passions.
It’s much nicer over here. I suspect Will Stancil has a much different experience because his account is 5x bigger than mine and hundreds of assholes treat being horrible to him like a video game.
Hell yeah.
A concept: clear, realistic rules about what you can build and where you can build it that are set in advance and applied impartially by professional staff.
The Grindr gays abstained from hookups until they could get vaccinated and we crushed the virus almost entirely.
Not building housing screws young people, pushes them out & tanks future economic success. We need to make it easier & faster to build the homes we need for a bright future. Our current vetocracy need to change & we’re working to change it.
Yeah it is very much a different game over 10-15k followers.
The homelessness is a product of the NIMBYism.
Absolutely.
It's only "objective criteria or nothing" if you think your website has to serve ~everyone for free and your moderators don't get paid very well.
"I don't like your vibes and do not want you here. There will be no appeals" is actually a fine way to run a social group.
I wrote about this last week. www.maxdubler.com/blog/2025/8/...
While I understand why city council members want to keep their power to personally approve or deny ~every proposed housing development, it is a big part of why cities like LA and NYC have housing crises. We should replace this bad system with actual urban planning and the rule of law for land use.
Intensely critical support to Eric Adams
xXxCaptiveDreamerxXx
I’m convinced inspection and utility hookup delays contribute to the “developers will just keep their buildings empty for the tax write off” conspiracy theories.
Understandable! For decades, developers who wanted to build infill were supplicants to neighborhood political interests.
"We need to reform zoning codes in order to increase housing supply" and "we don't want to step into the business of local government" and "dense cities are dangerous hellholes that we must pacify militarily" are three propositions that don't hang together at all
Yes!
What rules is that half of them refuse to type “bluesky” because they’re afraid of getting punished by the algorithm.
Yes!
I saw this sculpture in London.
This fundamentally is not an issue of overconsumption or profligacy by affordable housing developers, who built subsidized apartments for poor people on the assumption that they would be able to pay back their construction costs.
The morality tale you invented, where money-grubbing real estate capitalists are suffering because they made a bad financial decision, is not an accurate reflection of the reality here, which is that unanticipated changes in Seattle’s housing market might *destroy the affordable housing industry.*
I can’t speak to Washington state but here in California subsidized affordable housing has to be built to an extremely high construction standard using union labor, which significantly raises costs compared to market rate housing.
Do you think that subsidized affordable housing for low income households is a good thing or a bad thing?
What do you mean by “monetizing housing?”
I'm sorry but this is insane www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news...
The guy who tariffed lumber, who is trying to deport the construction workforce, and who campaigned on his opposition to Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing does not actually care about bringing down housing prices.
“The intellectual victory of the YIMBYs can sometimes obscure how precarious our position really is: A whole edifice of opposition to land-use reforms is still in place — people in power with formative political experiences and assumptions from a prior era.” Recommended reading!
This orange crocheted cabana set at Rolo in SF is absolutely delightful.
Today at the Bike the Drive in Chicago.
Only two people live in this six room apartment?
The Darn Tough merino wool socks I wear most days would be unimaginably luxurious 200 years ago.
“My great great grandparents would be absolutely astonished by how much clothing everyone has today” is my Roman Empire.
This is true.
Once again thinking about how it used to take two hundred hours to hand-knit a single silk stocking.
The phenomenon of describing things as “spiritually Israeli.”
Perfect weather and an Aperol spritz at the park.
Is this the only good Subway Take?
My subway Take would be like “tom yum noodle soup does not get enough respect.”
Being a rootless cosmopolitan slaps, actually.
Your city is not full.
I am sure SF YIMBY would be happy to support higher height limits along with the density decontrol in single family neighborhoods. I very much doubt your friends at Neighborhoods United would agree to that.
This is a quite sizable bowl of noodles.
Trump’s economy smh
Good eye!
If you’re in the mood for it, hell yeah.
A former mayor of Santa Monica says it best: gentrification is too much money chasing too little housing
It’s not that hot tbqh.
Wat Dong Moon Lek noodle is really good if you’ve never been there.
This is probably the most Berkeley thing I’ve ever seen.
Every time the bill comes at the Thai place I am transported back to 2014 and I’m like hey what’s up hello.
Stunting is a way of life.
Yes we agree that this is a problem. I am asking you what an acceptable solution to that problem could be, given your stated beliefs about fair rent levels.
Shout out to the Mazdarati.
My lived experience involves basic financial literacy.
