Better to be a pig than a fascist!

Apparently 30% of market rate housing built in the Sacramento region since 2010 are now affordable to Low Income households. I don’t think I’d have guessed this. Dr. Flo Cofer - she/her Kevin McCarty check this out!

A high schooler emailed me asking to interview me about housing policy for a school project :’)

I believe in the Coastal Act’s mission of public access to the coast, but its skepticism of housing harms access. The Coastal Commission shouldn’t block housing in environmentally beneficial places for it. Let’s modernize the Coastal Act.

Thanks POLITICO California and Dustin Gardiner

Since when is it the Coastal Commission's job to ensure affordable housing, or to decide which housing is good and bad, especially outside of environmental concerns? We have other agencies for that — people who actually have expertise in the field.

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people will sometimes say that arguing against left NIMBYs is a waste of time because in reality most NIMBYism is right wing, but time and time again you see people in very influential policy making positions making nonsensical “left wing” arguments against market rate housing

The Coastal Commission’s allies say they should block market rate homes. The Commission implies they are pro-housing. But they’re opposing incentives for mixed-income infill buildings and described one with 117 affordable homes as enriching “billionaires and corrupt kleptocrats”

'Louis Mirante, vp of public policy at the Bay Area Council, a pro-business advocacy group, has helped lead the effort to curtail the commission’s authority. It arguably hasn’t faced such a challenge since voters approved the Coastal Act of 1972...' politico.com/newsletters/ca…

So much of this *is* duplicative review though. There was recently a case of a project that had to do 400 pages of analysis to be eligible for a CEQA *exemption* - the typical document I see is 1,000 pages long.

I’m really excited to soon be able to speak about a major project the Bay Area Council is about to roll out on just this topic.

Here's an example of why we need this law: NIMBYs on Half Moon Bay's planning commission are trying to kill a 100% affordable senior farmworker housing project, and are planning to use the Coastal Act to do it! smdailyjournal.com/news/local/hal… Louis Mirante (on threads @louismirante) Circulate San Diego

She ran for Senate on the platform of opposing the bill to do this btw. The biggest NIMBYs in SF rallied around her to unseat the mayor who supported the bill to do this. And she’s wrong on the research. Here’s a paper showing development reduces eviction dropbox.com/s/oplls6utgf7z…

it’s wild that coastal cities have spent years debating if YIMBY policies will lower rents, and Austin just… did it

they streamlined permitting, upzoned most of the city, and eliminated parking mandates. Tons of housing is going up and rents are plummeting.

YIMBY policies work

On May 9th, The California Coast will take up an appeal of the Great Highway permit in San Francisco. Staff report is still unavailable but looks like there's a chance the Coastal Commision may shut down the pilot program, remove the traffic calming measures, and return the road to cars.

It’s time for serious reform at The California Coast — they are an impediment to building the housing and safe multimodal streets that we need.

Every time I read something about Chicago real estate prices my breathing becomes heavy

Think the Coastal Commission is only the beach? In 2023, low income people asked the CCC not to block a project because they stood to get affordable home ownership. CCC did, saying the project wasn't consistent with the 'community character.' Here's where the inland project was:

I'ts an honor to be the co-chair of the homeless committee for Bay Area Council who is co-sponsoring AB2479. Thank you, Matt Haney Adrian Covert 🇺🇸🗽🥑. We're one step closer to recovery housing in California. Salvation Army SF Darren Norton Steve Adami

CEQA also gives a tool to wealthy people who view poor people as pollution and their consultants (such as DSA member Dean Preston’s former Chief of Staff) to delay housing decades in a bid to ensure it’s never built.

Fix CEQA.