Housing guy. Researcher at UCLA Lewis Center, host of UCLA Housing Voice Podcast, author of The Affordable City, resident of Los Angeles.
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I do think that this is largely a proxy for costs in general. There was not some major tax increase in 2020, people are just reacting to inflation! There's a lesson here... lowering people's costs is a necessary prerequisite to raising taxes! Can I interest you in a little YIMBY-ism?
"For nearly 250 years, America has only known growth ... Even COVID, which killed more than a million Americans, didn’t reverse the trend. But Trump’s immigration crackdown may accomplish what no war, plague, or calamity has ever done." www.derekthompson.org/p/the-us-pop...
On one hand, reducing car use reduces urban pollution. But on the other, everyone likes it and cities become more livable
9 CDC Directors going back to 1977 speak out. What RFK Jr has done to our nation’s public health system "should alarm every American." It "is unlike anything we have ever seen at the agency, and unlike anything our country has ever experienced." www.nytimes.com/2025/09/01/o...
all these media asking democrats 'but crime seems to be down in DC isn't that good' ARMED MILITARY ON THE STREETS IS NEVER FUCKING GOOD
It goes without saying that President Trump is not deploying or threatening to deploy the US military within our own borders based on crime rates -- not that that would justify it. If so, he'd be threatening states under Republican control, like Tennessee, Missouri, and Louisiana.
And for what it's worth, the President of the United States of America has already used the US military to invade another US state governed by a democratically-elected official of the opposing political party -- my home, California. And it's extremely fucked up and can't be normalized.
Saying it because it's the thing I can do: the President of the United States is threatening to use his power as Commander in Chief of the military to invade the city of a democratically-elected governor in his own country, for no reason other than their political opposition to the president.
can confirm
Vaccines have one of the highest reward to risk ratios of any medical intervention in human history. This sociopathic conspiracy theorist is literally killing people, causing the deaths by vaccine-preventable diseases of people who could have lived.
8 kids meeting up at Taco Bell after school. When this Taco Bell was remodeled, it triggered the parking minimums in force at that time, 1 car stall per 50 sf of dining room space. Thus, they had to shrink the dining area and become a drive thru. 5 drive thrus built in 1 mile due to this law
This one is an absolute banger imo "Central Valley state legislators must support SB 79, to fix the broken system that allows wealthy coastal cities to pass off their responsibility– and forces our Central Valley communities to be overrun with traffic, pollution, and sprawling developments."
The highlighted quote is a good example of why trying to hash out disagreements in good faith with left-NIMBY orgs is exhausting and ultimately fruitless. The lead author on this report *knows* this isn't true, and he knows it because we had a whole exchange about this in the pages of Dissent!
The fact that land use decisions are council members' number-one job is *why* we have such an acute housing crisis here. They have incredible influence over land use, and for 50 years they've used it to make sure we never build enough homes to make the city more affordable.
Jon Lovett’s face when LA City Councilmember Imelda Padilla said she forced an affordable housing project to go down from six stories to three stories and add in EV charging spaces
imagine being so maniacally racist that you side with the fire over the firefighter
The idiocy and misanthropy of the people leading our country knows no bounds. It is boundless.
Our latest UCLA Housing Voice episode is with Vincent Reina, discussing findings from a direct-to-tenant cash assistance program in Philadelphia, PHLHousing+. Reduced evictions, homelessness, and housing quality problems — and no unused vouchers! Give it a listen: www.lewis.ucla.edu/2025/08/27/9...
if i were on this deployment i would be pissed. these people have actual jobs! and here they are, walking around picking upt rash.
City of Denver analysis reveals major potential for single-stair housing — identifying 39,000 parcels where single-stair apartments could be built. This includes hundreds of vacant lots across the city and lots where affordable housing incentives allow for the construction of taller housing.
Stalin could only have dreamed of having such toadies.
My lab's been attacked by an anti-wind group and their lawyers. They threatened the science funding of my whole university, to shut me and my undergraduate research assistants up. NYT just covered it. 1/n www.nytimes.com/2025/08/25/c...
Who's the English-speaking expert on IBAs? I.e., Internationale Bauausstellung, or International Building Exhibitions. These things: www.internationale-bauausstellungen.de/en/ www.iba-wien.at/en/
Sacramento: the Kyoto to America's Osaka 😏
I debated writing this. It can feel tempting, upon encountering yet another instance of this administration’s racism, to let it be. How many ways can you say the same thing over and over again? And yet we have to write it down, if for nothing else, so those who come after us know we were against it.
Which isn't to say that everyone needs to be speaking to that audience -- it's not something I talk about much. But I'm glad we have people out there who are, and I try to see them as complementing those working on other, arguably higher-impact issues.
They're 100% used for that purpose, but I also don't see many advocates for ADUs who pack up and go home after getting them legalized. Like a lot of stuff in housing reform (and all policy and advocacy, I'm sure), it's important to speak to people at different stages in that journey.
Who's the English-speaking expert on IBAs? I.e., Internationale Bauausstellung, or International Building Exhibitions. These things: www.internationale-bauausstellungen.de/en/ www.iba-wien.at/en/
That's a new term to me -- I like it! I agree ADUs get a bit too much focus, but I suspect they play a sort of gateway drug role into bigger, more impactful reforms. I've also drawn a lot of lessons about what makes for successful reforms from ADU policymaking.
Hey folks, we're looking for some listener feedback on the UCLA Housing Voice podcast. We're coming up on episode 100 and want to do a mailbag ep where the hosts answer your questions, and we're also considering a bookclub, so we want book ideas. Reach out! www.lewis.ucla.edu/2025/08/18/a...
We should be very clear about this: Aside from making housing less affordable, opposing SB 79 is a vote for more homelessness, for longer commutes and slower climate progress, and for further enriching wealthy landlords and homeowners at the expense of renters and homebuyers.
Exempting cities with compliant housing elements would be such a characteristically Californian (derogatory) approach to policymaking. Basically rewarding cities that *plan* to allow more housing by waiving rules that would *actually* produce more housing.
There was a brief window, when ED 1 was still in its original form, when I thought Los Angeles might finally have a mayor who was somewhat serious about addressing the housing and homelessness crisis. My bad!
Free to "dart" wherever they like!
As Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo put it: "A city where you can get let go of your child's hand"
Here's the public comment I wrote opposing this anti-SB 79 resolution. Cowardice is the right word, especially after council opposed similar legislation almost a decade ago and then used that much-vaunted "local control" to turn the housing crisis up to 11. Kudos to the 5 progressives who voted no.
It's 2018. The LA City Council is opposing SB827 because it overrides local control. Rent is $1,663 It's 2019. The LA City Council is opposing SB50 because it overrides local control. Rent is $1,791 It's 2025. The LA City Council is opposing SB79 because it overrides local control. Rent is $2,625
Oh he’s a *Nazi* Nazi
Simple Boxes with Ornamentation are better than One Box Pretending To Be Lots of Boxes
i’ll never get over how blatantly and proveably lying is one of the best political strategies of the modern age
NEW: Wearing masks, no ID, unmarked & blacked out cars, refusing to say what agency they’re from and using profanity with any press & public nearby. This was at 14th & R in Washington DC, this morning (Sunday). What the hell is happening to the US? (🎥 Dan Rosenzweig-Ziff, Washington Post)
the message from the white house is that you live in a city run by people the president doesn't like, you will be occupied like you are an enemy of the state.
The fact that CBP was dispatched to menace a press conference by the duly elected governor of California should really put to bed any argument about whether these federal deployments are a response to crime rates. As if it weren't already obvious what this is about.
This is one of the most beautiful things I have witnessed, the craft here is impeccable.
Ahahahahahahhahahhahahhahahahahahhahhhahahahahahhahahahahhahahahahahahh
An "economist" so dumb I had to explain to him how the import price index works last month will now lead the BLS, kill me
Parked cars vs Outdoor dining in the same urban canyon ;)
I'm not disputing the fact that used housing is devalued, just trying to better understand the context. Maybe this acquire-and-rent strategy is actually commonplace, or ownership incentives mean that rebuilding is still more attractive despite the costs. I'd appreciate folks' insights!
I always read about how Japan has a weak market for used housing, with homes valued mostly for the land within about 30 years. But if that's so, wouldn't it make sense for someone to buy these old homes and rent them out? It seems like the preference for new homes wouldn't affect rentals as much.
Michael has a whole thread of these kind of responses, and 100% of the time it's just people rationalizing their desire to drive at unsafe speeds without penalty.
Even by the standards of this discourse, this is one of the worst arguments I have ever seen
This quote is from Lawrence Veiller, an influential progressive reformer in the US, in 1913. Anyone wanna guess what the dwelling unit threshold for shifting from the Residential Code to the more expensive Building Code is today, in 2025?
Yeah, I figured it was something like that. My intuition is that it's an overreach and unlikely to succeed, too, but maybe I'm wrong. ULA has a terrible reputation among people in real estate and in some policy circles but I don't think that's broken through much beyond that.
Anyone been following this California ballot initiative? It's news to me. It would limit the maximum real estate transfer tax rate, which I could potentially get behind, but also increase the special tax threshold to two-thirds, which I definitely can't support. lao.ca.gov/BallotAnalys...
Killing SB 79 will make Los Angeles a less affordable, less sustainable place -- it'll keep us on the same trajectory we've been on since SB 827 and SB 50 were killed almost a decade ago. Why is the mayor going out of her way to oppose it? There's no excuse for this.
this work saved millions of lives in 2021, won the Nobel Prize in 2023, and is cancelled in 2025
I'm extremely unhappy about all of Trump and the GOP's energy policy, but I'd bet large sums of money that renewable energy production continues growing far, far more in absolute terms in the coming years.
This isn't really analogous because blocking solar and wind projects isn't going to suddenly make coal and gas profitable ventures. 90% of what blocking permitting reform 3 years ago did was delay a bunch of clean energy projects long enough to get killed by the Trump administration.
Automated trains. Grade separated. Comes every 90 seconds. Tons of dense development around every station. My jealous is through the roof
America has lost 116k manufacturing jobs over the last year—that's the fastest pace of job loss since the early COVID era and worse than any period from 2011-2019. Big drops in the transportation (-49k) & electronics (-32k) industries drive most of the decline
These results are relevant for policymakers concerned about renters’ displacement as the costs of housing rise. The findings suggest that not allowing more homes to be built—even for high-income residents—pushes up all rents, making it harder for low-income tenants to remain in their neighborhoods.
Agreed it's not a given, by any means, that homeownership can't work in more traditional multifamily. But I do think townhouses offer something unique, and maybe uniquely appealing -- not having upstairs neighbors or an HOA, for example. It's definitely a both-and though!
They looked at the price of the home before redevelopment and the price of each home after, giving them the ratio/%, and the numbers here are the median result by the number of replacement units. Sometimes the original home would be $600k, other times $1MM, etc.
We don't get to choose whether our ancient housing stock gets redeveloped. We do get to choose what it's likely replaced by - 1) a few astronomically expensive homes, or 2) many more comparatively less expensive homes. Cambridge chose option 2 when it eliminated exclusionary zoning city-wide.
Upwards of 20,000 people in Seattle have bought them, so maybe they know something you don't
We actually talk about this -- why anti-mansionization ordinances, for example, aren't effective.
It's largely because the homes they replace tend to be among the smallest and most run-down in a given neighborhood. Makes a lot more sense replacing those than something bigger or recently renovated.
Definitely valid points, but also something I suspect it's impossible to account for in an analysis at this scale, practically speaking. There's certainly no breakdown like this in LA County assessor data, and we have some of the best assessor data in the country.
Agreed that low-rise multifamily is too low density in some locations, and when it gets built it effectively forecloses the development of more appropriately higher-density projects for at least a generation.
I think my view is that this "light touch" level of density should be allowed essentially everywhere in cities, with considerably higher allowed in more central areas, job centers, transit nodes, etc.
Single family zoning effectively mandates McMansionization and economic displacement in high-demand neighborhoods by making it illegal to replace older single family houses with several smaller, less-expensive homes.
Very important implications for the power of missing middle housing here. If we spur development of 6-8plexes on single-family lots we don’t just get increases in aggregate affordability, we get it on the project level too! Newer homes that are more affordable than what they replaced!
The crucial observation about old, small homes that come on the market in high-cost areas: there is no world where they get preserved as old, affordable starter homes. They will become huge expensive single houses, or they will become smaller, less expensive clusters. Do we want more mansions?
Looking back at the article, it looks like the figures are based on assessor data for 4500 SF to townhome conversions. I believe that means ~4x as many townhomes. Not all of them, but the vast majority. I'm guessing, but still 99% certain, that the assessor doesn't exclude square footage for stairs.
Yeah, I definitely think both things can be true. There are many ways in which an elevator-access condo (or apartment) unit on a single floor is the better product for many people and many sites. We should absolutely make it easier and more affordable to build both.
We covered a lot in this conversation — more than I've summarized here. Give it a listen and let us know what you think. www.lewis.ucla.edu/2025/07/30/9...
These townhomes are serving a younger, less affluent, more racially diverse population than Seattle's detached single-family houses. And this data is on homeowners specifically, who make up over 70% of the households living in the townhomes.
The researchers find that the sites that get redeveloped tend to be larger parcels with older, smaller homes. There's no world where these homes are preserved as affordable starters — they're getting redeveloped either way. Do we want them to be mansions 3x as expensive as the original? I don't.
When four homes replace a SFH, each new home is about the same price as the original, and at 5 units or more, the new homes tend to be more affordable. But the critical comparison is to the 1-for-1 replacement — a mansionization, in other words.
To me, this is the most important chart in the study. It compares the sale price of housing in these zones before and after redevelopment. For 2-unit projects, the price of the new homes is 80% higher than the original house. This falls as the number of replacement homes rises.
Over time, as land prices have increased in the city, the average FAR for new townhomes has increased. This is driven by declining lot sizes rather than shrinking units. The size of new townhouses has been remarkably stable, at around 1,400 sq ft on average.
Seattle's LR zones allow small multiplex and townhouse projects in places where single-family detached are the dominant building type, with up to 1.4 floor area ratio (FAR) in the densest zone. Projects are generally approved by-right. The modal project replaces 1 SFH with 4 townhouses.
In the latest episode of UCLA Housing Voice, we talk to Tobias Peter about his case study on Seattle's low-rise multifamily zones, which have produced over 20,000 townhomes since 1994. Some key findings in the thread below. www.lewis.ucla.edu/2025/07/30/9...
The number of birds killed by cats every year is in my top 3 of "facts that will shock nearly anyone you tell them to"
Helsinki (pop 657,000) has not had a single traffic death during the last twelve months. poliisi.fi/-/helsingin-...
“Don’t pave paradise” in front of a photo of a paved road for drivers. So silly. So selfish.
Updated histograms, now with the correct data bucketing! (and three watermarks, because people like to steal my charts without crediting me)
Also, if I may make a request @dkthomp.bsky.social, please include some kind of citation, credit, or link for the images and figures in your posts. To acknowledge the creators, yes, but also for the benefit of readers, including those like me who are skeptical of data/figures of unknown provenance.
Link to the article: www.derekthompson.org/p/why-does-i...
It's not the point of his post, but this chart from @dkthomp.bsky.social's Substack on the research history of GLP-1 really drives home how much time (and implicitly money) goes into developing life-saving and -improving drugs. And just how catastrophic it will be for us to abruptly stop investing.
Art of the deal: just say you made a deal even though your other partner has no idea what you’re talking about
Truly one of the dumbest arguments someone could make. Insulting to anyone within earshot and the kind of statement that should forever disqualify you from serious work in the public *or* private sector.
😡
Donald Trump has leveraged the power of his office for personal gain unlike anyone before in history to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars since his election.
Nice
Is 2025 the year that California finally got serious about its self-imposed housing crisis? Would've loved this all at once in 2018 as SB 827, but the second best time to plant a tree is today.
Incredible shrinking Cone of Uncertainty! Kartina 2005 vs Helene 2024. Dramatic improvement in hurricane forecasting due to expertise of NOAA scientists at NHC & AOML. Since 2005 forecast error on 5-day track has decreased by ~50%! We often take these accurate forecasts for granted but... 1/
I think this summarized it. Pretty sure the issue's been resolved, but I haven't looked into how. Housing Code Consequences: Zoning meant to encourage middle housing could complicate market share.google/HUChP43dcH0s...