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We’reTexas

Certifiably Surly
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Everything posted by We’reTexas

  1. I’d say we are down to a 2019 sketch level.
  2. I will say, since several visitors have mentioned this to me, that the sketchy areas adjacent to Union Square and Moscone are night and day from what they were a few years ago. Yes it’s a performative push by the new mayor /no CR, but downtown is finally beginning to get some real momentum going.
  3. But with whistle tips.
  4. Sorry, it was a joke. We drive over to Temescal all the time.
  5. The airport area is legit bad but Oakland gets an unfair rap. It’s been over two years since they last found a body in the lake!
  6. That’s a very good point I concede - I come across a Republican on the ballot once every four years so I don’t think of the overarching goal as simply ensuring MAGA is not in office. But what I was really getting at by digging into housing - affordability being the issue underlying everything in blue states these days - is that scarcity politics is bad policy and not necessary. I would like us to be the party of results! Zohran discussed on Derek Thompson’s podcast how wrong it is that “efficiency” and “ROI” have become right-wing coded - totally agree with him that we should reclaim that. ?
  7. That’s interesting - why? I say this from the perspective of a Texpat in San Francisco (a market sometimes more expensive than NY, despite the assertions of some). Not to get too in the weeds on housing policy, but Mamdani’s platform consists of (1) doubling down on rent control, perhaps the most widely panned economic policy besides tariffs, (2) fully subsidized BMR housing (that’s going at around $1.3m per 1k sq ft unit in SF and DC - I’d assume NYC is the same and they need 1 million units in the next decade. The math doesn’t math.) and (3) allowing market rate development only to the extent it is weighed down by interest group concessions to the point it isn’t economically feasible. My apologies, that was still too much in the weeds, but the upshot is that the progressive approach has a very low likelihood of success because it is simply not realistic regardless of any level of support. More fundamentally, it is not designed to succeed because it is based on a politics of scarcity that favors incumbent residents at the expense of future ones, which is a fair summation of blue city progressive politics overall. I don’t think this scarcity mindset is necessary, so I vote against it. To his credit, Zohran is a very positive guy who, unlike most DSA types, tries to avoid the zero sum class warfare game when it comes to affordability.
  8. Thank you for the negs. My criticism of Mondami has nothing to do with New York City specifically. I live in a city equally as expensive and have been involved in housing advocacy for a decade. As we are both from Houston, I find your hostility confusing. Might you explain how the housing economics of NYC does not comport with the rest of America?
  9. What I am trying to explain is that both approaches are so utterly divorced from reality that they deserve ridicule.
  10. What are you talking about? His platform is lock stock and barrel the progressive position that has dominated NYC, SF, DC and LA since like the 70’s. As is the rest of his platform, just glossed up on Tik Tok Edit: Bozo said it better.
  11. Because if it’s Dem v Dem, policy matters. And btw, his housing policies (which have been the de facto coastal blue city approach for forty years) benefit the wealthy at the expense of brown people that aren’t incumbent renters and will only contribute to NY and CA losing house seats to TX.
  12. Think “build the wall and make Mexico pay for it” but make it leftist housing policy.
  13. Is this a serious question? Anyways, I don’t think it’s exactly a mystery that he is an affluent guy LARPing as DSA working class hero. There’s plenty of other content out there for amusement.
  14. Seriously, does not seem like much of a story. There is more than enough to ridicule the guy on, this seems quite messed up (and they have his SAT scores apparently).
  15. Hey now, you forgot about opening up the floodgates of private development as long as there’s 20% inclusionary zoning, 100% union labor, rent control on all new development, thorough environmental review, thorough community review, just a little more community review…
  16. I that’s a little charitable and this is more of a progressive versus liberal “everyone to the right of me is a fascist” thing.
  17. +1, but recommend not literally renting a car from the city center as that is quite a harrowing experience. Last time in the Loire we stayed at an old monastery, Fontevraud Abbey, near Chinon. Would recommend.
  18. It’s not RCV itself, it’s just the local election administration rules in place. The RCV can be done in minutes. Some places wait until all ballots are counted, I guess because they don’t like the idea of a candidate being eliminated one day and brought back the next, but it doesn’t have to be that way. In San Francisco we see the RCV results real time.
  19. Beautiful day to head up to Tomales Bay. Food-wise I give Marshall Store the edge but nothing beats the HI patio on a day like this.
  20. Stabilization vs control is basically a distinction without a difference these days (in SF the increase is capped around 2% usually). In addition to everything you mentioned, it decreases the rental supply as landlords take vacant units off the market for condo conversion (or sell to corporate owners with the means to evict). And there is no means testing - I’ve know a few people with such great deals they bought houses in Sonoma or Tahoe and kept their city apartments. And yet in pure Tobias Funke “but maybe this time” fashion, it persists (although St Paul is already walking its disastrous experiment back after just two years).
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