"For the first time ever, more people are employed by remodeling companies than by single-family and multifamily developers combined." (h/t @josephpolitano.bsky.social) www.theargumentmag.com/p/americas-e...

My blog post on building code reform went up on YIMBY Action's main blog. yimbyaction.org/blog/beyond-... Many thanks to @kevinrmatthews.bsky.social, @robertagreer.bsky.social, and @stephenjacobsmith.com for your assistance on this!

We can't solve a housing crisis without building more housing. Today we broke ground on the Casanova Residence, which will soon be nearly 100 affordable and supportive homes with on-site services for New Yorkers. Every new home is a step toward a City that everyone can afford.

Over the course of both my carpentry and HVAC career probably 90% of my work has been renovation or repair of existing homes. People often don't fully grasp the level of difficulty these entail relative to new construction

It’s important to build enough housing to bring the market price down, not just take some units off the market. Why? The market price is the price anyone can reliably get. No lotteries, knowing the right person, lucking into a cheap rent-controlled unit a decade ago.

We need a building code between the IRC and the IBC. Something that can accommodate 3-12 units in 3-4 story structures, uses only P2904 sprinklers or automatic fire extinguishers, allows 1st floor commercial (but not restaurants), and lends itself to reproducibility without the complexity of the IBC

Constitutional amendment declaring that the taxable value of a property & it’s eminent domain value be the same, & allowing owners to voluntarily increase the former to protect from the latter

Genius Machine says: 1. Universal Basic Income 2. Universal Basic Services 3. Land Value Tax 4. Annually rising Carbon Tax 5. Proportional representation via ranked choice voting and multi-winner districts 6. Publicly-funded elections 7. Nonpartisan primaries 8. 4-day 32-hr weeks *unplugs machine*

Jon@jontafkasi.bsky.social · last mo.

I know his term only has 6 months left, but Colorado Dems should impeach and remove Polis anyway

Kyle Clark@kylec.bsky.social · last mo.

Gov. Jared Polis passed over other deserving inmates to give clemency to Tina Peters, according to two members of his clemency board who revealed Polis overruled the unanimous recommendation of his experts. Polis has now fired both of them.

I especially love this diagram.

From now on I will refer to road charges not as tolls but rather as environmental, navigation and security fees, and I will impose them on every road in this country

FinTwitter@fintwitter.bsky.social · last mo.

TOLLS NOT ON THE TABLE BUT IRAN IS EXPECTED TO PROPOSE ENVIRONMENTAL, NAVIGATION AND SECURITY FEE, DIPLOMAT SAYS

NIMBYs claim to care about displacement of renters when it's a new apartment building being proposed, but have nothing to say when displacement is caused by new detached houses.

How do I capture this populist zeitgeist for banning private equity from building rental homes & redirect it to banning private equity from building oversized, expensive fire trucks so they finally deliver the right-sized, affordable trucks Americans actually need?

YIMBY should be doing more youth outreach www.nytimes.com/2026/06/07/n...

They Have Yet to Sign a Lease. But They’re Furious Over $3,100 Rents.

nytimes.com

Beyond passenger elevators, Europe has way more freight elevators than us. On the left, a dumbwaiter at a small Tibetan restaurant in Paris. On the right, a NYC worker about to carry the better part of a ton of beer down into a basement by hand. High elevator costs are a worker safety problem.

This applies equally in Denver

Max Dubler 🏳️‍🌈@maxdubler.com · 2mo ago

The fact that small scale real estate investors who flip $500k starter homes into $2 million McMansions are NOT required to provide subsidized housing for poor people but the investors who flip the same homes into ten $650,000 townhomes ARE is such an indictment of California housing policy.

I hold social media tech companies primarily responsible for Trump so zero sympathy for backlash to their data centers.

Jeremy Diamond ☕️@dmnd.me · 3mo ago

AOC is the only politician I will accept this from because I think she knows this issue is going to be a widowmaker for both parties in 2028 in the same way Iraq was in 2008 and it will be important to appear consistently anti-datacenter.

Great video about how moving chains work, with a real example youtu.be/QQYMUMTI7fk?...

Building More Housing Creates 'Moving Chains' of Affordability

YouTube video by Pew

youtu.be

NIMBYs who claim "zoning is not a constraint" don't actually believe it.

Unfunded inclusionary zoning mandates are a tax on new housing that crush housing production without creating broad affordability. Blue cities and states need to admit that this policy is counterproductive and abandon it entirely.

Is a Portland rule requiring affordable units slowing down real housing growth?

A 10-year retrospective on the city's inclusionary zoning policy requiring large developments to have a percentage of affordable units suggests stricter regulations stalled production. Councilors will...

pressherald.com

Obeseboy Slim

Kevin@kevinrmatthews.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Slightly increases a band. Parinirvana

Left-NIMBYs think that blocking new apartments stops gentrification. What actually happens: new demand is redirected to the existing housing stock. Instead of living in new apartments, rich newcomers buy up old homes and displace renters.

it’s simple. Dems need to 1. prepare retaliatory gerrymanders in every blue state now that the VRA has been overturned 2. pack the court (and prosecute Thomas/alito) in 2029 I will only even *consider* primary candidates who support both of the above going forward

One of the things that stuck with me from one of the many UBI pilots is how people started talking with each other more in person in the community, and the reason was because people felt they would no longer be asked for money. And so UBI increased social cohesion by making sure everyone had money.

Liz@stayathomecommie.bsky.social · 4mo ago

i don't understand bluesky people who pretend to be on the left but absolutely hate poor people and complain about people asking for money. hating beggars is actually just standard reactionary stuff. it's weird to know about systemic economic inequality and still be doing that.

Disney World employs about twice as many people as the entire coal industry. Lighting the climate on fire, ruining the environment, and making people sick so that 39,000 Manly Men can stay employed in a dying industry is so dumb.

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 4mo ago

Energy Secretary Chris Wright: "I'm pretty confident coal will lead the world in global electricity production when I die"

10/ The reason most people don't want to attend public meetings isn't because they can't secure childcare, or they can't make it to the meeting venue, or whatever. The overwhelming, biggest-by-far reason is that they simply don't want to go. They have better things to do--and that's fine.

Is making public transport free “effective?” “…the relatively small difference between Victoria and NSW suggests price is not the main constraint on mode shift. Access, travel time, service reliability and the ability to make specific trips appear to matter more.” Via @theconversation.com

Victoria has made public transport free – NSW hasn’t. Has there been any difference in uptake?

Public transport access, travel time and familiarity with the network all play a role in how many people switch away from driving.

theconversation.com

We certainly have to reckon with *The Car* as a dangerous machine that needs to be regulated, but a bigger problem is that cars have been over-deployed as a mobility tool, especially in places where other tools such as transit, cycling, and walking make more sense.

If the Democratic Party was smart, and theyre not, they would be flooding airwaves and feeds on Asian and Hispanic centric forums, feeds, algos, radios etc that Trump is trying to take away their citizenship by race.

“Every $1,300 New York City invested in building bike lanes in 2015 provided benefits equivalent to one additional year of life at full health over the lifetime of all city residents, according to a new economic assessment.” That’s a better return on investment than some direct health treatments…”

Bike lanes are a sound public health investment

Every $1,300 New York City invested in building bike lanes in 2015 provided benefits equivalent to one additional year of life at full health over the lifetime of all city residents, according to a ne...

reuters.com