Archive
252 posts since 2012.
2026
2025
2024
2022
2021
- “Why do you spend your time advocating for expensive market-rate housing?”
- Don't expand Fire District 1. Eliminate it.
- Blueprint for building a shared-equity rental market
- How to build more homes while prioritizing equity in Los Angeles
- Why we shouldn't apply "value capture" to parking reform
- What Housing Boom? Housing units built each decade in the city of Los Angeles
- A "Rental Pension" Program to Compete with Homeownership
2020
- Why You Should Vote “Yes” on Proposition 15: Responses to Common Concerns
- Why Stability is Essential for Affordable Cities
- Why Subsidies are Essential for Affordable Cities
- Why Supply is Essential for Affordable Cities
- Supply, Stability, and Subsidy are the Foundation of Affordable Cities (Book Release)
- Building a More Equitable California with Transfer Tax Reform
2019
2017
- What Housing Policies Should Angelenos Be Advocating For, Post-Measure S?
- Election Update: So Far, People Voting Are Older, Whiter, Wealthier, and More Conservative Than Average LA Resident
- Los Angeles Voters, Here Are All the Reasons You Should Be Voting NO on Measure S on March 7th
- 1,300 More Affordable Homes—Mostly in Downtown LA—That Won't Be Built if Measure S Passes
- Ballot Initiative Voter Guide: City and County of Los Angeles, March 7th, 2017
- List of Housing Projects That Would Be Banned by Measure S — 19,000 Units And Counting...
- Top 7 Reasons to Oppose Measure S, the Los Angeles "Neighborhood Integrity Initiative"
- Analysis and Recommendations For the Proposed DTLA 2040 Community Plan Update
- We Should Demand More Housing and Greater Flexibility From the DTLA 2040 Community Plan Update
- Two Recent Updates on Housing Progress in Los Angeles
2016
- Los Angeles Builds 10 New Multifamily Homes For Every One It Tears Down
- Initial Thoughts on Proposed Downtown LA "Parking Podium" Reforms
- 2016 Ballot Initiative Voter Guide Cheat-Sheet
- Ballot Initiative Voter Guide: California, LA County, and the Cities of Los Angeles and Santa Monica
- Rent Stability, Part 1: The Limits of Rent Stabilization In Los Angeles
- Rent Stability, Part 2: How "Rolling" Rent Stabilization Might Preserve Affordability in LA
- Look Backward, Not Forward! Downzone Single-Family Neighborhoods!
- We Paved Over Farmland to Build the Suburbs; Now Those Neighborhoods Are Off-Limits to Any More Development
- Population Forecasts and Housing Allocations Don't Work; We Should Replace Them With Vacancy Targets
- Hard Work Is Taxed, Passive Accumulation of Housing Wealth Is Not
- Another Benefit of a Non-Profit Housing Acquisition Program: Tenant Mobility
- How a Non-Profit Housing Acquisition Program Could Protect Displaced Residents
- Renter Opposition to New Housing Isn't About Keeping LA Affordable, It's About Self-Preservation (And That's Okay)
- What Will It Take to Get Pro-Housing and Anti-Displacement Advocates on the Same Side?
- For the Future of Los Angeles—More Happy Hours, Please!
- Long-Term Planning For the "Great Parks" of the Future
- No, Developers Are Not Tearing Down Los Angeles to Build Half-Empty Luxury Apartment Buildings
- Private Development, Public/Non-Profit Ownership: Recipe For Long-Term Housing Affordability
- Maybe We Should Re-Frame the California Density Bonus as a "Market-Rate Penalty"
- What Does Governor Brown's Proposed Housing Bill Mean For Affordability in California?
- Keep Los Angeles Affordable by Repealing Proposition U
- The Neighborhood Integrity Initiative is Lying to You
- Wait, Who's Greedy? Many LA Homes Going Up In Value More Than Average Angeleno's Annual Income
- It's the Vacancy Rate, Stupid: Why New Development Has Little to Do With Rising Rents
- The Disconnect Between Liberal Aspirations and Liberal Housing Policy is Killing Coastal U.S. Cities
- Downsized: What to Make of the Updated Neighborhood Integrity Initiative
- Questions You Should Ask Supporters of LA's "Neighborhood Integrity Initiative"
- Top 7 Reasons to Oppose Measure S, the "Los Angeles Neighborhood Integrity Initiative"
- How to Pay For the Los Angeles Homeless Strategy
- Reviewing LA's Homelessness Report, Pt. 1: Background on Housing Programs
- Reviewing LA's Homelessness Report, Pt. 2: Efficacy and Cost of Housing Strategies
- Reviewing LA's Homelessness Report, Pt. 3: Key Housing Recommendations
- Mapped: All 200 Square Miles of Parking in LA County, As One Giant Parking Lot
2015
- Low Vacancy Rates Should Demand the Same Urgency as High Unemployment
- LA Metro: It's Time For a More Convenient and Equitable Fare Structure
- If We Can Grow Our Economy With Fewer Carbon Emissions, We Can Grow it With Less Driving, Too
- The Irony of Selling Oil Reserves to Pay for Highway Expansion
- Route Performance Index Results For Every LA Metro Bus Line
- Prop 13, Part 2: How to Fix California's Broken Property Tax Law
- Prop 13, Part 1: California's Property Tax Law is Completely Broken
- How to Get More Bang for the Affordable Housing Buck
- San Francisco is Doomed: A Cautionary Tale for Growing U.S. Cities
- Manhattanization isn't a thing; your city has plenty of room to grow comfortably
- Seattle's Sound Transit Hostage Situation
- Why Uber and Lyft Wouldn't Have Succeeded If They'd Tried to Follow the Law
- About 50 Percent of Major Roads Don't Even Produce Enough Revenue to Cover Maintenance
- Housing Preference Doesn't Matter When You Can't Afford to Live Where You Prefer
- California Cap-and-Trade Drives Up Gas Prices... By About 3 Cents... Maybe...
- Maybe Uber Should Just Provide Its Own Insurance to Drivers
2014
- Hotels Make Los Angeles Way More Money Than New Housing, Even After Big Subsidies
- California High Speed Rail Could Earn the State Over $40 Billion in Profit
- VIDEO: How to Maximize Parking Productivity in the City
- Beyond Green Belts: Connecting Rather Than Containing Our Cities
- How to Be Prepared For the Inevitable Takeover of Autonomous Vehicles: A Letter to Jeff Brandes
- "Vehicle Drives Into Apartment Building"
- "Bicyclist killed by vehicle" ...must be one-a them autonomous ma-jiggers
- It's Cheaper to Fix LA's Roads Than to Keep Fixing the Damage They Cause Our Cars. A Lot Cheaper.
- Since 1999, Downtown LA Has Built a Fifth of All Housing In Los Angeles
- No, Americans Are (Still) Not Driving More
- The Reason Foundation's Broken Logic, Summed Up in Two Sentences
- Subtle Signs of Progress in the Urban Highway Debate
- Why Nature Lovers Should Live Apart From Nature
- Preparing for LA's Future: Fewer Parking Podiums, More Car-Share Spaces
- Los Angeles Parking Meter Reform, Reasonable Edition
- Reduce Speculation and Limit Gentrification: Penalize Absentee/Pied-à-Terre Owners
- Multifamily Residential Construction is Booming, But There's a Long Way Yet to Go
- 30 Percent of Income Isn't a Realistic Measure of Housing Affordability
- Housing in LA Is Unaffordable in Many Places; Transportation in LA Is Unaffordable Everywhere
- Ten Years and $400 Billion in Federal Highway Spending Later, Are We Any Better Off?
- Unaffordable Housing Sucks, But the Money We Waste on Transportation is Still the Biggest Problem
- Owning a Home is a Great Way to Spend Your Money
- Is It Time to Go Eyman on the Washington State's Transportation Funding Authority?
- Time to Hand Over Your Car Lanes, Seattle Drivers
- On Urban Density: We're Not All Goldilocks, We Don't All Want the Same Porridge
- Do You Know What "Gentrification" Means?
- Why High-Speed Rail Isn't Less Cost-Effective Than Other Transit Investments (Part Two)
- How Car-Free is Your Neighborhood? Every Census Tract in the US, Mapped.
- March Mapness: The Least Car-Dependent Neighborhoods in Georgia, South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana
- March Mapness: The Least Car-Dependent Neighborhoods in Oklahoma, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Arkansas, and Missouri
- March Mapness: The Least Car-Dependent Neighborhoods in Kentucky and Tennessee
- March Mapness: The Least Car-Dependent Neighborhoods in Hawaii and Alaska
- March Mapness: The Least Car-Dependent Neighborhoods in Virginia, Maryland, Washington DC, and Delaware
- March Mapness: The Least Car-Dependent Neighborhoods in Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado
- March Mapness: The Least Car-Dependent Neighborhoods in Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Rhode Island
- Why High-Speed Rail Isn't Less Cost-Effective Than Other Transit Investments (Part One)
- March Mapness: The Least Car-Dependent Neighborhoods in Wisconsin
- March Mapness: The Least Car-Dependent Neighborhoods in Minnesota
- March Mapness: The Least Car-Dependent Neighborhoods in Michigan
- March Mapness: The Least Car-Dependent Neighborhoods in Ohio
- March Mapness: The Least Car-Dependent Neighborhoods in Indiana
- March Mapness: The Least Car-Dependent Neighborhoods in Texas
- March Mapness: The Least Car-Dependent Neighborhoods in Florida
- March Mapness: The Least Car-Dependent Neighborhoods in Nevada
- March Mapness: The Least Car-Dependent Neighborhoods in Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, and South Dakota
- March Mapness: The Least Car-Dependent Neighborhoods in New York (And a Special One For NYC)
- March Mapness: The Least Car-Dependent Neighborhoods in Illinois
- March Mapness: The Least Car-Dependent Neighborhoods in Massachusetts
- March Mapness: The Least Car-Dependent Neighborhoods in North Carolina
- Map: The Least Car-Dependent Neighborhoods in Washington State
- Map: The Least Car-Dependent Neighborhoods in California
- Map: The Least Car-Dependent Neighborhoods in Oregon
- Map: The Least Car-Dependent Neighborhoods in Pennsylvania
- Map: LA County Residents, How Many People Get to Work Without a Car in Your Neighborhood?
- Map: Bicycle Mode Share For Every Census Tract in LA County
- How Crowded Are the Homes in Your ZIP Code?
- Why Does Downtown Los Angeles Have Parking Minimums?
- A Bicycle Tax Would Do Nothing for Bicyclist "Credibility"
- Low-Income Communities Are Already 'Green'
- What's the Goal of Neo-Liberal Housing Policy? Actually Solving the Problem.
- Vindication! In Seattle, As New Apartments Go Up, Rents Go Down
- The Chart That Says (Almost) Everything You Need to Know About Housing Affordability
- Sometimes Transit Isn't the (Only) Solution(!)
- Seattle Transit Service Hasn't Gotten Worse, It's Just Different (And Probably Better)
- Tax Repatriation-Financed Infrastructure Plan Still a Horrible Idea
- Look at the Amount of Space in Seattle Dedicated to Single-Family Housing
- Quote: Why We Need More Growth In Cities
- Is Bicycling More Emotionally Fraught Than Other Transportation Modes?
- Planning For Detroit's Next Hundred Years
- Stop Charging Me For Other People's Free Gas
2013
- Deficit-Decreasing New Markets Tax Credit Under Threat
- The Part of Rent Increases That Really Is Rich People's Fault
- Cities, and Unions, Are Bargaining Away Other People's Futures
- LA Man Wants Cheaper Parking, Economics Be Damned
- Useful: Map of Property Tax Rates Across the Country (with some surprising results)
- Hey, Washington Legislature, Enough with the Highways
- Parents of Three-Year-Old Killed by Reckless Driver Share Their Story
- Here's Why Your City Needs to Get Rental Prices Under Control Right Now
- Burden of Affordable Housing Funding Falls Disproportionately on New Residents, Pro-Growth Neighborhoods
- Cul-de-Sacs Build Community, But What Kind?
- Long Commutes Justify More Expensive Cars (And That's a Bad Thing)
- Living in the City Isn't Just Cheaper, It's Also a MUCH Better Investment
- Bus Seats, LA Edition
- Who Cares About Average Rent?
- Banks Can Play a Major Role in Promoting Smart Growth, If They Want To
- It's Not Just Crazy Drivers: LA Streets Are Designed For Road Rage
- What Do Solar Power, Affirmative Action, and Urban Planning Have in Common?
- Many Millennials Will Leave Cities, And That's Okay
- Home Values in the New Millenium: The Rich Get Richer
- Real life update: off duty this week
- A Tale of Two Subsidies
- News Roundup: August 03, 2013
- Almost All of Los Angeles' Growth Is in Low-car Households
- GOP to Obama on infrastructure, tax reform: "Yes, those ideas sound nice. Anyway, no deal."
- News Roundup: July 24, 2013
- More Highway Funding Double Standards
- Can Longer Leases Protect You From Gentrification?
- News Roundup: July 19, 2013
- Extreme Temperatures Are Affecting Every Mode of Transportation
- Claiming space for buses on corridors where transit users outnumber drivers
- News Roundup: July 15, 2013
- Silver lining for the impending King County Metro service cuts
- New Roundup: July 10, 2013
- Freeway expansion doesn't improve freeway traffic, but it does make local traffic worse
- News Roundup: July 8, 2013
- News Roundup: Highway Edition
- Safe Routes to School needs more than funding to be successful
- News Roundup: June 29, 2013
- News Roundup: June 25, 2013
- Study: Americans have no idea what they're talking about, might hate selves
- "Anti-vaccine zealots turn their attention to car pollution" ...right?
- News Roundup: June 21, 2013
- As economic stimulus, the USPS is an incredible deal
- Private transportation: no operations subsidy, but at what cost?
- News Roundup: June 19, 2013
- News Roundup: June 17, 2013
- Do remote state capitals produce less effective governments?
- News Roundup: June 14, 2013
- News Roundup: June 12, 2013
- 34th and Stone: the Burke-Gilman's most dangerous intersection?
- News Roundup: June 10, 2013
- Dual court rulings reaffirm Bloomberg taxi service goals, consumers benefit
- News Roundup: June 06, 2013
- News Roundup: June 05, 2013
- Infrastructure investment is about safety and mobility, not construction jobs
- News Roundup: June 04, 2013
- News Roundup: June 03, 2013
- Bicyclists still don't have their fair share of road space in New York City
- John Norquist, the Most Interesting Man in the World
- The repatriation-financed infrastructure bank plan, as structured, is a TERRIBLE idea
- Cities don't "aspire" to gentrification
- Seattle city council falls short on affordable housing, again
- With new study, air travel subsidies get another pass
- How do we address "Sunk Cost Bias"?
- Pro-car populism is about protecting cars, not people
- Owning a car doesn't cost the average person $9,000 a year
- Hey, Amtrak: don't shelve that $151b HSR plan just yet
- What do we get in return for ultra-strict train safety regulations?
- Improving credit, not relaxing standards, should be focus for home loans
- "Luxury apartments and condos are a good thing, my friend"
- Want housing that doesn't break the bank for lower-income residents? Get rid of some parking.
- Even with poor infrastructure, rail exceeds air market share in many domestic corridors
- What should light rail to northwest Seattle look like?
- Is the "man-covery" responsible for 2012's increase in vehicle deaths?
- Shameless self-promotion: I was on the radio!
- Rankings that matter: Which cities save the most time and money thanks to public transportation?
- A possible solution to the SR 99 tunnel's projected tolling shortfall
- Thoughts on income tax as a source of transportation funding
- Property tax deductions, like mortgage interest deductions, are unfair to renters
- Mileage fees are a great idea -- in addition to gas taxes, not in place of them
- Governor of Virginia offers worst transportation funding proposal in modern memory
- Drunk driving prevention is difficult, but we already know how to do it
2012
- Infrastructure stimulus is different
- With driverless cars on the way, smarter transportation investment is needed
- Are our programs working? Do we even want them to?
- Downtown Brooklyn considers reducing parking requirements, but not enough
- Improving the downtown driving experience is impossible
- Parking-free apartment buildings aren't enough
- In Washington state, the gas tax is not a user fee
- We need a better system for delivery of commuter tax benefits
- Let's get rid of the mortgage interest tax deduction--for everyone
- How federal taxes work, and sometimes don't
- It's time for Capitol Hill to get its first pedestrian plaza
- What would Seattle look like if Metro fares weren't subsidized?
- Increased apartment housing in Seattle likely to stabilize rent prices
- Why would we want to privatize the one profitable Amtrak service?
- With bike share coming, can single-stop buses become viable?
- Texas caters to private toll road operators at the expense of the public
- L.A. County hoping to speed up transit infrastructure construction
- Texas to incentivize driving for decorated veterans
