Ryan Bell

@ryanjbell.bsky.social

Housing is a human right Free Palestine 🇵🇸

mayor jacob frey has vetoed the pause evictions, save lives bill the minneapolis city coucil approved that would've extended the eviction timeline from 30 days to 60 days temporarily to held families impacted by the ICE invasion catch up paying rent

March 11, 2026
Minneapolis City Council
350 South 5th Street
Room 370
Minneapolis, MN 55415
Dear Council President Payne, Council Vice President Osman and Council Members:
This letter is to inform you that I have vetoed Ordinance No. 2026-002 to extend the pre-eviction notice for
renters to 60 days. I understand the authors’ intent, but the experience from COVID-19 and guidance from
shelter and affordable housing providers shows that this strategy has not worked. We have heard over and over
again from shelter and affordable housing providers that longer timelines produce worse outcomes for
residents. In their words, when rental assistance isn’t available, time is a debt trap that becomes a barrier to
securing future housing.
I heard a call for more financial assistance, and I believe that is the best path forward. Rental assistance is
working and getting to renters quickly – rent collections are better in 2026 than 2025. That’s why I’m proposing
to spend $1 million from the Affordable Housing Trust Fund for emergency rental assistance administered
through Hennepin County.
While a 60-day pre-eviction notice period sounds good, there is no data to show that it does good. Pandemic
era eviction moratorium allowed many renters to accumulate huge amounts of debt that they are still paying off
today. When property owners carry the losses, the housing system experiences upward pressure on rents to
replenish reserves, catch up on missed mortgage, insurance, utility, payroll, and property tax payments, and
cover increased costs associated with deferred maintenance.
I believe most landlords are working with tenants to develop payment plans and access rental assistance. But for
bad actors, I worry that the proposal gives them reasons to report tenants to ICE or use minor lease violationswhich don’t require as much notice and are harder to expunge – to evict tenants.
We will continue to monitor the data. If something substantially changes, I am committed to working with the
City…

Probably unreasonable to expect the Post editorial board to stay on top of economic research but there are three studies of California's fast food minimum wage (not just the one they preferred to highlight) The average estimate across studies suggests the policy had essentially no employment effect

Opinion | Data from Calif. and D.C. shows how minimum wage hikes can hurt

Recent experience underscores the perils of raising minimum wage above what the market can bear.

washingtonpost.com

One of the great joys of reading is coming across insights and feelings that are familiar but you’ve never put in words. This, from Overstory, arrested me. “The moon is a blazing telephone that anyone on earth might call him on, simply by looking up and seeing what he sees.”

Racist policing and unaffordable housing are central crises of our time. Indefensible Spaces: Policing and the Struggle For Housing shows how they intersect in the Antelope Valley, Los Angeles County’s northern outpost and a key destination for those pushed out of LA. June 2025 @ucpress.bsky.social

The book title appears above an image of single family homes in Palmdale, California.

"Nearly three million children risk losing their homes every year through the eviction process....Even the threat of eviction can increase the odds of school moves and disenrollment, moves to worse-off schools, and increased school absences and suspensions." evictionlab.org/eviction-and...

Losing your home, losing your school: how evictions affect kids' educational trajectories

Kids whose parents face eviction cases are more likely to leave their district, end up in schools with fewer resources, and experience an increase in absences and suspensions.

evictionlab.org

I really appreciate @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social review of Agnes Callard’s “Open Socrates.” I haven’t read the book but the review captures what I find so annoying about so much of modern political discourse. Does anyone know of a book that accomplishes what Callard sets out to do, but better?

Just had a sample of the Eaton Fire ash that is in my driveway run on the department XRF. Is there titanium (new house paint)? Yup. Lead (old house paint)? You betcha. Heavy metals? Check. Treat that ash like it's toxic folks (because it is)

A computer screen with a display showing output from an xray diffraction spectrometer. Close up view showing fraction of metals. Fun stuff.

An already tight Los Angeles rental housing market, pushed to its limits by a natural disaster, shouldn’t be an opportunity to gouge victims of that natural disaster, no matter how much Richard Green and Stuart Gabriel would like you to think that this is simply the housing market at work.

I'm working from a hotel room in the Long Beach today because the Air Quality Index at my apartment is still around 400. State and Local groups are frantically working on getting resources organized for folks who have been displaced.

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I’m sitting here just crushed by this story. Today I spent the morning in eviction court with a friend. Then this remarkably reported story. I feel like the challenge of reclaiming our basic dignity from landlords and the state is too much to handle.

Surviving on $1,800 a month in Social Security, she died looking for a place to live

Joanne Erickson’s story shows the looming challenges for millions of seniors struggling with health issues, an unforgiving housing market and little or no retirement savings.

lapublicpress.org

New from me on what the rage and glee on public display after the killing of a healthcare CEO portends. I suspect the corporate world will respond with more security and retreating even more into their gated lives. They would be advised to read up on history. 🎁🔗 www.nytimes.com/2024/12/06/o...

Opinion | The Rage and Glee That Followed a C.E.O.’s Killing Should Ring All Alarms (Gift Article)

It echoes another era of extreme inequality and extreme violence.

nytimes.com

Steve Linberg@slinberg.net · 2y ago

When @zey.bsky.social has something to say, stop what you’re doing and listen. www.nytimes.com/2024/12/06/o...

A wild story about the recovery efforts in Lahaina. "At the same time, greed has also hampered recovery.... Emergency housing programs, which offered property owners a premium to house wildfire survivors, have enabled landlords to engage in predatory behavior, www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024...

Poverty in Lahaina has doubled after 2023 wildfire: ‘We’re cutting down on what we eat’

Maui, struck by one of the deadliest blazes in modern US history, has seen tourism drop, a shortage of houses and persistent inflation

theguardian.com

Throwback to when one of the wealthiest landlord couples in Pasadena was featured in a hit piece against our rent control measure claiming to be renters. Good times!

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This is as good a time as any to remind us all that this is what landlording is. Pure wealth extraction and transfer to people lucky enough to have money from people who work for a living.

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The Iran-Contra Affair is one of the the first foreign policy “events” I remember. I was about 13. This is exactly how I remember feeling about Reagan at the time. Image from “The Show Must Go On” (New Yorker, Sept 16, 2024).

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