It's genuinely remarkable (and extremely frustrating) how much better the left has gotten on housing production and zoning in virtually every big city other than San Francisco

Janeese4DC@janeese4dc.bsky.social · 19h ago

We can and we must build more homes for all of us.

Doing "single-stair reform" that requires a second stairway on the outside of the building might be the most San Francisco thing I've ever seen

dereksagehorn.bsky.social@dereksagehorn.bsky.social · 3d ago

San Francisco announces change to allow 4-6 stories single stair with secondary exterior egress requirements. [gift link to Chron] www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/arti...

read your editorial. thought it was awful. question: why does the editorial consist of virtually no info on Caltrain, which serves more stations in San Jose than BART, and is planning for the same closures/cuts as BART should RTM fail to pass? shouldn't San Jose voters know RTM impacts Caltrain too?

Dan Borenstein@danborenstein.bsky.social · 3d ago

Before Bay Area voters get sucked into the 'fiscal cliff' claims, they should read this. @mercurynews.com @eastbaytimes.com www.mercurynews.com/2026/10/09/e...

Laughing my ass off at this absurd anti-SB79 NIMBY display board seen at a San Mateo HOA candidate forum tonight

Should Californians vote to scale back #CEQA via #Prop45? I'll be on @kqedforum.bsky.social today at 10am PT to discuss, along with @cafedujord.bsky.social and @jason-elliott.bsky.social. Tune in on KQED or stream live here: www.kqed.org/forum/201010...

Prop. 45: Will California Vote to Trade Environmental Regulation for Quicker Housing Development? | KQED

We’ll look at how changes could impact housing, data centers and more.

kqed.org

#NOon45 CEQA was created when new highways and highway expansion were destroying communities. Prop 45 would roll out the red carpet for just the type of projects that we created CEQA to prevent. cal.streetsblog.org/2026/10/02/s...

Streetsblog Endorsement: No on Prop. 45 - Streetsblog California

CEQA was enacted at a time when new highways and highway expansion was destroying communities, and a big part of the reason to create CEQA in the first place. Prop 45 would roll out the red carpet for...

cal.streetsblog.org

After voting, YIMBY Action leads couldn't reach a consensus on Prop 45, and won't be making an endorsement! This means that not a single YIMBY org in California is endorsing the measure (with one opposed). CEQA "reform" for sprawl & freeways is bad! Glad most of us recognize this. No on 45!

Why did a High-Speed Rail Authority board member carve CAHSR out of Prop 45 (on the ballot in November), which streamlines a variety of more harmful projects from CEQA?

San Francisco Chronicle@sfchronicle.com · last wk.

California has recently rolled back some of its notorious building regulations to battle problems of red tape and high costs. Now, a measure wants to take the push for reform up a notch.

YIMBY Action leads are voting on a recommendation for Prop 45 today. If you or any of your friends are on the fence, I highly recommend reading this great thread. Tl;dr: AB130 already exempted infill housing from CEQA. Prop 45 would just open the floodgates for sprawl.

East Bay for Everyone@eastbayforeveryone.bsky.social · 3w ago

The backers of Prop 45 are counting on the public not being able to tell infill homes near transit from building new roads into wildland / fire areas for sprawl's sake. EB4E recommends a NO on 45 this fall. eastbayforeveryone.org/2026/03/05/s...

Its insane how much housing isnt getting financing right now because lenders just dont want to fund it over other shiny object initatives. Truly bizarro world.

Mike Eliason@holz-bau.bsky.social · 2w ago

chat is this good?

You mean to tell me that building more sprawl doesn't actually do anything for urban affordability and is instead predominantly a wealth transfer from those areas to exurban ones? I'm shocked! Anyway, vote no on Prop 45.

Payton Chung@westnorth.com · 2w ago

"each new suburban home leads to only .015 moves in low-income urban neighborhoods... new suburban housing supply has little effect on urban housing affordability or on the welfare of low-income urban households." www.jchs.harvard.edu/research-are...

The backers of Prop 45 are counting on the public not being able to tell infill homes near transit from building new roads into wildland / fire areas for sprawl's sake. EB4E recommends a NO on 45 this fall. eastbayforeveryone.org/2026/03/05/s...

I was a 911 dispatcher during the Great Recession and helped quite a few suicidal people who’d taken a bath on/made a living in real estate. Others called only to give some final info and didn’t want help 💔 …when this shit hits the fan I worry it’s gonna be so much worse

Semafor@semafor.com · 3w ago

Kalshi will now let users juice their bets with borrowed money. www.semafor.com/article/09/2...

Uh, it's actually extremely easy to prove otherwise? Urban consumption is a minuscule fraction of overall water usage in this country. Look to the agricultural sector if you want to see where all our water is going.

Snowden St.@snowden.st · 3w ago

Folks are welcome to try and prove it otherwise, but "free migration within the country" and "barely managed water policy, especially in the light of climate change" are inherently in a kind of conflict.

Bleak

Michael Hobbes@michaelhobbes.bsky.social · 3w ago

6% of Republicans think climate change is a major problem, down from 13% in 2009 news.gallup.com/poll/708050/...

I think the "stop inflation at all costs" takes are bad, but Trump did promise to lower prices immediately, and instead they continued to rise. And certain common products that Trump specifically promised to make cheaper instead rose in price quite a lot. Now voters are punishing Trump for lying.

Will Stancil@whstancil.bsky.social · 4w ago

This is insane. Inflation is under 4%. We’ve genuinely created a monster here: a public that hallucinates intolerable inflation no matter what the actual figures are. It is a bullet to the head of the entire progressive project *and progressives can’t even be made to care.*

If they oppose housing, how, pray tell, are they a housing group? Why is that framing used here? They literallly created this group TO OPPOSE HOUSING, how is that a housing group?

KQED News@kqednews.kqed.org · 4w ago

Bad news for lovers of exurban sprawl, freeway expansions, and data centers! Support for Proposition 45, which would streamline those things, has cratered in the last two months -- going from 73% in July to just 49% today. Opposition has also jumped from 24% to 46%. www.ppic.org/publication/...

PPIC Statewide Survey: Californians and Their Government

Key findings of the PPIC Statewide Survey include: Democrat Xavier Becerra maintains a wide lead over Republican Steve Hilton in the governor’s race. Likely voters are somewhat divided on a billionair...

ppic.org

This is the standard by which all other leftist politicians in America should now be measured

Do you ever think about how San Francisco basically went through an economic miracle, with multiple years of double-digit growth, and about the only thing they have to show for it is a world-famous housing crisis? Data from fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GDPAL...

Great reminder that the ongoing and intensifying American affordability crisis cannot be solved without major land-use changes (ending sprawl, accelerating infill development at scale) that enable people to ditch their cars and access cheaper/more sustainable mobility modes

Peter Flax@pflax1.bsky.social · 4w ago

This story buries the lede, but if you pull out a calculator and do the math, AAA found that the average American spends $15,031 a year for a single car! www.cnbc.com/2026/09/14/c...

Wow, you mean to tell me that the flippers cosplaying as homebuilders were human garbage this entire time?

Caltrain letting each city run its own grade separations is working out terribly as expected. This should be Caltrain or Caltrans or CAHSR doing this work corridor wide with a standardized design and limited customization www.paloaltoonline.com/transportati...

As costs rise, Palo Alto scales back rail redesign plans

After more than a decade of designing, debating and dreaming of grade separation at three local rail crossings, Palo Alto’s elected leaders are preparing to narrow their scope and focus their energy o...

paloaltoonline.com

Checking in on this

Everybody who knows anything about insurance is screaming from the rooftops what a disaster Jane Kim would be as commissioner. Here’s another sfstandard.com/opinion/2026...

Opinion: Jane Kim’s California insurance plan is built on a myth

The candidate for insurance commissioner has campaigned on a platform of smoke and mirrors: big talk, little respect for the facts, and at times outright falsehoods.

sfstandard.com

These are the people who have controlled land-use policy in California for the last 50+ years. This is why we have a housing crisis. This is everything wrong with blue city/state governance distilled down to its essence. www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/arti...

Imagine one of these popping open a door as we ride in the ubiquitous door zone bike lanes

Chris Person@papapishu.bsky.social · last mo.

This feels like a bad idea for traffic

Wake up babe, incredible new NIMBY anti-SB79 AI slop just dropped www.facebook.com/permalink.ph...

There was already backlash against the smaller proposal. There will always be backlash from people who don’t want more homes unless they fit some magical, ever changing formula because they don’t want more homes. That’s their whole deal! www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/arti...

Exclusive: Proposed S.F. apartment tower more than doubles in size, sparking fears of backlash

A developer that proposed the largest housing development ever in this San Francisco neighborhood is more than doubling the number of homes at the site and adding three stories to the project.

sfchronicle.com