Ben Teresa
@benfteresa.bsky.social
Associate Professor VCU Urban and Regional Studies & Planning, Co-founder and director, RVA Eviction Lab
Landlord tech — from digital keys to intercoms — are a crucial part of the surveillance state.
Ingrid Burrington@lifewinning.com · last wk.A hot take I've been working on is that everyone needs to be as mad about those smart intercoms being put into apartment buildings as they are about Flock cameras, what do you mean people need an app to get into their home
They could always sign up to give comment at a public meeting.
The Wall Street Journal@wsj.com · 4w agoNew York City’s business elites are long accustomed to direct access to City Hall, where even Democratic mayors felt the need to court the city’s wealthiest and most influential corporate leaders. That access is getting shredded by Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
“Aggregate outcomes are not in general or even usually interpretable as an aggregation of individual preferences.” @interfluidity.com www.interfluidity.com/v2/6846.html
interfluidity » Quick thoughts about airline economics
interfluidity.com
Max Dubler 🏳️🌈@maxdubler.com · last mo.I think my most genuinely unpopular take is that a widely held and genuine consumer preference for cheaper, lower-quality goods, not private equity, is driving the decline in quality of consumer goods like clothing and housewares.
d) consumers do not choose the ownership characteristics of who produces media about consumer products, they only choose between the media offerings e) Consumers do not choose the media distribution channels that offer information about consumer products, they only choose a distribution channel
b) consumers do not choose how goods are distributed, they only choose between distribution channels. This is also crucially different c) consumers do not choose their incomes or overall income distribution. also crucial.
I think this is fundamentally wrong but in an interesting way I will need to write about sometime. The key is a) consumers do not choose what is produced, or how, they choose between what is produced. This is a crucial difference
Max Dubler 🏳️🌈@maxdubler.com · last mo.I think my most genuinely unpopular take is that a widely held and genuine consumer preference for cheaper, lower-quality goods, not private equity, is driving the decline in quality of consumer goods like clothing and housewares.
a big issue in the US seems to be that a big part of the rural working class cannot vote because they're not citizens
A very serious Rural Politico once told me "Dems have to go to farmer meetings! We gotta be where the people are!" I was in fact in a farmer meeting at that very moment! So I live-texted him the meeting. They were complaining that they want indentured workers that they don't have to pay or feed.
Lucas Tieman@lucastieman.bsky.social · last mo.There would be more pushback if folks left of center were more serious about outreach. But folks aren't despite the fact that our system does give disproportionate power to rural areas. But instead of taking that as the rules of the game as it exists, and actually organizing, we complain about it.
Covid is simultaneously a nefarious Chinese bioweapon designed to kill millions and "just the flu." It killed millions because the deep state suppressed knowledge of the true horse paste cure and also killed nobody while millions died from the unnecessary evil vaccine.
Don't know when it will be published but just finished a draft of a piece I'm very excited about it: "Social Safety Net Cuts and Salient Price Increases Elected Trump in 2024: An Examination of the “Objective” and “Subjective” Causal Mechanisms behind the 2024 Election Results"
"The focus on housing affordability, however, ignores the issue of housing quality. These are not two separate issues, but rather, two sides of the same coin... [low-income famlies] rent or buy homes that are so deteriorated, that they have become “affordable.” progressive.org/op-eds/the-h...
The Housing Crisis You’re Not Hearing About
Availability and quality are two sides of the same coin.
progressive.org
BREAKING @crisesnotes.bsky.social from @juanhanes.bsky.social and I: HUD is planning to add "special conditions to grant awards” that will require grantees to submit all invoices & individual payment information from themselves, "subrecipients" AND contractors www.crisesnotes.com/breaking-hud...
BREAKING: HUD is Planning on Hobbling Federal Financial Assistance for Housing by Burying it in Paperwork.
This is a free piece of Notes on the Crises. Please take out a paid subscription so that breaking news coverage like this can be kept free. Or leave a tip. Have non-public information about the Trump...
crisesnotes.com
Lina Khan enters the Mamdani administration gothamist.com/news/mamdani...
Mamdani to appoint antitrust crusader Lina Khan as chair of NYC economic development agency
As board chair, Khan will be able to scrutinize an agency that has been criticized over the years for being too cozy with business interests.
gothamist.com
NEW @crisesnotes.bsky.social PIECE: Confused about the oil market's behavior while the Strait of Hormuz is closed? This is my long piece breaking down what's happening, with the help of @roryjohnston.bsky.social's excellent Odd Lots interview last month. www.crisesnotes.com/the-oil-mark...
The Oil Market is a Conventional Wisdom Processor
I had so many thoughts about the run up to- and beginning of- the Trump-Iran war. My biggest thoughts were focused on how the ideas that I developed about the stock market as a “conventional wisdom pr...
crisesnotes.com
hey does anyone know where i can read a profile of some dumb asshole that fell for a reality show hosts bull shit and it took a decade for them to realize theyd been duped? oh every day in every major publication? awesome thanks
Another way to say this is that a rising homeownership rate can result from rising distress among potential renter households.
Yonah Freemark@yonahfreemark.com · 2mo agoUS homeownership rate is conventionally described as being ~ 65%. But that measure fails to take into account the large number of adults living in homes where *other* adults actually own the homes. People like young adults, elderly, friends. Once you account for that, the rate declines to… 53%.
“Homeownership [in Houston] is on the decline, particularly among Black households.” www.governing.com/urban/is-hou... By @jaredbrey.bsky.social
Is Houston Really an Affordable Place to Live?
A new report shows housing costs increasingly out of reach for Houstonians. Black homeownership shrank by the biggest margin on record.
governing.com
Wait, I thought big landlords were good actually?🙃 Gift article.
Largest Landlord in the U.S. Accused of Widespread Fair Housing Violations (Gift Article)
Greystar turned away apartment applicants trying to use housing vouchers to pay rent, according to a watchdog group.
nytimes.com
remember, be careful what you post on a day like this. If you do it right, you can get illegally fired for being disrespectful to Lindsay Graham and then win a massive lawsuit about 10 months from now and retire with 2 million in your pocket
The next step will be for Republicans to force students to take courses at this indoctrination center, which is what they had to do in Iowa, because nobody actually wants to take courses at these centers.
States Newsroom@statesnewsroom.com · 2mo agoOnly one student has registered for courses at West Virginia University’s new Washington Center, an academic program mandated by Republican lawmakers for the campus. State lawmakers have allocated $3 million in state dollars to the program in the last two years. @westvirginiawatch.com
In most places in the US, renters have fewer protections to deal with inadequate, unsafe housing than a consumer who bought a defective toaster with credit.
Eviction Lab@evictionlab.bsky.social · 2mo ago“The rental housing market is one where consumers have little power.” Via: @us.theguardian.com
NEW: The morning after the socialists swept, the establishment had its excuse ready: Claire Valdez and Darializa Avila Chevalier only won because of gentrification. It was a convenient narrative. It is also false. And we can prove it: open.substack.com/pub/michaell...
When Narratives Meet Facts
The anatomy of a political earthquake — and the failed efforts to discredit it
open.substack.com
BREAKING NYT: A New York City panel just voted to freeze rents for nearly one million rent-stabilized apartments — fulfilling one of Mayor Zohran Mamdani's key campaign promises and handing the mayor a major policy win six months into his tenure.
Mamdani’s Rent Freeze Is Approved by New York City Board
nytimes.com
Amidst a housing crisis and skyrocketing costs, we are creating the first City-backed program to reduce insurance costs for affordable and rent-stabilized housing. Housing providers will get support to improve housing while maintaining affordability. www.thecityreporter.nyc/2026/06/24/p...
Search Begins for Operator of City-Backed Insurance With $100M in Public Funds
A request for companies to apply to run the program for rent-stabilized buildings opened Wednesday.
thecityreporter.nyc
I missed this when it came out - but excited to see @benfteresa.bsky.social more broadly exploring something we saw in VA. Some LLs did not file rather than take ERA $$ where applying for rental assistance was required to move evictions forward. As always, Ben brings amazing deep cuts together.
Ben Teresa@benfteresa.bsky.social · 4mo agoDuring COVID, I heard landlords were turning down rent relief or otherwise being recalcitrant participants. The standard explanations (admin burden, slow bureaucracy) weren't convincing on this puzzle. New paper out today in @economyandspace.bsky.social on why: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
During COVID, I heard landlords were turning down rent relief or otherwise being recalcitrant participants. The standard explanations (admin burden, slow bureaucracy) weren't convincing on this puzzle. New paper out today in @economyandspace.bsky.social on why: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
When I warned about the rise of institutional single-family rentals post-mortgage crisis in a 2018 workshop I did on racism and housing affordability, a developer then pronounced, "Everything Louise just said is true, but it's not the truth." and then proceeded to voice all these same tropes.
Ben Teresa@benfteresa.bsky.social · 2mo agoI'm writing a book with a chapter on single-family rentals, and every prediction the 2017 elite consensus made about institutional landlords can now be refuted, from the Urban Institute's "Why the single-family rental merger won't hurt homebuyers or renters."
I'm writing a book with a chapter on single-family rentals, and every prediction the 2017 elite consensus made about institutional landlords can now be refuted, from the Urban Institute's "Why the single-family rental merger won't hurt homebuyers or renters."
Why the single-family rental merger won’t hurt homebuyers or renters
In a $4.3 billion deal announced last week, two of the country’s largest landlords of single-family rentals agreed to merge.
urban.org
I've spent the last two months putting together this exhaustive analysis of the New York Times coverage of trans people. It covers 3,242 articles over 12 years. In 2022, the NYT shifted towards a hostile stance towards trans people in their framing. www.thedissident.news/exclusive-ho...
Exclusive: How The New York Times Changed Its Coverage of Trans People
An exhaustive analysis of over 3,242 articles by the New York Times covering transgender issues from 2014-2026 revealed a stark shift towards hostile framing in 2022. In January 2015, the New York Ti...
thedissident.news
