🧵THREAD: LA's housing shortage keeps getting worse, despite Mayor Bass's progressive promises. I wanted to organize Bass's actual housing record over the past few years. What I found should worry anyone who cares about working families staying in LA 1/

NEW RESEARCH by former professors at Harvard and UC-Berkeley answers the question: How do tenant protections like "just cause eviction," right-to-counsel, and source-of-income impact rents? Answer: They drive up rents -- especially for the lowest-income renters. Findings: 🧵

The authors conclude: "A balanced approach is essential. Policymakers should consider rental housing regulations in light of their adverse impact to affordability ... Thoughtful regulation should safeguard renters from harm while avoiding undue burdens on multifamily operators

I was working in local government when Parks and Rec premiered and those town meetings are a mild exaggeration at best.

The coalition behind Measure ULA just released a report attacking UCLA research on the tax. They’re claiming it “debunks” the research. It doesn’t even come close. 🧵

Bobby Fijan "Red tape" is 80% a culture problem and only 20% regs and laws.

[VICTORY ALERT] Governor Newsom has signed SB 79, which will make it legal to build multi-family housing near high quality transit!

[VICTORY ALERT] Governor Newsom has signed AB 1154, which will make it faster, cheaper, and easier to add small accessory dwelling units to existing homes.

New results! In "The Symbolic Politics of Housing," David Broockman Josh Kalla & I showed that public opinion about housing policies correlates w/ affect towards the groups that the policies make salient (via framing or criteria in the policy itself). 🧵/19

Anti-housing legal nonprofits get the vast majority of their budget from governments, not foundations. ULA will turbocharge left-NIMBY advocacy in LA.

New decision from CA Court of Appeal on the fee-shifting provisions of AB 1633 has big implications for NIMBYs' incentive to challenge housing approvals under CEQA & beyond. This one belongs in a Law of Abundance casebook. 🧵/24 law.justia.com/cases/californ…

The extent of rent control benefit (it can be a large cumulative dollar saving and social benefit in housing stability) as compared to the cost via new supply reduction (in overall market supply-tied rent increase and mobility challenge)really depends upon the details of the

Eric Biber Chris Elmendorf Was SB 79 unclear? And yes, some enviros supported it, and the Greenbelt Alliance - whose mission is to preserve undeveloped land - co-sponsored SB 79. Given past behavior, I see no reason to believe that groups like PCL would ever support a good upzoning bill.

Over the past 20 years, America has basically stopped building condos. Owing to a mix of restrictive financing regulations and endless defect litigation, the most viable path to urban homeownership has largely disapprared. In my latest for The Atlantic, we explain why.

The paper linked below is getting play today. I gave it a read. Things that jumped out to me: 1. It does not model development economics like those of us who actually develop housing do. 2. This is unsurprising since none of the BAE staff seem to have ever practiced

Amazing how inclusionary zoning - something that was accepted as gospel as recently as 2021 - is increasingly being discredited in cities across the US. Earlier this month, Oregon passed a major state bill to ban unfunded inclusionary zoning in the Portland metro area.

California YIMBY is proud to be sponsoring SB 2074 with Matt Haney, a bill that will make it easier to build high-rise residential in the transit-rich downtowns of our state's largest cities. In this thread, a little context. 🧵

Inclusionary zoning is fascinating in that it's universally seen as "best practice" by practitioners, yet it manifestly doesn't work. Even in theory, it presupposes a permanent housing shortage.

Inclusionary zoning is both bad policy and bad politics. Legislators who are serious about ending the housing shortage should reject it entirely.

Unfunded inclusionary zoning mandates do not actually make housing more affordable. Cities should abandon this failed policy and do things that (a) actually work, and (b) do not create counterproductive second-order effects, like transfer taxes do.