Brandis: Steffany, you smiled really big when he said 126 [new ADU] applications just recently.
Steffany: It means that we're going to have more Chicagoans.
I love Chicago. I think it's the greatest city in the world, and I want there to be more of us.
Twitter was really bad for my brain. It was fun for a time, but it became overall really toxic and anxiety-inducong for me. And "micro-blogging" in general is not good for me.
I do enjoy substack though, so I'm making that an intentional part of my 2026!
open.substack.com/pub/politics...
From left to right, Sarah Goodyear, Laura Foot, Rashi Kesarwani, Adhiti Bandlamudi, Scott Weiner and Doug Gordon standing in front of big bright screen on stage.
Especially great to talk with @yimbylaura.bsky.social, Berkeley Councilmember Rashi Kesarwani, KQED's Adhiti Bandlamudi, and CA State Senator @scottwiener.bsky.social about politics and media in the fight to make cities more affordable, sustainable, safe, and just.
Started writing this on the bus, riding with 3 seniors, two other families with young children, two college students and two high schoolers on their way to/from field hockey.
Arrived at the toy store so we can witness firsthand how much kids hate transit oriented neighborhoods.
Things that help families:
- building homes in high resource areas, esp with transit
- funding public transportation
Things that do NOT help families:
- blocking homes causing rent to rise
- blocking homes causing families to move away
- blocking homes causing teacher shortages
- BLOCKING HOMES
NIMBYs have this fantasy that somehow parents and disabled people need cars, and they are "saving" us from the bus.
In fact, any day of the week, you can ride the bus and meet hundreds of people in wheelchairs or with strollers who depend on transit to make their lives work.
As a disabled parent, I am simply begging NIMBYs to stop trying to "help" me by making it more expensive to live in transit oriented neighborhoods by blocking housing.
Lobby Day Wrapped image
🎉 LOBBY DAY WRAPPED 🎉
✅ 22 advocates
🏛️ 38 legislator meetings
💬 47 offices contacted
🏙️ 28 Chicagoland lawmakers
💼 12 legislative leaders:
🔹 10 House Leaders
🔹 2 Senate Leaders
🌆 1 Cook County President
🏛️ 1 Governor
📄 Legislative wins:
➕ 3 new co-sponsors for HB 1813
➕ 3 new co-sponsors for HB 1814
I have heard they've changed the name from "Community Benefits Playbook" because it was too on the nose.
drive.google.com/file/d/1-gEQ...
Here's where they tee up that we're going to have to go back to a normal system where we have predictable taxes that are then spent on government aka "community benefits."
We'll have to have a democratic process where we decide where our taxes should go, rather then capricious side-deal-making!
You should definately read the entire thing, but here's the good news about how reducing arbitrary - I mean discretionary - processes means that the project-by-project negotiation racket is being curtailed in San Francisco:
I wrote a blog post a few weeks ago about how the "community benefits" negotiation game with housing developers sure does rhyme with the Trump Tariff Negotiation Process, and an amazing person who wanted to remain anonymous sent me this GEM of a draft document from SF's Planning Department...
🔥
Why is That YIMBY Party 1970s themed?
Because the median home price in California back then was $41,000 and a bag of magic beans.
onecau.se/_9crf91
"If a politician won’t say their position in public, they won’t vote for it in public either."
inpractice.yimbyaction.org/p/politician...
Big props to Senate Pro Tem Mike McGuire for selecting her as chair of the housing committee, breaking the streak of housing champions in that seat. Masterful gambit, sir.
Most cities treat zoning as the beginning of a negotiation. Zoning is so restrictive, so obviously impossible to use as written, that planners and city councils have a process where developers beg for changes. After months of negotiations, “benevolent” planning commissions and city councils will offer zoning concessions to those who have successfully fought for their favor. Smart, well-connected developers become experts at navigating these formal systems with informal practices. They know which community groups need to be met with. They know which city council members will need to be shown how the project benefits their district. They learn to bundle sweet Community Benefit Packages with beautiful presentations about their community-serving amenities. These elaborate negotiation games create delays, increase costs, decrease units and height, and, in the end, can lead to abandoned projects. And it creates a much smaller industry of savvy developers and consultants whose competitive advantage is their deep knowledge of who’s back needs scratching.
Sure, we might let you build a new apartment building, but have you considered donating to the local parks fund? How about some money for the buses? What about building a little extra space for a politically-favored nonprofit to have an office — and what about not charging them very much rent?
But instead of having clear set rules about what we require of developers, these lengthy processes ends up giving leverage to whoever can jam things up the most. And we know that this process ends up benefitting whiter and wealthier citizens. The uncertain and inconsistent decision-making process allows for the “extraction of benefits,” which is why so many city planners and residents love it. After all, who doesn’t like putting the squeeze on your perceived enemies? But the cost of this extraction process is high. Bespoke negotiations drives up the cost of housing and slow down production. As a 2016 report by the American Planning Association put it, “discretionary approvals are time-consuming and costly, and discretionary review processes often culminate in uncertain, inconsistent, and unpredictable decisions.” One study found that by-right projects were permitted 28% faster than discretionary projects. Another argued that “a key driver of higher housing costs in the state is the development costs associated with lengthy entitlement processes. California’s entitlement process is unusually complicated and cumbersome: the permitting process for new development in coastal communities in California takes a third longer than in the average American city.”
How do we get real estate developers to stop attempting to work the system? Make it predictable, uniform, and boring! If we want developers out of politics, we need to take the politics out of development. We ought to zone for the housing we need. The rules should be clear and built to achieve the goal of an accessible, affordable community. Once that zoning is in place, cities have to allow housing to get built without separate, bespoke negotiations. That's no way to run a city.
Great article by @yimbylaura.bsky.social on how discretionary approval slows down and increases the cost of housing as developers buy out wealthy, well-connected residents at great expense.
Permitting should be predictable, uniform, and boring!
inpractice.yimbyaction.org/p/what-trump...
Join us for our inaugural event in this exclusive series on April 16th in San Francisco, featuring Toni Atkins in conversation with YIMBY Action Executive Director @yimbylaura.bsky.social
www.eventbrite.com/e/finding-a-...
Next week I'm in Atlanta interviewing Abundance co-author @dkthomp.bsky.social at the Georgia Center for the Book in Atlanta. (Grab your ticket!)
He makes very similar points in this article and I can't wait to dig in with him about the future of the democracy.
www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...
Like everyone, I'm reading Abundance and having my takes:
"Little by little, we stitched together a gigantic wet blanket that continues to hold back housing production. It’s easy to blame liberals, but like all of our worst problems, it was bipartisan."
inpractice.yimbyaction.org/p/abundance-...
Best new rage-bait we found from Sebastopol:
“I’m just not about to be a part of it,” said one member of the council, after a unanimous vote to ignore their RHNA obligations, an answer that is both completely wrongheaded and honestly a little iconic.
inpractice.yimbyaction.org/p/the-way-ca...
I'm getting on the substack bandwagon!
One of the best/worst examples of how a law *designed* to be a nightmare to implement is the CA Housing Element system.
Hopefully this convinces states considering adopting a "fair share" law that there be dragons!
inpractice.yimbyaction.org/p/the-way-ca...
@sfacc.bsky.social what's the latest with the bleeding husky dog loose in the Castro? Did you manage to catch him?
To say that the only way to build a lot of housing would be to demolish existing multi-family housing demonstrates such a lack of spacial parking awareness. Like, are they parking-lot-blind?
Luckily @wafoli.bsky.social has the perfect tour for the parking-blind.
partiful.com/e/66eMyfOBhl...
Putting aside the outright lies about how there are already tenant protections in the pro-housing bills, because the people who want more housing care about the class of renters...
My landlord (illegally) replaced our windows with new ones that are so so so much safer. They even have built-in child safety locks!
"Preservationists" is a generous term for people who want to control everyone around them at any expense.
Happy Hanukkah!
We're having a very Merry Muni Christmas, taking the bus to the grandparents!
Reminder: public transportation is way better for families than free parking!
