Bear with me; there are a lot of them.
In just the past three weeks, 1,300 homes for low-income residents and the formerly homeless were proposed in Los Angeles. Measure S would block them all.
At least 19,000 desperately-needed homes, including thousands of affordable units, could not be built if Measure S passes in the March 7th Los Angeles election.
Measure S is an ego trip masquerading as a social justice crusade. It's the Donald Trump of ballot initiatives, and these are 7 of the most important reasons that Los Angeles can't allow it to pass.
The city has put together an early draft of its proposal for the DTLA 2040 Community Plan update. It doesn't go far enough, and I think we can do better.
Analysis and recommendations for all 17 California ballot initiatives, along with some local ones in LA County, the City of Los Angeles, and Santa Monica.
Right now rent stabilization applies to multifamily housing built before 1979. Instead, we should consider a "rolling" threshold that includes all buildings over 30 years old.
Stabilized rents are not synonymous with affordable rents.
"The reason for the history lesson is: We paved over the orchards to make way for the Baby Boomers, and now the Boomers are fighting with Millennials who want to turn one-story strip malls into four-story apartments."
Forecasts rarely pan out, yet they're a foundation of the planning process. Instead, we should plan around something we can measure in real time: vacancy rates.
When you get a raise, a lot of that new income is taxed away. When your home doubles in value, you can pretty much keep it all.
Along with its many other benefits, a non-profit acquisition-based affordable housing program could also increase tenant mobility.
Apartment tenants at risk of displacement have good reason to oppose new development. Instead of demonizing them, we should be helping them.
We share the same goals, but our focuses differ. Can we reconcile our differences and come together?
Opposing new development because it requires demolition of some rent-controlled units is shortsighted, and overlooks the many real affordability solutions available to us.
Using affordable housing funds to acquire existing buildings is less expensive and more sustainable than using them to subsidize new units, and would be accompanied by numerous other benefits to the housing market and low-income residents.
A little bit of behavioral economics might help us get more affordable housing out of the state's density bonus law.
Proposition U froze our commercial corridors in time and contributed to our affordability crisis. Repealing it may be the best thing we can do to heal the wounds of the past.
We're pro-environment but anti-density, pro-immigration but anti-migration, and pro-equity but anti-housing. Our ideology is completely detached from our policy outcomes, and its killing our cities.
The Neighborhood Integrity Initiative is an ego trip masquerading as a social justice crusade. It's the Donald Trump of ballot initiatives, and these are 7 of the most important reasons that Los Angeles can't allow it to pass.
Eliminating homelessness is an expensive proposition, but we can pay for the great majority of it by simply redirecting money that's already being spent inefficiently on treating homeless individuals on the street.
What if you took all 200 square miles of parking in Los Angeles County and turned it into one giant parking lot? This map puts into perspective how much space we waste on car storage in LA, and around the country.
Prop 13 is considered the "third rail" of California politics, but that may be changing. Here's one idea for how to shift the politics and fix many of the worst impacts of the law, while still preserving its protections for low-income homeowners.
Proposition 13 is a citizen's initiative passed in California 1978, and to this day it continues to squeeze the state's housing market and primarily benefit older, whiter, longer-term residents at the expense of everyone else.
San Francisco's housing prices have nowhere to go but up. Whether it can stabilize prices or not, it will never again be affordable, and low income residents will continue to leave. Other coastal U.S. cities should take note.
The official fiscal analysis of California's High Speed Rail program has looked just a few decades into the future to assess its impact, but HSR is a 100-year investment. What do costs and revenues look like in that distant future?
Downtown Los Angeles accounts for just 1 percent of the city's geographical area, but 20 percent of its growth over the past 15 years. This is good news for downtown, but bad news for a city that needs more housing everywhere.
We keep throwing money at new roads and highways, and what do we have to show for it? The same amount of driving, the same commute times, and fewer drivers per 1,000 people. It's time to stop throwing good money after bad.
What share of residents in your census tract walk, bike, or take transit to work? I've created maps for every census tract in the U.S. that have the answers.
Measure S won't fix the affordable housing crisis. When the vote is over, win or lose, what can we do that will actually move the needle?