Ben Phelps
@thisisbenphelps
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Musician and General Theorist. Actual person. Georgist, Heterodox, Urbanist. Trying to make Los Angeles a proper city. Terrible Twitter brand. Go Dodgers.
Los Angeles
Joined August 2010
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Uh oh fascist trad account getting hip to urban walkability
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We could never have this sort of healthy, clean, well maintained urbanism and public space in Los Angeles, we’re just not as wealthy as Bilbao, Spain.
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If
@PeteButtigieg
knew about this and went along with it he should also resign. I’m done with this.
@GovKathyHochul
Hochul says she started these convos “weeks” ago.
Says she talked to White House, elected officials and businesses.
Let me say: this was NOT widespread — or even a discussion — among lawmakers as of a week ago.
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Ca Coastal commission really nailing it’s mission of keeping the coast available to everybody
In red is every US county with a median house price above $500k.
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I still struggle to find any sign that the California political class, to say nothing of the general public, actually understands the implications of this
I’m pretty confident to say without a parental gift you will not purchase a home in California.
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Lefty anti-YIMBYs are free to go build all the social housing they want, I’m certainly not stopping them.
@Econ_Marshall
It’s crazy how many comments you can get from them without a single substantive refutation
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LATimes did a whole exposé on the bleak state of the restaurant scene in LA. But once you understand the housing theory of everything, you can’t help but see this as an effect of the housing crisis, the main bottleneck driving our current inflation…(cont)
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Remember that time California judges ordered UC Berkeley to cut its enrollment for "environmental reasons" under CEQA and then like 2 days later the state changed the law to override them
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This critique of the nonprofit industrial complex is an absolute banger and everybody that thinks they are a progressive should read it
This brilliant essay has a brutally accurate evaluation of TODCO, a San Francisco affordable housing nonprofit that receives millions in government funding and tirelessly works to block the construction of any new affordable housing in San Francisco.
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@_StefanHorn
Yes we should force people to have roommates the British aren’t poor enough yet
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@sassygayrepub
@gofundme
guess you wish you had some government sponsored health insurance right about now
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Left-tenant orgs: we are against housing the middle class
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This is the kind of attitude I’m railing against. San Francisco has a homelessness rate *20x* that of Houston. It’s a much smaller city but has at least twice as many homeless total. There ARE no working poor in SF, they are priced out. People commute to work in SF from Stockton.
@Mallrat9000
@CSElmendorf
So, to your question: SF's minimum wage is 2.5x the minimum wage in Houston, it rises with inflation, and there's no lower minimum wage for tipped workers. In Houston you don't have rent stabilization, and probably have to keep up a car to stay employed. I guess I'd go with yes?
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Can we talk about how Dean Preston, Supervisor of the city and county of San Francisco, famous "socialist", personally looked me up and tried to threaten me with repercussions to my supposed employer? How deranged is this person.
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Demand subsidies in supply constrained cities are not a homelessness solution. It's no shock that giving 100 people $750 a month improved their housing outcomes. Give 15,000 $750 a month though and watch that money quickly evaporate in rising rents.
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Is it a good day to remind everyone that Feinstein downzoned San Francisco?
I don’t heare this being mentioned as part of her legacy.
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The writer’s strike is about the housing crisis, but LA politicians won’t talk about it.
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The reason the city is so expensive is because of lack of housing construction, something the council member has direct power to help correct. In fact, it’s the only solution. Giant raises to writers and actors without more houses just drives of housing costs for everyone else.
LA is one of the most expensive cities in the world. Workers are struggling just to live here. For the first time, our population is falling.
If studios continue to shove creative workers out of the industry, people will leave LA in droves. And the impact will be devastating.
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If Bernie were president, he would absolutely not solve the housing crisis
Corrupt real estate developers are gentrifying neighborhoods and forcing working families out of the homes and apartments, only to replace them with fancy condominiums and hotels that only the very rich can afford.
We need affordable housing for all.
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Gonna go out on a limb and say that people trying to find a place to live for their families in the major city of their home state is not settler-colonialism
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I think Katie Porter should have held down her valuable Irvine congressional seat. There I said it.
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@jferris215
@mikiebarb
auto industry would not be profitable if it had to pay for the roads.
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LA city council approves $500k for another traffic study before gondola can be permitted. Consultants rejoice.
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LA's housing market is in crisis and I still don't hear any local politicians talking about it
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What frozen property tax rates, a booming economy, and anti-growth urban land use policies get you
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San Jose and LA city workers about to go on strike and I’m yet again forced to remind you that the problem is you didn’t build any housing.
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Ending property tax reassessment works out great for the people that own property when the freeze occurs but long term blocks new generations from property ownership, as the tax rates are capitalized into skyrocketing property values and reduced development incentive
Prop 13 is hot garbage. A friend recently attended a funeral in California. The elderly owner had been paying ~$4,200 a year on a $29M dollar property; about the same as the monthly rent on a 2BR/2BA apartment in the same city. The numbers are even more extreme for business.
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One way to get blocked real fast is to point out to people that if they are running up against the SALT deduction cap they are in fact rich
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@ChristRobbins
@GovKathyHochul
Did you ask her if the diner owner asked for her to raise his payroll taxes?
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Kate Willet negatively polarized by Stancil into support a YIMBY.
This is why we post.
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Have I gone crazy a positive high speed rail article in the LATimes
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Instead of complaining about Taggers city officials should actually do something about Oceanwide. The city needs to eminent domain this and sell it to a developer that can finish it.
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@RepKatiePorter
Could have announced the creation of the Restore the Child Tax Credit Caucus if you are interested in helping middle class families
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@kiangoh
I think a UC professor that focuses on housing should care more about homeless students
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@paleofuture
Elon thinking he has anything to offer Tokyo: well at least he believes in himself
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AIDs healthcare foundation takes out a full page ad in the Times advocating that we should abolish our municipal utility
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Continued amazing land use next to LA Chinatown gold line station
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People on the left stop being crazy Biden is a great president. I know his speeches aren’t the most inspiring and he’s old. But he’s been far more effective than any Dem president in the last 50 years at getting important things done. Wake up.
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@Devlinside123
@mattyglesias
If the white people want to be mayor so much is it too much to ask they also file the required paperwork?
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Santa Cruz, home of the worst housing crisis in the state of California, has a measure on the March ballot to require all zoning changes and general plan updates increasing heights to go out to the public in a referendum vote.
A letter to the editor in my hometown (Santa Cruz, CA) after they replaced a Taco Bell with a six-story apartment building
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I’m pretty confident to say without a parental gift you will not purchase a home in California.
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Dean Preston isn’t a landlord, he’s just married to a Real-estate heiress. If you call him a landlord, he’ll sue you for defamations.
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@dahvnyc
the funny thing about congestion pricing is that New Jersey and Connecticut residents already freeload off NYC by avoid NY income tax, this is a perfect way to get some of that money back.
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@htown_Joe
@Baritone_BC
@pushtheneedle
@fuelgrannie
@mswann82
“It’s not a profit when you reinvest it” is not a valid point
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Oakland builds too many luxury apartments, causes filtering to work
Epic narrative violation, maybe the worst one yet.
“Due to a glut in market-rate and luxury housing, as of April, the year-over-year rent in Oakland has dipped 10.3% … That has a “knock-on effect” as mid-priced units lose renters to newer buildings.”
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@StatisticUrban
@pastoralpunkdys
We know it won’t increase fertility rates but it will help make raising kids easier for those who decide to do it so it’s not a bad thing
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@ProgNewDealer
@Michiganger_
The real thing is that car-designed cities make transit unviable.
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All these people with their ideas on fixing Los Angeles (like "appoint a homelessness czar"- Zev Yaroslavsky) and no one goes with "build a ton of new housing"
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@adamfaze
Incorrect. Spotify isn’t profitable because they don’t charge enough for the service they provide.
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I think
@NathanTankus
is super smart but he’s really negatively polarized against people that want to build housing for other people and that’s weird
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@kiangoh
Wow does the IPCC know this
"The report makes clear that simply replacing gasoline with batteries won’t be enough: cities must also dramatically curtail the use of automobiles and avoid 'locking in' future emissions by building more car-dependent infrastructure."
#EarthDay22
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And she floated raising payroll taxes on NYC residents to plug the congestion pricing hole she just created!!! This is the worst governing I’ve ever seen.
The Hochul-floated idea of raising the MTA payroll tax in NYC to plug the new congestion pricing hole?
It went over like a lead balloon in Senate Dems' conference, I'm told. Assembly Dems expected to discuss it later tonight.
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@sassygayrepub
@gofundme
I wish we had a health care system that worked for you, I continue to fight for that
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We should absolutely disband the coastal commission
🚨Unbelievable but true: In 2018, the Coastal Commission (
@TheCACoast
) approved a MASSIVE oil drilling operation 🛢 in one of the most polluted coastal cities. Yet, this April, they rejected an ADU citing 'visual impacts'
A thread on environmentalism that lost its way ⬇️
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Banning neighborhood commercial is one of the most unexplainable dysfunctional things we’ve done as a society
I've been on the neighborhood commercial kick for a while now. Really glad to see it gaining some steam and I hope we can make it happen here in the Golden State!
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What, this city of 346k has more vibrant pedestrian urban public spaces than Los Angeles? Yes.
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So weird how the left has decided we must defeat Blackrock when it’s all pension and other retirement funds
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Every time I’m downtown all I can see are the empty surface parking lots, year 40 of the housing crisis
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I am cautiously optimistic SB423 plus AB1633 will be real game changers to get San Francisco actually building housing. This could crush Dean Preston. However, I don’t know that we’ve really addressed the log jams in LA yet (where the low hanging R1 zoning will remain in place)
[VICTORY ALERT]
@GavinNewsom
has signed SB 423 into law! This law by
@Scott_Wiener
extends and expands streamlining for mixed-income housing projects that follow zoning in cities that are behind on meeting their state housing goals.
Our statement:
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While I support giving this person some prison time more important is to take away power from the traffic engineers that are actually responsible here
An entire family wiped out at a Muni station by a reckless driver. I hope she spends the rest of her life in prison. But she won’t
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Though Rene blocked me a couple years ago I’m happy to have taken up rent controlled space in his head
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I’m willing to do something, but I’m more concerned about losing parking spaces
1. New York, 2023
2. San Francisco, 2020
3. Los Angeles, 2020
4. Sydney, 2019
In the past 4 years alone, each city has experienced it's worst day of wildfire smoke in recorded history.
The Earth is on fire. Our negligence is killing our planet. We must change our ways.
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@RespectableLaw
Did you not notice that republicans passed like almost no legislation the past 4 years
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@ariellesallai
@MitchOFarrell
I simply can't understand how a faux European suburban half-empty restaurant is more useful to the people of Los Angeles than houses for them would be
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While I was checking out the regional connector opening today their were some super awesome and super nerdy teenage boys that were filming their entire trip from Long Beach to Azusa and they might be the first to do it and I need to find the results of this on the internet
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@EunissesH
Los Angeles has a city council full people of people that still somehow believe that building fewer units will help affordability instead of hurting it
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@ProgNewDealer
@Michiganger_
and when you are not providing other viable transportation options besides cars you ARE controlling the choices people make
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Where’s my Palo Alto Builders Remedy projects?
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Despite not being able to articulate a single actual harm done by the Gondola, environmental, financial or otherwise, Ground Game LA and a number of local politicians have talked themselves into thinking opposing it is social justice. We can’t have nice things.
@cd1losangeles
Former Burbank mayor and Supervisor candidate
@KonstantineinCA
spoke against the project and asked for Metro to help Burbank and the region by voting against this boondoggle and supporting real regional transit needs, like the ones his city is working on.
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@DeanPreston
@NO_TO_FIRE
@RealDianeYap
@cultofJT
@kane
@CawthonMichael1
@hknightsf
@UCLAalpert
SUE ME YOU CAN DO IT DEAN
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Metro and LADOT just completely ignored the council approved EIR (in violation of CEQA) in its road widenings around downtown regional connector stations. This nonsense has to stop and these rogue agencies need to be held accountable.
Every no and again we get traffic engineers who come on this site and tell us the reason why we can't have bike lanes is because their hands are tied by policy makers. As this article about Metro shows, this is a lie.
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@thecandells
@louismirante
@Scott_Wiener
Yes people other than the fabulously wealthy should be able to live on the California Coast so I welcome your tears
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@2AvSagas
Seems like this should be a NEPA lawsuit. Did they study the effects of canceling congestion pricing?
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The especially insane thing about this ruling is not only that human noise is considered the “environmental” impact, but that the developers REMOVED the design element that was flagged as causing the noise impact. But that qualified as a “mitigation. This is bonkers.
🧵I'm gobsmacked. The City of L.A. just lost *another* CEQA infill exemption case in Court of Appeal, w/ court relying on infamous UC Berkeley "social noise == pollution" precedent.
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Los Angeles first ever deputy mayor of housing Etsemaye P. Agonafer warns we may have too much of it
@Mishka__1
@mnolangray
The deputy mayor of housing said to the largely NIMBY crowd something to the effect of 'too much too soon.'
She also added a story of a dryer vent 'blowing directly out onto a single family home'
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Pretty weak form to post a whole YIMBY-bait thread with pretend research and charts and everything and then just go private as people start pointing out the massive flaws in your arguments
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@Sammy_Roth
This requirement (if it were actually enforced) is basically a death knell in ever actually building any housing on the Dodger stadium parking lot
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@damienISgoodmon
@MatthewBarba4
Ah, the scholars that have spent their lives fighting people moving to other cities. What a life well spent.
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@sam_d_1995
I just met with a good friend that should know better but is honestly terrified. It’s the media ecosystem they’re in.
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I was added to a pretty sweet list called “YIMBY losers”
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