Dogs, data, and new inventions. Founder and Executive Director of @housingrightsUS. Personal account/opinions my own.
New York, NY
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Today we are announcing one of the largest housing discrimination lawsuits in US history against 124 real estate companies and brokers for discriminating against low-income families with housing vouchers – and we got it all on recording.
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nytimes.com/2022/05/25/nyreg…
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I would argue that this is better messaging than the 1000 bullet point visuals
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I’m staying at an Airbnb with a hot tub that charges you $50 extra a day for them to make the hot tub hot, and I can’t stop thinking about this meme
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The most notable part about this headline, “Zohran Mamdani wants to end all misdemeanor charges,” is that the article itself doesn’t include a single citation showing that Zohran Mamdani seeks to end all misdemeanor charges — because they made it up.
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"Research shows it costs taxpayers $31,065 a year to criminalize a single person experiencing homelessness while the yearly cost for providing supportive housing is $10,051."
housingmatters.urban.org/fea…
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Our organization has been conducting undercover investigations against brokers that discriminate against tenants, and you wouldn’t believe some of the responses we get
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(1) This is genuinely awesome and amazing
(2) There is NOTHING funnier to me than NYC learning about the technology of garbage trucks picking up garbage bins for the first time and people in other places wondering if this is a bit
Here’s a demo of New York City’s new automatic side loading garbage truck lifting large on street containers. A pilot program is expanding to all of Community Board District 9 in West Harlem.
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San Francisco’s poverty rate is 10%; Detroit’s is 33%.
San Francisco’s unemployment rate is 3%; Detroit’s is 20%.
Yet, San Francisco’s homelessness rate is a whopping 3 times higher than Detroit’s.
Why?
If you want to understand homelessness, follow the rent:
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Slanted benches don’t reduce homelessness.
Bolts on steps don’t reduce homelessness.
Raised grate covers don’t reduce homelessness.
Spiked windowsills don’t reduce homelessness.
There’s only one thing that *does* reduce homelessness — and that is housing.
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Welp it finally happened! After decades of NYC tenants being forced to pay countless $ of their hard earned money for brokers whom they didn’t want or need, the tenants of NYC will no longer be forced to pay brokers fees
The NYC brokerage mafia has been dismantled as we know it!
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Atlanta cut homelessness by 40% through housing
Houston cut homelessness by 63% through housing
Finland cut homelessness by 75% through housing
Tokyo cut homelessness by 80% through housing
The solution to homelessness isn’t policing — it’s housing, housing, and more housing
It takes on the ground work to end the homelessness crisis. Good to spend some time with the team at District 3 doing that vital service.
ALT Mayor Adams enters the District 3 Police doors
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Refugees can’t live in your “welcome refugee” signs, but they could have lived in the affordable housing that you blocked.
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“An absolute mess” that NYC, one of the most unaffordable cities on planet earth, will now have a brokerage system that functions like every other city in the United States of America. Scary stuff!
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-$500M in revenue in 6 months
-Rush hour delays at Holland Tunnel down 65%
-Subway ridership up 7%
-Bus ridership up 12%
-LIRR ridership up 8%
-Metro-North ridership up 6%
-Access-A-Ride ridership up 21%
Congestion pricing = smashing success
gothamist.com/news/numbers-a…
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“The libs have no idea what's coming.”
I mean we do, it’s literally on Wikipedia.
Tonight's blizzard of executive orders is the result of preparation. Many of Trump's most loyal staffers from the first administration have spent the past four years preparing for this day. They are going to go hard as soon as they get in. The libs have no idea what's coming.
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Places w/ higher rates of poverty, don’t have more homelessness (left)
Places w/ higher rates of mental illness, don’t have more homelessness (top right)
Places w/ higher rents, *DO* have more homelessness (bottom right)
Bottom line: The root cause of homelessness is housing.
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If Dems have any interest in winning more elections, they should run approximately one billion ads like these.
Soybean farmer: I get up one morning, I turn the news on and we gave $20 billion of taxpayer money to Argentina, my competition. And then the Chinese buy $12 or $14 billion worth of soybeans from the Argentinians.
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A perfect response to the landlords who are upset about NYC’s recent elimination of forced tenant-paid broker fees: If you love them so much, pay for them.
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This would be very bad for consultants and, thus, very good for America.
Did Kamala accidentally stumble into a new model for a very short campaign? What if the a party pushed all the primaries into the weeks before the convention? The long American campaigns have a real downside.
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Places like Mississippi, Alabama, and West Virginia have drug addiction, mental illness, poverty, low wages, unemployment, domestic violence, but extremely low rates of homelessness — because while all of these factors contribute to homelessness, the #1 factor is housing costs.
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New York City is trying to do what virtually every city in the developed world already does — putting trash in garbage cans — and some NIMBYs aren’t having it because the status quo of trash and rats spewed all over the sidewalks give that “cute neighborhood feeling”… Holy f*ck!
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One of the many benefits of doing congestion pricing in a city that has one of the most expansive public transportation systems in the Western Hemisphere is that you are just going to get a lot of banal stories like this
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In the 1960s, renters paid around 15% of their income on rent; homelessness was *not* widespread.
Nowadays, renters in high cost cities like NYC pay over 30% of their income on rent; homelessness *is* widespread.
Housing costs is the primary driver of homelessness. Debate over.
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You could get mad about someone doing what they can to feed their family and pay their rent in one of the most unaffordable cities on planet earth. Or you could seek therapy.
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Fun fact: New York City is one of the only cities in America where tenants are forced to pay for a broker they didn’t hire.
These brokers should learn how to make an honest living… or GET A REAL JOB
Behold the broker crowd ahead of a planned 9am rally opposing @OsseChi’s broker fee bill that would require the hiring party pays the fee
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Asia: Here is a magnetic levitating train that goes over 300 miles per hour
NYC: Here is a chair
NEW: after the @MTA hears complaints from @LIRR customers there’s nowhere to sit at the new $11B Grand Central Madison hub, they’ve added some seating as of today. Passengers have been told to limit their seating to 90 minutes. #NBC4NY
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The fact that San Francisco is our nation’s second densest city is everything you need to know about America’s aversion to density.
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The way the real world works is that if you build enough housing and affordable/supportive housing, more people will be housed.
This is how Atlanta was able to reduce homelessness by 40%, Houston by 63%, Finland by 75%, and Tokyo by 80%.
Boy it’s almost as if progressives have absolutely no idea how the real world works.
Funny how all of this is still exactly what they’re pushing, despite decades of unbridled failure.
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Hi everyone, in an effort to recoup my costs, I’m renting out an Airbnb hot tub I’m staying at for $50 a night.
Please be advised there will also be a $750 cleaning fee in case of accidental water splashage and a $1500 breathing fee for your existence.
SERIOUS INQUIRIES ONLY
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Here's an insane statistic: "One-third of tenants in eviction court devoted at least 80% of their household income to rent, and 92% received an eviction notice for falling behind"
Bottom line:
Housing costs + lack of rental assistance = evictions
Evictions = a policy choice
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Governor Cuomo awarded a $115 million no-bid contract to a random Illinois based firm to roll out New York’s federal rent relief program, which has only distributed $1 million of its $2.7 billion to date, amidst a health, economic, and housing crisis.
YOU CAN’T MAKE THIS SHIT UP
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The fact that Louisiana & Mississippi have the highest poverty rates in America & also the lowest homelessness rates show that while wages are undoubtedly a factor in our homelessness crisis (we need a living wage), it's not the primary factor. The primary factor is housing costs
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NIMBYS: Creating lots of housing won't make housing more affordable
Tokyo: Hold my beer
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Hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer money down the drain thanks to the fiscal conservatives
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“At Tokyo prices”
If only Brooklyn were like Tokyo!
I'm breaking up with Brooklyn. Sorry, but this place is like Cleveland but at Tokyo prices, Houston amenities, and Philly crime.
If you can afford Manhattan but choose to live in Brooklyn, you're a fool. I'd rather live in a shoebox in Manhattan (I already do) than stay here.
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When homeless people lose their personal items, clothing, food, medical devices, and wheelchairs from encampment raids, they aren’t any closer to obtaining housing — they are further away.
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And now that we are on the topic of fan mail, this one (regarding housing/affordable housing supply) is my favorite of all time.
I still consider changing my bio to “developer shilling transplant bitch”
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Somebody: Building doesn’t make rent cheaper.
Private equity real estate: We target areas that don’t build, because building would make rent cheaper.
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I want to share a story about the power of the Housing First model — which provides permanent housing to the homeless — and how it’s actively undermined through criminalization efforts and the high cost of housing.
This story takes place in Venice Beach.
(Thread)
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A central tenet of NIMBYism is that unless something is 100% good, it’s 100% bad, and since nothing is 100% good, everything is 100% bad, and therefore we should do nothing.
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Eventually suburban congestion pricing opponents are going to have to decide whether NYC is an irredeemable crime ridden hellscape or a place they want to come to so often that even $15 (for the traffic/pollution imposed) is too much to bear. Because you can’t have it both ways.
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“If you build affordable housing next to the highway, it will ruin my childhood memories.”
You literally can’t make this shit up.
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Anti-congestion pricing advocates have somehow convinced themselves that everyone who drives in NYC is poor and everyone who takes public transit is rich — leading to some of the dumbest discourse the world has ever seen.
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A perfect illustration of how the progressive project will fail unless blue states start getting their shit together on housing costs
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Yusef Salaam, who is one of the 5 Harlem men wrongfully incarcerated in the infamous 1989 Central Park jogger case, announced that he’s going to run for Kristin Richardson Jordan’s City Council seat next year, AND THIS WAS HER RESPONSE.
Sorry, but time for KRJ to go yesterday.
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“Abundance” is just a fancy way of saying that we should build a ton of basic shit (like housing, public transit, clean energy) that people need in order not to die, which seems pretty rational to me.
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Welp, the gig is up.
My local Starbucks finally figured out my “no ice, but ice on the side” scheme. They are now refusing to fill it up to the top.
It was a good run.
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Governor Hochul to Senator Krueger regarding congestion pricing fallout: THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT
Senator Krueger: Yes
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“Congestion pricing is too unpopular so let’s go with something that’s infinitely more unpopular” is a perfect window into Hochul’s political acumen, which is nonexistent
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Japan also has an ocean next to it, but unlike NYC, it utilizes this really cool thing called the SKY, where there is ample space to build.
We should try it sometime!
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I really don’t want to play this game, but I’ll bite: If homeownership was the only way to build wealth, Romania would’t be among the poorest countries in Europe and Switzerland would’t be among the richest.
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The definition of gaslighting is abandoning a climate policy (congestion pricing) and then doing a dramatic speech on the climate
Next week’s heat wave is no joke: Areas throughout New York are expected to hit record high temperatures.
Extreme heat is the number-one weather-related cause of death in the U.S. Make sure you’re prepared: dhses.ny.gov/heat-safety-tip…
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West Virginia has the highest opioid overdose rate per capita in the country, but one of the lowest homelessness rates, because while drugs are a factor in homelessness, the #1 factor is housing costs.
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Today is the day where NYC finally cracks down on the brokerage mafia, which has forced tenants to spend their hard earned $$ on a service they didn’t want or need that landlords should have either been paying themselves or doing themselves like virtually every other city in 🇺🇸
NYC Council set to vote Wednesday on bill shifting broker fees from renters to landlords
buff.ly/3AtVKUV
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One thing that NYC brokers who *force* tenants to pay broker fees fail to understand is that almost no tenant wants their services because it’s 2024 and we have an even better service known as the internet.
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(1) Only 20% of households in Manhattan own cars
(2) Their median household income is approx $150,000
And
(3) The idea that the future of authentic food in Astoria rests on wealthy Manhattanites being able to drive there for free is just about the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard
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Of all the things to make your #1 issue in a NYC mayoral race, imagine going with “blocking 123 units of affordable housing for low income seniors in one of the richest neighborhoods on planet earth, SoHo” and then bragging about it on the internet.
Seek help.
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That moment when New York City realized that it doesn’t have to resort to clogging its curbs and sidewalks with loose bags of trash and can instead rely on sophisticated technology: Trash cans
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Then they find out it’s not a bit and are like, “how the F have you all been living?!?!”
And we are just like,
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“A ban on forcing NYC tenants to pay broker fees will result in broker unemployment” is such a bad argument
In many cases, NYC brokers are charging tenants for a “service” they don’t want or need — so now they can get a different job that provides ACTUAL value to society. Great!
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Sorry but if a broker’s business model relies on forcing tenants to pay for a service they don’t want or need, I think that job is not only useless, but actively harmful, and their jobs should be at risk.
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The outdoor dining program was a wildly popular success story. It replaced free parking (in a city where most people take public transit) with tax revenue, jobs, food, fun, entertainment, and so much more.
So, naturally, New York City had to destroy it.
We reached out to more than a dozen restaurant and bar owners to ask them if they plan to apply for a curbside dining permit under the City's new outdoor dining regulations. The response: anxiety, resignation, and a lot of uncertainty. hellgatenyc.com/restaurant-o…
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Percent of emergency rental assistance distributed by state:
Virginia: 54%
Texas: 47%
District of Columbia: 45%
New York State: 6%
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Good regulations are good.
Bad regulations are bad.
NYC’s decision to decimate one of the most popular, enjoyable, and effective programs in recent memory — which provided fun, food, and jobs to countless people — goes in the really bad column.
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Minimum parking requirements are unaffordable housing requirements.
Here are 37 studies showing how the cost of parking gets passed on to tenants in the form of higher rents.
(THREAD)
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And then they are like, “wait… you’ve just been leaving your garbage bags on the streets?!?!”
To which we respond by making loud monkey noises
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The funniest part about this segment is that she didn’t cite reducing the number of affordable housing units in her district as an example of how she’s blocking affordable housing, but as an example of how she’s creating it. Because housing breaks people’s brains.
Jon Lovett’s face when LA City Councilmember Imelda Padilla said she forced an affordable housing project to go down from six stories to three stories and add in EV charging spaces
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The hypocrisy of “fiscal conservatives” who rail against density despite the fact that it is significantly cheaper, easier, and more effective to provide public services in densely populated areas.
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Zohran’s campaign has been one of the most uplifting things I’ve seen in NYC politics in a long time. No consultant driven bullshit — just positivity, organizing, and a really big tent
He’s also going to destroy Cuomo’s political career today, which is a great service to society
A few days after the presidential election one year ago, we went to Fordham Road in the Bronx.
It was a little different last week.
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Robert Reich really ruined Robert Reich for me.
Every time he tweets something important out about rigged systems, I’m reminded of the time he tried to rig the system by preventing housing in his own backyard, because apparently housing is only a right for ppl like Robert Reich.
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Mississippi has significantly higher rates of drug use, mental illness, unemployment, and poverty than California. But homelessness there is a whopping 10x lower, because at the end of the day homelessness comes down to whether someone can afford to pay the rent.
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The funny thing about Manhattan is that it is unlike 99.999999999999% of places in America. So if you have an aversion to density, you have the option of living literally anywhere else.
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Some folks are working overtime trying to overcomplicate this, but it’s really straight forward:
You. Can't. Choke. Someone. To. Death. Just. Because. They. Yelled. At. You.
nytimes.com/2023/05/12/nyreg…
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