Americans and Europeans need to do a building technology knowledge swap: we help them retrofit their old buildings with air conditioning and they help us retrofit ours with elevators.
@macdiehard.bsky.social
All about solving the housing and homelessness crisis. Join us at http://SeattleYIMBY.org.
The city of Seattle is going to waste 6 months “studying” the effects of not upzoning around transit stations under the guise of “equity” and “anti displacement” when they already know this actually causes and exasperates it
God forbid they should reform zoning and reduce permitting fees.
Kevin Erdmann@kevinerdmann.bsky.social · last wk.This article mentions a 2023 White House report that claimed that rent pricing software cost renters $3.8 billion. Last year, tenants paid rent totalling $777 billion. So the claim is that the software raises rents 0.5%. That’s the stat in the story used to support the ban.
Blaming evil greedy developers is an easy and convenient rhetorical trick, because it’s not very popular to say you’re against providing housing to renters, working families, low-income seniors, young adults, or refugees.
Our City and region are going to continue to grow in population. We can’t stop that even if we wanted to (and that’s not what I want). So where are people going to live? Are they going to live in the City or are we going to cut down more forests and farmland to build suburban housing?
The vote is this Tuesday. Contact your councilmember!
Councilmember Eddie Lin@cmeddielin.bsky.social · 2w agoCB 121215, my legislation related to SEPA appeals, will expedite Seattle's ability to address our most pressing issues, from mitigating climate change to building more homes. Read the full FAQ below: council.seattle.gov/2026/07/24/f...
This is UCLA research about California but Seattle is doing the exact same thing with our MHA fees. It’s time to end MHA fees before more damage is done.
Dan Bertolet@danbertolet.bsky.social · 2w agoNew study finds that unfunded inclusionary zoning: - reduces resid. construction by nearly a third - relocates MF developments to lower rent areas - costs renters $800,000 in excess rents per IZ unit created Who could have guessed that taxing housing to fund affordable housing is a bad idea?
The US House’s proposed transportation legislation—sponsored by both Republicans & Democrats—would cut transit funding massively, affecting every state & congressional district. Instead, it focuses on highway building through blank checks to state DOTs
How Will Congress’s Proposed Cuts to Transit Funding Affect Your State and Congressional District?
The next transportation reauthorization law will reshape federal transportation spending for years to come.
urban.org
America Walks@americawalks.bsky.social · 2w agoBefore we build more roads, let's take care of the ones we already have. Across the country, roads, bridges, sidewalks, and transit systems need repairs. But this bill prioritizes highway expansion instead. ‼️Congress should fix what we have first. Tell them ➡️ buff.ly/JJBoCJH
Paperwork will not save our planet! Thank you @cmeddielin.bsky.social for making it possible to do good things in Seattle!
Councilmember Eddie Lin@cmeddielin.bsky.social · 2w agoFirst up, our OpEd. There’s much more to say, but I wanted to highlight the importance of political courage when it comes to making the choices we know are needed to address affordability and climate change and to redesign our city around people instead of cars. www.seattletimes.com/opinion/this...
CM Eddie Lin responds to the attacks in the Seattle Times on the idea of SEPA reform in an op-ed this morning. "Dense housing, walkable neighborhoods, and safe, accessible transit is how we can finally address our affordability crisis and build a more resilient and equitable city."
We can have livable, walkable communities and we must have the courage to make them a reality. This is what leadership looks like.
Councilmember Eddie Lin@cmeddielin.bsky.social · 2w agoFirst up, our OpEd. There’s much more to say, but I wanted to highlight the importance of political courage when it comes to making the choices we know are needed to address affordability and climate change and to redesign our city around people instead of cars. www.seattletimes.com/opinion/this...
New housing is ALWAYS going to be expensive for a long list of reasons including cost of labor, materials, and land. Affordable housing has always traditionally been older housing. And if you want more of that, build more market-rate new housing so people can move up.
The primary barrier to housing affordability in America is wealthy people’s desire to exclude poorer people from their neighborhoods and school systems, not the existence of the military.
Weirdly, we understand this intuitively with cars and understand that buying used is the solution. Nobody demands that car companies manufacture a quota of "affordable" models
Lets get the SEPA reform bill passed! Write the Council at council@seattle.gov
Councilmember Eddie Lin@cmeddielin.bsky.social · 3w agoOur SEPA bill passed out of committee and is now headed to full Council on Tuesday. Let us know your thoughts! Your voice matters and makes a difference!
Nobody disputes that having access to a car in a car-dominated society is good. It gives one access to jobs, healthcare, food, education, social opportunities and more. All we're asking is for people to go one step deeper and ask why access to such basic rights requires buying and operating a car.
Romeo Kokriatski@vagrantjourno.bsky.social · 3w agoI grew up in Jackson Heights in Queens and we still had a car, and our lives got measurably better when we did.
Landlords can only get away with this stuff because NYC has a 1.4% rental vacancy rate thanks to decades of under-building new homes. Building more housing would force landlords to compete and take away their leverage to demand these invasive tenant screenings.
I've been saying this for a while. So much of the politics surrounding housing in this country is inextricably linked and utterly fucked by the policy decision to make home equity the main—indeed, often only—source of wealth acquisition for the bottom 99%.
Dr. Samantha Hancox-Li@sjshancoxli.liberalcurrents.com · 4w agolot of people in the replies doing the usual doomposting about stock market crashes, financialization, whatever. as if none of those apply to fucking home prices lmao. but perhaps more importantly: "your house is your wealth" is actually a pretty fucked up political economy!
Also, for my fellow Seattleites, note this, from @mayorofseattle.bsky.social: "Finally, under my leadership Seattle will join Spokane in advocating for a Land Value Tax as an alternative option to the property tax, that would also create an incentive to put rundown properties to better use."
Progressive Revenue | Katie Wilson
wilsonforseattle.com
Also check out this piece from @danbertolet.bsky.social at @sightline.org, which has done a ton of great work on land value taxes.
Yes, a Land Value Tax Is Possible in Washington State | Sightline Institute
A new report modeling a property tax building exemption in Spokane rebalances incentives toward community goals, encouraging homebuilding and discouraging in-city vacant land speculation.
sightline.org
👆 @mayorofseattle.bsky.social let’s get Seattle building homes again.
We should build a zillion fucking homes so Seattle is worldcuppy all the time.
• we should allow slightly smaller elevators in these small-scale “sunlight suites” buildings, and bring elevator costs down to those in peer countries by breaking the US elevator oligopoly’s pricing power youtu.be/Or1_qVdekYM?...
North America's Elevator Problem
YouTube video by About Here
youtu.be
Both NYC’s fire (nypost.com/2025/01/05/u...) and EMS (www.ems1.com/labor-issues...) unions were very against congestion pricing without carveouts for their members (which they never got). They said it would hurt public safety and, in EMS’s case, even *tried* to make it hurt public safety.
Daniel Comeaux@danielcomeaux.bsky.social · last mo.New NBER paper finds that the congestion zone in NYC sped up emergency responses by over a minute - about 5-6%. Great stuff! www.nber.org/papers/w35414
"we find that the January 2025 implementation of congestion pricing reduced passenger vehicle traffic by roughly 21 percent near the boundary and improved total EMS travel times by 63–70 seconds, approximately 5–6 percent." www.nber.org/papers/w3541...
Congestion Pricing and EMS Response Time: Evidence From New York City
Founded in 1920, the NBER is a private, non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to conducting economic research and to disseminating research findings among academics, public policy makers, an...
nber.org
Just announced: Seattle's Chinatown-International District will host a free watch party on Monday at Hing Hay Park starting at 4.
