Putting this up, just for the record. In a normal election year…
We are moments away from the Presidential Candidates Forum at the 110th #NAACPConvention. Watch live at https://t.co/HXjaoHjGIg beginning at 9:30AM ET. pic.twitter.com/O8khp69qNs
— NAACP (@NAACP) July 24, 2019
Washington was fixated on Robert Mueller's testimony today, but the Democrats running for president apparently weren't. They spent the day at an NAACP forum pressing a different case, calling President Trump a bigot who unduly harms black communities. https://t.co/o8CS2Lraa9
— The New York Times (@nytimes) July 24, 2019
Good for the candidates, I say. They proved themselves perfectly capable of talking about the necessity of impeaching the Oval Office Occupant from the convention floor — and a lot of people had planned for this meeting months in advance of the DC show-trial.
… One by one, at the national convention of the N.A.A.C.P., the nation’s largest and oldest civil rights organization, the Democratic candidates chose not to discuss Mr. Mueller’s testimony in detail and instead outlined their respective plans to uplift black people.
When they did mention Mr. Trump, it was often in the context of his remarks about racial minorities, and his tendency to evoke stereotypes steeped in racist history to degrade his political opponents…
The forum was hosted by April Ryan, the longtime journalist who has been a target of Mr. Trump’s administration. Ms. Ryan, the Washington bureau chief for American Urban Radio Networks and a CNN analyst, repeatedly pushed candidates on several issues that are particularly important to black communities, including voting rights, criminal justice, reparations and closing the racial wealth gap.
Though the N.A.A.C.P. has undergone a major revamp since its glory days of the 1960s, when the organization was on the forefront of civil rights advancements, it remains a hub of reliable Democratic support — particularly from older and more religious black voters.
Historically the candidate who has earned the plurality of black votes — particularly in the South — has gone on to be the party’s nominee. And as some attendees noted, the sheer number of top-tier candidates who attended the forum, in addition to recent events like the Black Economic Alliance Forum in South Carolina and the She the People Presidential Forum in Texas, makes clear how serious the candidates are about addressing black voters directly…
Senator Harris takes the stage at the #NAACPConvention. Lots of energy in the room for her!
But I think Biden still had the most universal, sustained applause in this room. pic.twitter.com/loVAMDsDDU
— Bhavik Lathia (@bhaviklathia) July 24, 2019
#NAACPConvention .@ewarren opens remarks by citing @NAACP's vote yesterday to call for the impeachment of the president.
— NAACP (@NAACP) July 24, 2019
"We have to make it clear. No one is above the law. The responsibility of congress of the United States when the president breaks the law, is to bring impeachment charges against that president." – @ewarren #NAACPConvention #WhenWeFightWeWin pic.twitter.com/8do6x5OmcQ
— Derrick Johnson (@DerrickNAACP) July 24, 2019
Warren/Sanders answers on gentrification were perfect studies in their differences.
Warren: “I have a plan to build 3.2 million housing units.”
Sanders: “We’re going to tell the developers you just can’t come in and build expensive condos and drive working class people out."
— Dave Weigel (@daveweigel) July 24, 2019
#NAACPConvention @corybooker pic.twitter.com/pcLLyDp9df
— NAACP (@NAACP) July 24, 2019
Bernie comes on stage at the #NAACPConvention to #feelthebern chants. And the way he ends his opening statement is hilarious. @AprilDRyan calls ‘time’ and Bernie concludes with a loud “ETCETERA”. The audience cracked up. pic.twitter.com/VAHhABZpib
— Bhavik Lathia (@bhaviklathia) July 24, 2019
"Hello NAACP. It is always fun to follow Bernie Sanders," says Amy Klobuchar.
— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) July 24, 2019
#NAACPConvention "I stand for economic opportunity, for voting rights and a better America for all of us. We must restore the Voting Rights Act and we must stop voter suppression." – @amyklobuchar
— NAACP (@NAACP) July 24, 2019
#NAACPConvention @JulianCastro pic.twitter.com/Bp7nCFXocB
— NAACP (@NAACP) July 24, 2019
#NAAACPConvention @PeteButtigieg pic.twitter.com/kpM7qBgOic
— NAACP (@NAACP) July 24, 2019
#NAACPConvention @BetoORourke pic.twitter.com/0DqO7KbAu1
— NAACP (@NAACP) July 24, 2019
Points to my ex-guv for showing up, however fruitless his campaign:
President Trump’s GOP challenger @GovBillWeld tells NAACP: “Unless the national Republican Party in Washington expressly, expressly rejects the racism of Donald Trump, it will become universally viewed as the party of racism in America.”
— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) July 24, 2019
Today, @NAACP voted to move forward with a resolution to initiate @realDonaldTrump’s impeachment at the 110th #NAACPConvention. Trump’s misconduct is unmistakable and has proven time and time again, that he is unfit to serve as the president of this country. #WhenWeFightWeWin pic.twitter.com/LFg7Z8JDYO
— Derrick Johnson (@DerrickNAACP) July 23, 2019
The #NAACP’s role in combating hate, racial inequality, & civil injustice is more important now than ever. Can't wait for next year's #NAACPConvention in #Boston – where we rep the first chartered branch of the NAACP #WhenWeFightWeWin #MA7 cc: @attorneyTanisha @bostonnaacp1911 pic.twitter.com/IDWWkLF9Qv
— Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley (@RepPressley) July 24, 2019
Fireworks closed out the NAACP Detroit Party. This is how we do it in the D. #NAACPConvention #NAACP110 pic.twitter.com/JTWy4kPEec
— JazzieeB (@Bdwal359) July 24, 2019
Baud
Good.
West of the Rockies
What are polls showing now as far as candidate preference among black people? Is Joe still doing well? I really hope Harris or Warren becomes president.
guachi
I think I still don’t have a grasp on when buying a house and fixing it up turns into gentrification.
Eolirin
@guachi: When it leads to a systematic displacement of the previous occupants of the neighborhood.
Dopey-o
As we learned in 2016, keeping Russians out of the voting booths while ensuring that Black Americans get to vote is the key to defending our country.
I’m ordering my Biden Harris 2020 sticker today. I don’t care that he’s too old. I don’t care that he played footsie with vile segregationists. I just want my neighbors to feel like the boot may be coming off their necks in 2021.
Baud
@Dopey-o:
Who’s putting out Biden Harris stickers?
West of the Rockies
@Baud:
Yeah, seems a bit premature.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Harris is I believe 52, in national electoral terms she’s a rookie, with a pretty safe seat. Why would she be Biden’s number 2? Same with Stacey Abrams. I think it would be an act of sacrifice (patriotic, to be sure) for either of them to offer to prop up Uncle Joe.
That said, Biden had almost cured me of my half-assed desire to play it safe with him, then he came out with what I think is the most pragmatic health care plan.
Another Scott
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Julie Rovner at KHN – Biden’s proposal still a heavy lift:
We’ll see.
Cheers,
Scott.
Barbara
Good for Elizabeth Warren. The focus needs to be on building housing so that it is not such a scarce resource.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
absolutely, and it means shit-all if we don’t retake the Senate, another really heavy lift, but I still think it’s a much better campaign platform than single payer
Villago Delenda Est
I’ve got news for Bill Weld: the ship has sailed. The GOP is the party of racism, xenophobia, and greed.
Mike J
@Another Scott: Marginal expansion of a popular program: absolutely impossible.
Destroying the insurance industry and replacing it with a complete government takeover of the healthcare system: walk in the park.
tam1MI
Gillibrand now blaming the media for making her run Al Franken out of Senate on a rail, in the process gets caught in a flat lie:
https://mobile.twitter.com/seungminkim/status/1153491335896326144?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1153491335896326144&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.dailykos.com%2Fstory%2F2019%2F7%2F23%2F1873793%2F-Midday-open-thread-The-truth-about-Ellis-Island-Kirsten-Gillibrand-on-the-double-standard
Emma
At this point, after yesterday, I. DON’T.CARE. I’d vote for Lord Voldemort if he brings down the Orange Disgrace and the Republican Party.
Barbara
@Eolirin: Right, but it’s not usually systematic, or at least not in my neighborhood. It’s the accretion of hundreds and thousands of individual decisions combined with a zoning system that locks out anything other than single family residences. So the ground beneath my house has more than quintupled in value over the last 25 years, such that if I sold it there is no way that anyone could build on that land a dwelling that counts in any way shape or form as affordable. We need to focus on the underlying policies and not on individuals, even ones motivated by destructive greed. Personalizing issues like housing does not lead to more housing.
Fair Economist
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Being Biden’s #2 offers an excellent chance of moving up sometime over the following 8 years; better than the chance of winning on their own in 4 or 8 years. I think any of the other candidates would accept other than the even older Sanders.
zhena gogolia
@Emma:
Me too.
Except Bernie.
zhena gogolia
My squishy middle colleague (pro-Israel, anti-Trump) wants to see a Biden-Abrams ticket, FWIW.
Mary G
Biden showing his sharp political instincts by going after Cory Booker and Kamala Harris for daring to question his record on civil rights (WaPo):
Another Scott
@Barbara: Yes, if land is $300,000 a 1/4 acre, then someone isn’t going to build a ranch house on it and sell it for $150,000. That’s a big problem. It’s easy to say that a big part of the solution has to be changing zoning to allow multi-story, multi-family housing in subdivisions.
But, of course, as I heard someone point out recently, that introduces its own problems beyond NIMBY and OMGWhatAboutMyHomeValue. Can the water and sewer and road systems in the neighborhood handle it? Can the electrical grid handle it? Where will people park their cars, and if they can’t park a car, will there be buses or other public transit? If you increase the housing stock in an older neighborhood by 10%, where will you put the extra school kids?
And on and on.
Growth is a complex problem. Change is a complex problem. A systematic approach is needed, but it has to be incremental or nothing will ever get done.
Cheers,
Scott.
Fair Economist
Biden’s health care plan is pretty good, and even probably optimistic about what we really might get passed in 2021. Pushing for better plan even if you can’t get them now is good, but it’s a tragedy that the way Bernie has pushed “Medicare” For All (which isn’t actually a Medicare plan) has produced so much negative opinion on plans like Biden’s.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@tam1MI: I’m ambivalent about Franken, and admire Gillibrand’s record on sexual harassment issues, but the idea that her campaign flopped because of Franken, much less because of the media, is weak and self-pitying. Why are at least two of her fellow Senators and about half a dozen governors and MoCs flailing too? She got out-worked, out-charisma’d, out-whatever’d. Fold your tent and go home already. Clear up some room on those debate stages.
Doug R
@Dopey-o:
What makes you think Kamala Harris would pick Uncle Joe as VP?
Jeffro
@guachi: When people not like you do it and home values go up quickly.
Omnes Omnibus
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: She is 54 and will be turning 55 in October.
Miss Bianca
@Emma: I’m pretty sure Lord Voldemort would be running as a Republican.
Baud
@Miss Bianca:
I read the Harry Potter books. I didn’t think he was that evil.
trollhattan
@Barbara:
Yup, fiddling with the housing industry’s parameters is not enough. Declaring NIMBYism “Bad!” is a feel-good distraction. Direct action for housing construction* could harvest meaningful results in our lifetimes. Demand is outstripping supply and the industry is uninterested or unprepared to deal with that.
*If that means like Houston, you’re ignoring flood maps and greenlighting the construction industry to go nuts there anyway, you’re doin’ it rong.
Omnes Omnibus
@Fair Economist: Please remind me, how many sitting VPs have become president through being elected?
Fair Economist
@Another Scott:
The utilities will almost always support far denser development than SFH. Go to any streetcar suburb and you’ll find a utility system generally inferior to current suburban ones supporting a much higher density. In addition, utility systems have heavy upkeep costs which non-luxury SFH housing can’t support in the long term. The future for most SFH-only zones is Flint.
Because of the greying of America, almost every school system is *short* of students other than exurban ones. If that were an honest objection, the answer would be to bar greenfield SFH-only development and, well, rezone all current R1 zones (other than in exurbs) to fourplex and less like Minneapolis and Oregon.
opiejeanne
@Another Scott: Parking? Who needs parking? says Seattle.
They’re tearing down old houses and doing just that, putting up multi-story multi unit buildings, but removing what parking there used to be on the property. Oh, and the neighborhoods were almost all built 1900-1920 with driveways and tiny garages that no one parks in now, and big street trees. The new ones are stark modern boxes with minimal landscaping and no driveway. There is no thought that they be built in a style that would blend in. No thought is given to the existing neighborhood or where the new occupants will park
Miss Bianca
@Baud:
Just misunderstood? Depraved on account of he was deprived? Oh, right…you *are* a Democrat, aren’t you? ; )
ETA: Oh, *now* I smoke your meaning. D’oh! Well, my worst enemy could never accuse me of being the sharpest light bulb in the shed.
Fair Economist
@Omnes Omnibus: Relatively few VPs have been *elected* directly to the Presidency but lots have gotten there because the President died. Biden has about a 1 in 3 chance of dying in the next 8 years and that alone is better than the odds of any of the other candidate winning a competitive primary *and* the general in 2024 or 2028. The additional chance of moving up in 2028 is just gravy.
joel hanes
What makes you think Kamala Harris would pick Uncle Joe as VP?
She probably wouldn’t, but maybe she should.
The Vice Presidency is a small-bore job, perfectly suited for a small-bore glad-handing centrist like Biden, and he has more experience in that job than anyone else in the field. Biden as VP candidate would tend to bring in the numerous Dem voters who apparently like him.
joel hanes
@Fair Economist:
Because of the greying of America, almost every school system is *short* of students other than exurban ones.
Cities are increasingly places where the young and childless move to establish themselves and have an exciting young adulthood before they decide to have children. When they start to have kids, they swim upstream and spawn in the suburbs, or in semi-rural areas.
As a result: cities are increasingly populated by childless young adults.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/07/where-have-all-the-children-gone/594133/
Fair Economist
@opiejeanne: Parking is a self-limiting problem. If having the parking spaces is really worth it, then they’ll be included with the housing, or paid parking garages will get built for the demand.
The reality is it’s not needed. Most older east coast cities have large areas built to three stories, and they don’t have parking problems because at those densities cars are no longer a necessity.
Barbara
@Another Scott: Tell that to Minneapolis.
MattF
@Barbara: Another factor is that when local government gets involved, the time scale for projects increases significantly. An example in my neighborhood– a large municipal parking lot in my neighborhood was designated by local government for residential/retail development. It was pretty much an ideal case, across the street from a successful retail development, developers and banks eager to plan and finance, cooperative local government, a lack of diehard opposition. It took fifteen years.
It’s just hard to do this sort of thing well, even in ideal cases.
J R in WV
@Another Scott:
The one time we toured a little in southern France, and then took a train into Paris, we both noticed how wonderful it was that the cities had farmland almost right up into the cities. As you approached a city, suddenly there was a narrow band of high rise apartment buildings, connected to downtown with bus routes and trains, as well as highways. The apartment buildings were thick on the ground, too, with minimal parking so far as we could tell from our train or bus.
This was especially true of the two biggest cities we visited, Toulouse and Paris. Somehow the French manage to maintain the rural character of their countryside and provide housing for everyone who lives in France. It must be a miracle, as it seems so impossible in America… what could the difference be I wonder>?
Emma
@Miss Bianca: No, no. He would be sneaky and destroy the Republican party and co-opt the Democrats.
Brachiator
@Fair Economist:
I didn’t realize that the numbers were so stark in favor of those who became president due to the death of the predecessor.
Fair Economist
@joel hanes: There are lots of children in even higher density cities elsewhere in the developed world. People with children tend to leave cities because they are becoming so insanely expensive due to construction restrictions combined with explosive demand for them. Only about 10% of US housing is walkable. After well-off childless couples take their share there’s nothing left for anybody else.
Bill Arnold
Since I haven’t seen this angle noted here yet,
If Epstein has seriously damaging dirt on Trump (or other on ruthless powerful people) in his head (i.e. not in computer records or recordings), then his head/life is at risk. “Suicide” is an old, old, old way to silence witnesses.
Jeffrey Epstein found unconscious in jail cell, say reports – Billionaire accused of sex trafficking hospitalized in unclear condition, with injuries to his neck that may have been self-inflicted (The Guardian, Thu 25 Jul 2019)
And “suicide” can be induced, including with psychological techniques. (The well-publicized cases are amateur-hour kid stuff, literally.)
Barbara
@opiejeanne: Obviously, the circumstances of the specific location matter, but for suburbs well-served by transit, it really is the case that many people are foregoing car ownership. Having been associated with an affordable housing apartment development within the last 15 years, I can tell you that it was forced at great expense to build three levels of underground parking and the lowest one has basically never been used. Yeah, I get the aesthetic complaints, but I’ve become deaf to them as I have seen my local neighborhood councils try to force people to spend tens of thousands of dollars on planning to enhance the aesthetic appeal of apartment buildings that are desperately needed. “Blending in” often enough really means “fencing out.”
Another Scott
Evan Hurst at Wonkette on Mueller Time:
A good read.
Cheers,
Scott.
Omnes Omnibus
@Bill Arnold: There was an entire thread on this last night.
Miss Bianca
@joel hanes: Except I seriously doubt that Uncle Joe would consent to a VP role again. I mean, he just spent 8 years as the appendix of the administration – no one, as far as I am aware, has ever signed up for that gig a second time round!
Brachiator
BTW. A vice president factoid to make Trump angry (from CNN).
low-tech cyclist
I like the “When we fight, we win” in the NAACP banner.
A lesson that the Democratic Party could stand to learn.
guachi
@Eolirin: If I’m buying a house for sale, the residents have already decided to leave.
I mean, my wife and I bought an inexpensive house here in Augusta, GA for about $85,000 and our household income is about $120,000.
The previous homeowner was dead. We put $25,000 into the house. Are we gentrifying? We are upper middle class whites.
Or should we have moved to the white flight area in the early conservative part of town?
WhatsMyNym
@J R in WV: Ah, the Paris suburbs…
The Other France.
Martin
This is why I don’t like Sanders – he’s a perfect encapsulation of why SF is fucked up.
Expensive condos lower housing prices. All additional housing lowers housing prices. Sanders’ argument is a supply-side argument, which you would think he’d be opposed to. The supply side doesn’t control prices, the demand side does. Build an expensive condo, and either:
1) Someone will want to live in it, move out of their cheaper unit, adding supply and lowering prices.
2) Someone won’t want to live in it, and the price will necessarily come down until it’s attractive.
The only solution to the housing crisis is to build housing. Yes, low-income, higher density is better, but every unit helps. Warren is a capitalist through and through – and that’s a great thing. She recognizes the strengths and weaknesses of capitalism, plays into its strengths and regulates its weaknesses.
Just One More Canuck
@Baud: “Baud! Voldemort! 2020”?
Major Major Major Major
Aleta
So, damn, my bil has fought cancer in two places, now clear for some years. His mom died of cancer when he was 5 or 6, and this winter his daughter of cancer. Her son, his grandson, is now five. Last night he wrote a malig, tumor was found in his jaw. I consider him my true brother. I guess I’m saying this to say, get checked if you have pain or something is off. (Me who just got a primary dr. after 2-3 years without.)
The Moar You Know
A “party of racism” in the United States will do very well. At least as well as the GOP is doing right now.
This is not a problem but an end goal for most of the GOPs voters, and Weld needs to figure that out.
If they could mix it up with some old-school populism – which thankfully is not something I think they can do and keep Big Money on board – they could get and hold veto-proof majorities.
Barbara
@Aleta: You mean the five year old grandson has a malignant tumor in his jaw? Or your brother in law?
Bill Arnold
@Another Scott:
That is a fun read! Here’s the close:
Martin
@guachi:
When it’s done as part of a social policy. Individuals cannot gentrify. Gentrification means that the city has decided that the class of people that live in a neighborhood are undesirable and take steps with zoning and permitting to price them out of that neighborhood so that they leave. That applies to businesses as well. Times Square in NYC is a good example of gentrification. When I lived there it was full of peep shows. The city forced those businesses out, and replaced them with Disney store and TGI Fridays. Preparing for an Olympic games is usually used as an excuse to gentrify. Even individual developers cannot gentrify a neighborhood. All they’re doing is finding mismatches between value and price. An expensive piece of land has limited options – either an expensive single family home, or a high density low income block, or maybe a mixed use property (retail + apartments/condos). They’re looking to extract the largest price from the given value.
The problem comes from the community that is unwilling or unable to recognize the same mismatch. If your old bungalow on a highly appreciated piece of land is worth way more as a 4 story mixed use building, then sell and reap the profits. CA distorts this by grandfathering your property taxes so that the utility cost of owning that (now) expensive bungalow is lower than it should be, enticing you to stay rather than sell. And now you’ve become a rent seeker, trying to block development of neighboring properties to preserve your own value and yelling about gentrification. You may internalize it as preserving your childhood home, or retaining the flavor of the neighborhood or whatever, but at the end of the day it’s greed.
The other flavor of gentrification is low income workers that would be forced out from higher rents. But the city’s motivation may be to bring in higher paying jobs, so that the higher rents become affordable because you earn more. This is where wage policy and housing policy need to be in some degree of coordination. If you renovate a neighborhood and raise rents 100% but wages stay where they were, then yeah, you created a big fucking problem. And you can’t displace service workers for tech workers, because that neighborhood will still need service workers. You can *add* tech workers, still raise rents, but you need to ensure wages rise so that those workers aren’t forced out. Cities are doing a better job of this.
The main problem is single family homeowners that block development. In SF its rich liberals that use every excuse in the book to preserve their profits, completely failing to recognize that they’re the very things they proclaim to hate.
Aleta
@Baud: It’s ok (understandable) if you don’t want to answer this, but I was wondering if any dogs have come your way. Or perhaps you’re on intentional dog break. Lately I’m wondering whether to plan for another dog.
Aleta
@Barbara: my bil.
Barbara
@Aleta: I’m sorry. That’s really devastating news, and I wish him the best.
Martin
@trollhattan: I’ve never seen a case of industry ignoring the problem. If there’s demand for housing, there’s always a developer willing to take that money. The problem is almost always zoning and permitting. Its city leaders recognizing that the voters that are there now have way the fuck more power than the potential voters that might move in. That’s why Newsom is trying to override the city governments.
Huntington Beach will be fascinating to watch. Republican city council is out of compliance with the state housing policy by refusing to allow new units to be built. Newsom is suing them.
The Moar You Know
@Dopey-o: My old elementary school has become the dumping ground for that district’s Hispanic kids. Within a month of Trump’s getting elected, ICE/CBP shows up an hour before school starts and just parks several vehicles with officers inside right outside the driveway and they stay there ALL DAY until the last vehicle leaves the lot.
I’ve vote for fucking Hitler at this point if that would stop this. Those poor fucking kids. They didn’t do shit. Their teachers didn’t do shit. It needs to stop. These people need to go. Impeachment will not remove them from office, the Senate will not do it, the only thing that can is a new president. And while I have a laundry list of things I’d like out of that new president, those things are irrelevant in comparison to kids in cages and assholes in combat gear stomping through the halls of my old school.
I might add that I drive past that school every day as it’s on my way to work. I will probably have ground my rear molars to the jawline by the time Election Day rolls around.
Another Scott
@Martin: I think your thought experiment is too simplistic.
There’s only so much land in and near a city.
If someone buys up a city block and tears down the tenements that house 5000 people to build a skyscraper with 10,000 square foot penthouses for 200 oligarchs who are looking for a place to park their money (e.g.), that’s not helping the housing stock for the city.
The way neighborhoods are allowed to change depends on zoning, and zoning depends on elected officials.
The kind of new housing matters. A lot.
Cheers,
Scott.
Ruckus
@Fair Economist:
I live in socal and if you tried to take away peoples cars and parking spaces, you’d have a shooting war. I’ve had people yell at me that I must be too poor to own a car because I’m walking. They will give up their car only after hell freezes.
Barbara
@Martin: A relative by marriage grew up in Venice Beach and has been trying for as long as I have known her to try to keep the house she grew up in in her family, even though, as I kid her, it cannot possibly accommodate the families of all the kids who grew up there. Her mother recently died, and the house is in trust for the kids after the stepfather dies. In truth, the mother stayed there only because of California’s property tax laws, and the kids can inherit the low taxes (I’ve looked it up) but nobody really wants to live there. It’s hard to feel sorry for them, and yet, at the same time, you know that it must have been wonderful to grow up as an ordinary middle class kid a few blocks from the beach somewhere around the early 70s.
Jim Parish
@Miss Bianca: Two people have served as VP under different presidents – George Clinton (Jefferson and Madison) and John Calhoun (JQ Adams and Jackson). In both cases, the terms were consecutive; neither finished his second term. (Clinton died, Calhoun resigned to take a seat in the Senate.)
Barbara
@Another Scott: I think Martin is spot on. There have been 40,000 apartment units built or approved for construction in DC over the last few years and they have had a measurable impact on rent. You are loading your critique by assuming that “oligarchs” will come in and buy everything. In point of fact, the biggest threat to availability in some markets is that oligarch known as Air BnB, which definitely incentivizes rent seeking behavior. But they too can be regulated, as DC proved.
Major Major Major Major
@Another Scott:
A number of cities have abolished single-family zoning, there’s a big push for it right now by the YIMBY types.
Ladyraxterinok
@J R in WV: My brother architect said 1 reason was European cities often are legally prevented from constantly spreading ever more out from the center. Thus they don’t destroy their inner cities but work to keep them livable and walkable.
Bill Arnold
@Omnes Omnibus:
Thanks, that Epstein thread was good.. I’m inclined to see it along the lines of the way that Chris Johnson does at the end of the thread. As possibilities, note.
Anyway, one point of calling these possibilities out is to spike toxic narratives. Will be watching the media takes the next few days on this.
noname
@opiejeanne Replace Seattle with Portland (Maine) and your comment would 100% apply here as well. And not a whisper being heard about even the slightest improvements/additions to the abysmal “mass” transit we have here.
MomSense
@guachi:
Damn, the only real estate for sale in my area for 85,000 or less are undefined lots. I couldn’t find a house listed for 120,000 or under.
Brachiator
@Martin:
I don’t quite understand why you ascribe this to greed. I’ve heard variations of this from people who demonize California Prop 13. Are people always supposed to want to sell their homes? Where are they supposed to go?
And even though Prop 13 was crappy in a lot of ways, it was also unfair to increase property taxes to unsustainable amounts.
Miss Bianca
@Aleta: btw, speaking of dogs…whatever happened to the Lappies? Apologies if you’ve already answered this question – seems I never catch you in real time on threads anymore.
Martin
@opiejeanne: Parking is a huge problem. It’s a problem because we expect it to be free.
Seattle has 5 parking spaces per resident. You can only ever be using one of them. The other 4 are wasted. And you pay for none of them. Des Moines has 20 spaces per resident, so only 5% utilization.
Credit to SF here (since I bash them so much on housing policy) that they are doing demand based pricing. They got together with the owners of the parking structures and got agreement, at least in parts of the city, to do demand based pricing. Street parking and lot/structure parking is the same price, and it will vary from $.50 to $6.50/hr. Now, at $6.50/hr a lot of people are going to seek out alternatives. BART becomes a lot more attractive.
That’s really the key to public transit adoption. Cars are considered a sunk cost to owners. So if parking is free, then mass transit needs to be cheaper than gas *and* more convenient. But charge everyone for parking (and I mean everyone) and there will be a rush for public transit like this country has never seen. Think of a retail shop. They’re paying anywhere from $25,000 to $75,000 per parking space. And they need to make that up in prices. Some retailers spend more for free parking than they pay in wages. For many cities, if you put up housing only in parking lots, you’d completely solve their housing problem.
I’ve long advocated that private vehicles should be banned in Manhattan. Service vehicles can enter at certain times. Cabs can remain a thing (make their licensing more transparent and approachable) but otherwise turn the streets over to bikes and pedestrians. Restaurants can now open up outside seating, that kind of thing. The city has enough mass transit to make it viable, so go for it.
Roger Moore
@Another Scott:
An important point, though, is that upzoning results in incremental increases in density, not radical ones. When the zoning changes, they don’t come in the next day with building crews to tear out the single family homes and replace them with apartments. Instead, homes are replaced one at a time as their owners decide to sell, or ADUs are built as the individual owners decide they want to.
I lived for nearly a decade in a neighborhood that had been upzoned from single family homes to allow up to 4 units on what had been a single family lot. That happened years before I got there, and most of the lots were still single family homes. During the time I lived there, two houses on my block were replaced by a cluster of townhomes. I would guess it will take a few more decades for the neighborhood to be completely converted. And this is in Pasadena, where home prices are very high, so there’s plenty of demand for townhomes.
James E Powell
I woke up late and haven’t read anything but this blog.
Why is #ClintonBodyCount trending on twitter?
Miss Bianca
@Jim Parish: Oh, there you go, dragging actual history into this!//
Well, then, I sit corrected!
rikyrah
@Aleta:
so sorry for him..
phuck cancer.
trollhattan
@Martin:
It does not help one bit that the real estate and lending industry lie their fucking heads off about something like last November’s Prop 10, which would have stricken Costa-Hawkins from state law. They claimed it “established statewide rent control.” It did not. They convinced my loan-broker spouse it established statewide rent control and even after I showed her the actual text in the voter guide, she held that belief. So like other times, the lie became reality.
Shrug–whaddyagonna do?
I know a housing developer who lives here but only builds in Texas because “it’s too hard in California.” I do not know how one alters such beliefs.
jl
‘ Warren: “I have a plan to build 3.2 million housing units.”
Sanders: “We’re going to tell the developers you just can’t come in and build expensive condos and drive working class people out.” ‘
Nice tweet. Summarizes nicely why I wanted Warren to run in 2016, and why she is my first choice and sending her money now.
And if Harris can get clearer on some important policy issues (like stop ‘misunderstanding’ questions on health care policy and backtracking a day later) she’d be my second choice.
But, if Biden or Sanders is the nominee, I’ll do whatever I can to help them win in the general election.
Unless we get a surprise in the other candidates’ campaigns, how they pitch them (e.g. emphasis on specific policy solutions versus ‘values’ campaign), looks ever more likely the real contest is between those four. I am puzzled why Biden’s nostalgia tour pitch works at all, but even he is starting to put out some interesting policies. So, that is good. Surprised Booker is not doing better.
rikyrah
@James E Powell:
I found a possible answer on another blog:
Martin
@Another Scott:
But that’s exactly the thing city permitting should be blocking – focus on units, not the price of units. Instead they prevent the single family home from being torn down so that a 20 unit apartment complex can go up. If you want to tear down the tenement and build a skyscraper, then great, but there better be more units in it than the thing you replaced.
But that’s generally not the problem we’re seeing. We’re not seeing a loss of units. We’re seeing a gain of units being blocked. Hell, SF is blocking abandoned laundromats from being converted to apartment blocks. It’s absurd.
MisterForkbeard
@James E Powell: No idea. Maybe because Epstein was found hurt this morning in his cell? CLEARLY it’s Bill Clinton’s ruthless agenda, and not literally any of the other extremely likely causes.
different-church-lady
@guachi: For me, the hard line is when you do so just to flip it. Everything below that is a grey area.
Roger Moore
@Barbara:
To put it another way, I understand the desire to have an architecturally consistent neighborhood, but I think it’s far less valuable than providing enough housing for the people who need it.
Another Scott
@Barbara: Perhaps I wasn’t clear. (I live in NoVA.)
I agree that new housing is needed in many areas, and that that new housing needs to be affordable. More apartments is good, and AirBnB is a big problem (developers buying up apartments and renting them out via AirBnB and refusing to obey hotel regulations, etc.).
I don’t agree with Martin, though, that any new housing will reduce housing prices and automatically help. While oligarchs can’t buy up a thriving city, they can cause problems by taking land that can be better used for higher density, more affordable housing. Empty highrises don’t help anyone (except maybe money-laundering oligarchs and their minions).
I hear the stories about how Amazon’s HQ2 is going to destroy Alexandria/Arlington. I think it’s mostly overblown (because the number of new employees is ramping up very slowly), but I haven’t kept up with the details. I do think that housing in the DC region needs to change from sprawling suburbs into something that has more density. But it will take time, and requires a lot of thought. My impression is that the way Fairfax has handled Tysons Corner is generally sensible, but I haven’t kept up with the details there, either…
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
rikyrah
@The Moar You Know:
At first, I thought those who said Abolish ICE were being hyperbolic. I’m done believing that. It’s not a few rotten apples. The barrel is rotten, from top to bottom.
And, it’s the unwillingness to follow the phucking law. You wanna get someone, then bring a damn warrant SIGNED BY A JUDGE. This whole thing about them busting into people’s houses, and snatching them up, like they’ve been doing across the country, without a warrant, is such bullshyt.
And, their insistence on attempting to bully people who don’ t follow their illegal orders…
J R in WV
Regarding Mueller’s testimony, he seemed way more amenable to the questioning in the afternoon session with Adam Schiff’s committee.
I especially liked the back and forth with Schiff, when Chairman Schiff asked Mueller if it would be immoral to accept election assistance from a foreign Power, and unethical? and Muller says “And illegal!” which is the prosecutor speaking up!
That right there is a winning video clip that should be running on people’s TV from now until November, 2020!
Frankensteinbeck
@The Moar You Know:
They can’t. Republican voters want to cause pain, and view any kindness as evil. It’s an attitude that is always dangerously popular, but it has gone into overdrive in the US because of the browning of the country. Republicans see reasons (brown people) to be scared and angry all the time, on the street, on TV and in the movies. The people who want to help brown people preach kindness in general. Any individual Republican’s personal right to hurt others is under constant attack, and evangelicals in particular are feeling that pinch. They used to be publicly acclaimed the most virtuous. Now their children are leaving them and everyone not an evangelical thinks they’re crazy assholes (because they are). There’s no room in this for proposals to stop the rich from hurting people, because the rank and file want to see a boot on someone’s neck. Anyone’s, even their own, at this point, just so long as cruelty is happening. There’s no room for infrastructure of increasing the safety net, because that would be kindness, and worse the n-lovers want it.
Brachiator
@Roger Moore:
As always, there are very interesting battles over housing and gentrification in Pasadena. Even though unemployment is supposedly very low, the homeless population in LA county, including Pasadena, keeps growing. Many of these people have been priced out of homes by skyrocketing rents. I see more people sleeping in parking lots, near businesses, on the green at Pasadena City College.
And yet homeowner groups keep fighting affordable housing. An Avon distribution center on Foothill Bl closed and all the employees were laid off, yet homeowner groups fought plans to include housing in any new project for the site. They are also fighting a project which would increase housing in a project on Los Robles.
As an aside, landlords are increasing rents on commercial properties and seem willing to keep the buildings vacant.
jl
@rikyrah: They need some good videos for this to really take off. I don’t repeating old and ridiculous scandals based on nothing on twitter will work.
Can they find a Congressperson who will make videos of him or her shooting pumpkins in the backyard? Nunes? Crapo? Crapo’s a Senator so probably beneath his dignity to shoot the pumpkins himself, he’ll have a manservant do it. So, they need to go with a GOP House member who will do it all himself and jump around a lot, gesture and make pro-wrestler type faces.
different-church-lady
@Another Scott: In the end, we don’t really have a housing problem; we have a too-many-people problem.
But that’s completely taboo, so we never talk about it.
trollhattan
@rikyrah:
When I hear the stream of sewage spewing from the mouth of the president of the border guards union (whatever they’re called) I can only draw one conclusion–the wrong people are doing the job and we need to start over. I doubt there’s a way to correct the culture from within, because they’re bringing their own beliefs to the job.
It could require reorganizing Homeland Security–Bush II’s lasting gift to the nation.
Another Scott
@different-church-lady: No, we’ve got plenty of land. Everybody could live in Texas!!11
(Not me, though.)
;-)
Cheers,
Scott.
guachi
@MomSense: Augusta, GA is really, really cheap. I’ve seen “gentrification” used for neighborhoods moving upscale because the houses are affordable It’s not a deliberate government policy, it’s just where the inexpensive housing is.
That’s where my confusion lies. Is it simply wealthier white people moving into a neighborhood because the houses are affordable, or does there have to be some other dynamic in play?
germy
jl
@Another Scott: So far, building has focused in high end residential and commercial properties. So far, saturation of these markets has not produced increased supply for lower income people. After the high end market is saturated in an area, the money does not start investing in properties affordable for lower income people, to the frustration of many local real estate people, at least people not among those few who specialize in high end sector.
One theory about why this happens is that, in low interest rate economy that encourages asset bubbles, high end properties are like options for rich people and companies. saturated with cash. Might do nothing, but some chance of a big payoff. Money that local people hope will go into lower end residential sector is not interested and flies off to some goofy real option play someplace else. There is some good evidence this is the case. Anecdata is to read marketing brochures that real estate investment industry puts out. “Tried of luxury condos, market saturated…. Next big thing is timber plays on South America!!!!!”
different-church-lady
@James E Powell: Because Twitter is a fool’s paradise.
trollhattan
Hey everybody, Boris is bringing a new golden age. MBGA!
Laws schmaws, let’s have tea.
Miss Bianca
@different-church-lady:
It’s “completely taboo” because a). population control is a red herring – or should I say “white” herring, because it’s almost always a call for Those People to stop having babies; and b). it isn’t true.
Not only is the US birth rate declining at a rather precipitous rate, but what the linked article calls “cost of living” *includes* the price and availability of housing, which among other things is part of what’s driving the birth rate down. The problem isn’t “too many people” per se.
different-church-lady
@jl: Thank you. Everyone leaves out the speculation and investment angles. Real estate markets are being badly contorted by it.
Another Scott
@guachi: WUSA:
That’s probably a good way to think about it: If new development is coming in to quickly and completely change the neighborhood and force out the long-time residents, it’s one thing. If someone is fixing up properties but working with the people in the neighborhood rather than explicitly trying to force them out, then it’s something else. Maybe “gentrification” is too loaded a word these days.
But we know that neighborhoods in cities change, and suburbs will change too. Cities that don’t change die.
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
Steeplejack
A soothing story for our troubled times:
trollhattan
@Miss Bianca:
Think there’s a dual hammer of housing cost and tuition debt causing a significant cohort of millennials to delay marriage, home purchase, having kids, etc. And post-millennials like my kid think there’s simply no point because the climate will kill us all. (I’m “‘Lucky,’ because I won’t be around for the worst of it.” Thanks, kiddo.)
Gin & Tonic
@different-church-lady: France has about four times the population density as the US, Germany about six times.
Kay
@Another Scott:
She feels picked on, and she should, because the truth is they’re all terrible:
They will now deny they depicted this thing like this. Although we all watched in in real time, yesterday. They really have more in common with the man they exclusively cover and obsess over than they want to admit. Either that or it’s spreading.
Haberman didn’t even cover Clinton in ’16. Amy Chozick did. Based upon that super duper work she was then given a star turn analyzing the female D candidates running for Prez in 2020. Again! We get it again! Same person! What did we do to deserve this?
It’s systemic. It’s in the bloodstream of the place. Some of them are actually too young to have developed Clinton-loathing over decades. They are passing it down.
joel hanes
@different-church-lady:
If this blog had upvotes, I’d open a hundred sock-puppet accounts with which to upvote this comment.
joel hanes
@Miss Bianca:
it’s almost always a call for Those People to stop having babies
canard, but an extremely effective one.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
Coaching at the World Cup
Coach Warren: we have an extensive game plan, with layered practices and film study.
Coach Wilmer: we’re going to tell the other team let us score.
joel hanes
@Gin & Tonic:
It’s not about density, it’s about total impact.
Miss Bianca
@joel hanes: A “canard”, eh? Oh, really?
jl
@different-church-lady: No one is really sure why commercial and residential construction and maintenance industries have been messed up since the financial panic and Great Recession. Real residential investment to increase and maintain capacity for a growing population never really recovered from the housing bust, and population keeps increasing. The increase in residential housing was not all that big historically during the housing boom. It was mostly a price boom not a building boom. Huge price bubbles are not built on top of truly plentiful supply. People don’t realize that the data show excess speculation on new housing sent real investment in new construction and rehabilitation into the dumpster starting at the height of speculative bubble, before the price bubble burst, and it has never recovered.
Anyway, the low interest rate and asset bubble explanation is just one part of the story, but I think an important part that is often neglected.
Kayla Rudbek
@J R in WV: I had a very similar experience this month on a bicycle trip from Bruges to Amsterdam. I was surprised that once the spouse and I were out of Rotterdam and between Rotterdam and The Hague, and The Hague to Delft, Delft to Amsterdam, that there was so much rural space left between the cities, as compared to the DC-Baltimore corridor.
JPL
@Another Scott: Property taxes also play a role. The Old Fourth Ward in Atlanta has been gentrified. What is forcing people out of their homes is the increase in property values causing local income individuals unable to pay their taxes. They can sell their property for a higher value, but then what. City officials can fix it by allowing individuals to stay and pay the increase tax when they move.
jl
@jl: Bottom line is that residential units per person in US has been steadily declining since height of price boom, at least looking at census and real estate industry data together. So more to the housing affordability problem spreading across most urban areas in the US than speculation. I think both are important factors.
joel hanes
@Miss Bianca:
Your linked article seems to me to say:
1. Overpopulation is indeed a serious problem
2. We ought to do something about it.
3. But serious people can’t have a serious discussion about it
4. Because they get accused of racism if they do
5. Because racists also talk about “overpopulation” in a racist way
ETA: Some Nazis were into vegetarianism. That’s not a good critique of vegetarianism.
Chris Johnson
@Frankensteinbeck:
There’s a lot of truth to this, but never forget that there is active, Russian-backed propaganda 24/7 to make you keep saying exactly that as loudly as possible, just to make damn sure those very people don’t defect.
People are hard to manage. To keep those people that ‘evil’ you’ve got to plausibly tell them that the evil liberals want to let in brown ravening hordes, AND also that they hate you, eternally and forever, and consider you not just panicky idiots doing awful things but actively cruel monsters who only want to destroy.
Writer tip: you can only write good villains when you see their side and write consistently from that side. In so doing you’re writing a villain who thinks they are the good guy.
It’s getting harder to be a Republican and see yourself as the good guy, so the Republicans are in a frenzy of fear-mongering. If you’re that dumb that you buy into it forever, you do turn into a monster, and you start becoming the sort of person you describe above. To a lesser extent you do the well-documented Nazi thing of dehumanizing classes of people, so you can exterminate them without being troubled. That way, to you it’s not about kindness or cruelty, it’s vermin control as public policy, and they’re not people.
Most voters don’t effortlessly go there. It’s not as easy as you say it is, to produce that. One thing they need is to establish that joining the opposite side is both evil and impossible, so they need people like you classifying Republicans as a kind of vermin, incorrigible, because then breaking ranks and joining you becomes impossible. You’ve already decided the Republicans can only be vermin acting as cartoon villains. This is a problem.
I don’t want the Republican electorate stamped out like vermin, but I damned well want them to wake the fuck up and cope with stuff differently. They are tantamount to criminals at this point. Criminals have motivations other than being irredeemably evil (in fact, being so psychologically broken as to be irredeemably evil will get you disqualified from the justice system and treated as an insane person not fit for normal punishment). Motivations are fine things to have but we are still responsible for not being criminals.
Miss Bianca
@joel hanes: Yeah, and just what is “talking about it” going to accomplish? Seriously? Nothing. Action, now, *that’s* the ticket! Are you prepared to start sterilizing people against their will? Because hey, that will take care of the problem!
Just because those vegetarian Nazis did stuff like that doesn’t make it *bad*, right? I mean, say what you like about Mao, he sure took care of China’s birth rate!
Roger Moore
@Brachiator:
I’m following all this stuff closely. The one that really pisses me off is the proposed construction at the old Space Bank storage site. It’s a perfect place for high density housing- very close to the freeway and Sierra Madre Villa Station- but the NIMBYs are fighting it tooth and nail on what seem like spurious environmental grounds.
And I’m deeply aware of commercial landlords sitting on vacant property. I live near a shopping center in Upper Hastings Ranch that used to have an Albertson’s. The owners raised the rent to force the Albertson’s out and haven’t found a replacement tenant in the past 7 years. They’ve allowed the whole property to decay and have only started to do anything about it under threat of criminal prosecution for code violations.
That site is actually forcing me to deal with my own inner NIMBY. I know the most logical development plan for it would be to knock the whole thing down and replace it with a mixed use development, especially since that area has good enough bus service that it would have been classified as transit rich by SB 50. Unfortunately, that would inconvenience me, especially if they built the new place high enough to spoil my view. I don’t think that’s likely to happen- the hill there is steep enough they could probably make it 4 stories without hurting my view, but the thought of it forces me to accept that saying YIMBY may have personal consequences.
joel hanes
Are you prepared to start sterilizing people against their will?
Jesus, what a bad-faith argument.
No, I’m prepared to donate to Planned Parenthood and agitate for repeal of the Hyde amendment, and to talk about how women who have ready access to affordable, confidential, effective contraception have tended to choose, on their own, to make decisions that benefit us all.
Thanks for calling me a nazi, though — it’s been a while.
Chris Johnson
@Kay: I’m really starting to think the Clinton-hate thing is, above all, because she’s a Russia hawk.
I wasn’t when I voted for her, but by now I am also a Russia hawk, and when I look at how much Russia is controlling inside our borders now, it’s no wonder they were able to make Donald Trump be President. It was out of sheer desperation. They’ll most likely throw Trump to the wolves and put up with just about anybody else so long as they don’t get another Russia hawk, because now they’ve justified far more than Clinton could ever have said against them, in those innocent days when she had to make nice for political reasons.
MoxieM
@Martin: And those of us who have trouble walking, but are not in wheelchairs? Must we always have enough dough for a cab or whatever? (By trouble walking, I mean, a couple of blocks to the next subway stop.) Yeah, I used to hike and bike and stuff. I’d quite literally give my left arm to be able to walk freely again, but ya know, sometimes it’s not a choice.
I don’t live in Manhattan (can’t afford!)–hell I can’t even afford my home turf of Boston/Cambridge anymore. But what you’re proposing excludes people with compromised mobility (like me) from urban centers.
Righteous lefties are so often blind to the needs of the less well abled.
Roger Moore
@Miss Bianca:
Yes and no. The “cost of living” is averaged across the population at large, but not everyone is buying the same things. In particular, costs for young people seem to be going up faster than costs for old people. College tuition has obviously gone through the roof, housing prices are high, and childcare is unreasonably expensive. Daycare for a child too young to go to school can now cost more than college tuition, so it’s very difficult for young people still paying off their college debt to afford a child.
Miss Bianca
@joel hanes: Oh, in other words, you support lowering the birth rate by empowering women and enabling them to control their own damn fertility which is *exactly what that article advocates*?
And you’re the one who brought up the Nazis, pal. For the record, I *didn’t* call you a Nazi, but even if it’s “been a while” (how often *do* you get called a Nazi anyway?), hey, if the uniform fits…
Miss Bianca
@Roger Moore: I think the author of the article was talking specifically about cost of living for her age cohort, which would be Millenials, and so would include exactly the things you pointed out.
Roger Moore
@Miss Bianca:
The author of the article you linked mentioned stagnant wages when adjusted for inflation, which is based on the cost of goods and services across the whole economy. So that is not factoring in the faster increase in prices of goods that are aimed more specifically at young people, like college tuition and childcare.
Miss Bianca
@Roger Moore: OK, I’ll accept that.
Brachiator
@Roger Moore:
Like you, I try to follow this stuff, but didn’t know the details about Albertson’s. Thanks very much for your perspective on this.
As an aside I think the decline of retail business, accelerated by increased online shopping, is having an impact on housing. Mixed use developments might not be as attractive as before.
I don’t know the answer to all this, but it is frustrating to see some of the opposition to increasing housing stock when it is clearly needed and beneficial in the long run.
Brachiator
@Miss Bianca:
Interesting article. Thanks for the link. One thing I found odd.
But the two most populous countries are China and India. You could wipe out all the countries listed, including the United States and there would still be a “population” problem.
I have not been able to read all the posts here and don’t want to step into any ongoing argument here about overpopulation. I tend to be very skeptical on this issue, but I mainly just wanted to thank you for the link. I will read the article more closely later on.
Bill Arnold
@James E Powell:
This is probably (almost certainly) worth tracing back to its origins. (Will look later to see if anyone has done a time-labeled map already.)
joel hanes
@Miss Bianca:
which is *exactly what that article advocates
Yes. I agree with the article, in all its particulars.
The area of agreement I first highlighted was that well-intended opposition to racist/authoritarian “population control” and eugenics policies too often stymies _all_ discussion of population as a contributor to various problems.
And no sooner did I mention contraception than you illustrated that point to a nicety.
I regret lashing back by putting the word “Nazi” in your mouth — you did not say that. Instead, you implied that I favored forced sterilization, which I find abohorrent.
Sometimes when have I advocated for a goal of lower population, I’m immediately accused of advocating mass murder of various segments of the existing population, (the replies tend to include “you first”) so your response was moderate in comparison. Those replies have, in the past, often gone straight to Nazi comparisons.
Here’s a current and related article:
https://www.wonkette.com/oh-boy-jordan-peterson-wants-us-ladies-to-ignore-climate-change-and-go-on-a-maternal-adventure
Barbara
@different-church-lady: Are you kidding?
@Miss Bianca: Thank you.
Miss Bianca
@joel hanes: But you do grok the essential point that you are criticizing this article for advocating exactly what you claim to be advocating for, only they are not using the term “population control”, right?
To me, the point is clear: yes, people – OK, *I* – *do* react negatively to the term “population control”, because that word “control” is triggering. We “control” pests. It’s easy – perhaps too easy – to jump to the conclusion that when folks talk about the need to “control” people/population, that they are talking about some people and population being more in need of “controlling” than others. If you didn’t mean it that way, I can only apologize for misunderstanding you.
Litlebritdifrnt
There is a huge problem with Russian oligarch’s buying homes in London for tax purposes and then leaving them to rot basically. The Guardian did an expose on it several years ago. Homes are being bought and left to rot. Several councils are now placing legal orders against them that state that if they have been empty for more than two years they can be seized by the council and turned into affordable housing and rented to people on the council’s housing waiting list. On the other hand some councils are placing a ban on homes being turn into HMO’s (homes of multiple occupancy, where people rent out a room in a house with a shared kitchen, bathroom and living area) or flats (as has happened in Morecambe) which means that if you can’t afford to rent a four or five bedroom house but you could afford to rent a two bedroom flat you are SOL because the council is not allowing investors to convert them. It is silly. The bottom line is that people need places to live.
Miss Bianca
@Litlebritdifrnt:
Thank you for mentioning that. It’s not just Russians – Saudi princelings and rich Chinese, among others, are also doing it, and not just in London – in New York, San Francisco, Tokyo, Paris – it’s happening in a lot of the world’s major cities.
Roger Moore
@Brachiator:
That’s a potential issue, but you could do mixed use with services instead of goods. If you focused on professionals like lawyers, you could make some live/work spaces. And you have to wonder if some kinds of retail, like grocery stores, would benefit from having a customer base in their own building.
joel hanes
@Miss Bianca:
Repeating: I am not criticizing that article. I agree with it in all particulars.
Roger Moore
@Miss Bianca:
There’s definitely a Chinese oligarch buying spree near me. I’ve mentioned it before. There’s a very nice neighborhood that looks like it was built in the 1950s and is full of the kinds of properties prosperous lawyers, bankers, and doctors would have bought back then: 3,000-4,000 sq/ft ranch houses on lots that are 1/2 acre and up. They’re being torn out and replaced with what I can only call mansions. These are 10,000+ sq/ft houses with 6-8 bedrooms and all kinds of crazy amenities: dual kitchens (one commercial scale kitchen and one show kitchen), home theaters, ballrooms, etc. If Chinese liked bowling, I’m sure they’d have bowling alleys.
Ruckus
@Brachiator:
I’ve just moved from Old Town Pasadena to Covina so I don’t have to drive to work, I can walk. I’ve been told by car drivers at stop lights that I must be poor because I’m walking – that I can’t afford a car. There’s more to it than just money. Status, even the perception of wealth, all of it is involved. Considering the area and the shouters, there may be some level of mega going on. But assholes are assholes everywhere so who knows.
Ruckus
@Roger Moore:
Some may not like it that work is only an easy elevator ride away.
Aleta
@Miss Bianca: hope I didn’t miss you again … I sent a couple of emails to you through cheryl and al, not sure if you got them, or if the form didn’t work. First the vet handling it withdrew. The younger one did get a local home with a 7 yr old girl, and the older one eventually went back to the breeder (a questionable imperfect situation they had tried to avoid, for the dog’s sake). I didn’t know about this part til later, but the older one (who’d always been bark-confrontational at other dogs) had in the last 2 years begun to have incidents of biting other dogs, several incidents. The friend in charge made the decision, after making the breeder make some promises. She hopes to monitor both dogs’ lives.
Aleta
@Barbara: @Barbara:
@rikyrah:
thanks very much.
Roger Moore
@Ruckus:
I think it’s safe to say that the kind of person who shouts rude things to passing pedestrians is acting like an asshole because they like being an asshole.
Brachiator
@Ruckus:
You’re lucky they don’t call the cops on you. It sounds like they think they have the right to police the neighborhood, to scan for the presence of poor people, who are, by definition, undesirable.
The minimum marker dividing poor from not poor, is owning a car, especially in Southern California. I’ve heard people say that they would never use public transportation because only poor people ride the bus.
Brachiator
@Roger Moore:
Hmm. Yep. But there may be vulnerabilities here as well. There is a mixed use development at Colorado and Los Robles. The biggest tenant, a Bank of America branch, recently pulled out.
An Interesting idea.
Also, contributing to the housing problem are people buying properties and using them exclusively for short term rentals, AirBnB stuff, etc.
Bill Arnold
@Roger Moore:
The people who shout rude things at pedestrians that they don’t know personally are at best deliberately rolling the dice, and probably just stupid.
NEVER assume that lack of status markers means lack of power.
Miss Bianca
@Aleta: thanks for the update!
Bill Arnold
@Brachiator:
A next door neighbor called the cops on me for the crime of wearing a hood and walking at night. (Have good night vision.) There have been other incidents as well. They are tempting me to fuck their life up in ways that they won’t even notice for a few years. (Skills, I have some/ / Skilz, I haz some. Also have ethics.)
Roger Moore
@Brachiator:
Permanent conversion of housing to rentals is a real problem. I wish companies like AirBNB would either A) exclude those kinds of properties completely or B) make sure they’re complying with all local laws. I think there’s a real place for short-term rental housing beyond conventional hotels. A house has amenities that a hotel lacks, and sometimes you really want those things. Also, hotels are often located away from residential areas, so they’re inconvenient when you’re visiting family and would like to stay within walking distance.