Rafa
LightNews LightNews
banner
rafamonsta.bsky.social
Rafa
@rafamonsta.bsky.social
150 followers 280 following 69 posts
Posts Replies Media Videos
Pinned
rafamonsta.bsky.social
Rafa @rafamonsta.bsky.social · Nov 20
Did you know that safety was a pretext for racism? While this has been mostly forgotten, it still largely serves the same purpose: to segregate people by income.
In 1909, the National Housing Association (NHA) was formed, largely in response to concerns over the spread of multifamily housing. Lawrence Veiller, who had spearheaded the tenement reform movement in New York City, became its secretary. In the following years, NHA leaders and prominent city planners, led by Veiller, propounded on the evils of multifamily houses and advocated strategies to curb their spread. At the first annual conference of the association in 1911, the chairman of the Massachusetts State Housing Committee declared: "Towns... ought never to be cursed with tenement houses... and it may well be provided as a preventive measure that they shall be of fireproof construction." By contrast, a Hartford planner stated that the building code should "interfere as little as possible" (NHA Proceedings 1911, 73, 107). A Harvard professor explained why even the most expensive types of apartment construction were undesir-able, even for childless families: [Disease may pass from one apartment to its neighbor through the common hall and through the mediation of vermin which pass easily from one suite to another.... The sounds from neighboring apartments frequently make rest and quiet impossible. True privacy and solitude, though very important to the growth of the moral individual, are difficult to obtain. ... It becomes impossible for the mother of a family to choose her children's associates, to prevent her child from coming in contact with children or adults of unwholesome character who may reside within the same building. The mother cannot supervise the play of her child when outside of the apartment, and in general the atmosphere of the tenement or apartment house is one destined to Create a race of adults that is unhealthful, puny and socially highly artificialized (Ford 1913, 476). es ls BS X-. Veiller, concerned with strategy, proposed that legislation to prevent multifamily housing use indirect methods because "zoning legislation will no doubt be fought strenuously and perhaps defeated." He outlined an approach designed to make apartment construction, even of three-unit dwellings, prohibitively expensive: [DJo everything possible in our laws to encourage the construction of private dwellings and even two-family dwellings, because the two-family house is the next least objectionable type, and penalize so far as we can in our statute, the multiple dwelling of any kind. ... If we require multiple dwellings to be fireproof, and thus increase the cost of construc-tion; if we require stairs to be fireproofed, even where there are only three families; if we require fire escapes and a host of other things, all dealing with fire protection, we are on safe grounds, because that can be justified as a legitimate exercise of the police power. ... In our laws let most of the fire provisions relate solely to multiple dwellings, and allow our private houses and two-family houses to be built with no fire protection whatever (NHA Proceedings 1913, 212).
Reposted by Rafa
marklemley.bsky.social
The idea that eventually enough US citizens will be sent to South Sudan that they might be able to form a class action to challenge their removal years later isn't going to protect anyone's rights as a practical matter
June 27, 2025 at 4:45 PM
Reposted by Rafa
jrskis.bsky.social
More Sausalito shennigans. Can't meet a deadline? Just revise it? What does a deadline mean when HCD allows them to keep changing them?
Table of Sausalito Housing element deadlines. Election orignally scheduled for November 2024. Now November 2025. Table of Sausalito housing element date revisions. Originally, Sausalito would request opinion from state attorney general in April 2024 if election failed.
May 18, 2025 at 1:47 AM
Reposted by Rafa
clarajeffery.bsky.social
this conspiracy theory on the left, the housing shortage is because landlords leave mass amounts of units unfilled, has been disproven again and again. We must build more housing, all kinds of housing.
theophite.bsky.social rev. howard arson @theophite.bsky.social · May 12
the strangest common idea on the left is that you can make more money by buying real estate and leaving it empty than by renting it out
May 12, 2025 at 6:39 PM
Reposted by Rafa
cselmendorf.bsky.social
City of L.A. is swinging for the fences w/ demurrer to YIMBY lawsuit challenging adequacy of housing element rezoning.

I think city will lose at this stage, but its demurrer does illustrate a real problem w/ manner in which cities & HCD implement the Housing Element Law.
1/5
May 7, 2025 at 6:57 PM
Reposted by Rafa
handle.invalid
It’s getting to the point where, if you’re a legislative staffer, you really should be honest with your boss about what taking amendments with unrealistic labor standards and affordability requirements means: it will build nothing so it’s probably not worth passing.

calmatters.org/housing/2025...
'Limited to no impact': Why a pro-housing group says California’s pro-housing laws aren’t producing more
Recent California laws were supposed to supercharge housing construction. According to YIMBY Law, they haven’t even come close.
calmatters.org
February 24, 2025 at 9:34 PM
rafamonsta.bsky.social
🤡 Alert! Last week the city of Jurupa Valley, CA in Riverside Co decided to block approval of a 67-home infill project on a vacant lot over some vague traffic concerns despite it being consistent with the city's zoning. At the same hearing they decided to apply for HCD's ProHousing grant program!
a cartoon dog is sitting at a table with a cup of coffee in front of a fire with the words this is fine .
ALT: a cartoon dog is sitting at a table with a cup of coffee in front of a fire with the words this is fine .
media.tenor.com
February 22, 2025 at 10:44 PM