Tim McCormick
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tmccormick.org
Tim McCormick
@tmccormick.org
Housing and knowledge activist, designer, researcher, writer, builder; Contributor writer at @Sightline.org; etc. Mostly in: Cascadia, Western US, LDN; nomadic. http://tmccormick.org; tmccormick.eth
On Monday I'll be presenting at #YIMBYtown housing conference in New Haven: "Why Homelessness is a Problem YIMBYs Should Care About and Can Help Solve". Please join us, send Qs/comments, look out for recording/recap later whova.com/embedded/ses... c/ @desegregatect.bsky.social
#YIMBYhomelessness
September 13, 2025 at 9:05 PM
"All professions are conspiracies against the laity."
—George Bernard Shaw. The Doctor's Dilemma, 1906. [see variant usage in the Preface].
archive.org/details/in.e...
August 17, 2025 at 7:09 AM
I'm following #Spokane reforms with special interest b/c I sometimes spend time there, a family member has a house there, and imo the property could be a good test site for the #CottageCluster, rock-bottom-cost, highly adaptable form of the #SpokaneSix I dream of. #SpokaneSixpack? #MissingSmall
August 8, 2025 at 2:59 AM
travel electric kettle, 450 or 500mL, ~$25. Mine (left, discontinued) is especially discreet, looks just like a thermos or waterbottle, is among my favorite and most constantly used #microdwelling essentials. For coffee/tea, oatmeal, soup. Next level: figure how to, or get model that will, boil eggs
August 2, 2025 at 4:49 AM
@valarie.bsky.social sort of in the vein of the lovely @backlisted.bsky.social, I wondered if you know or listen to LRB #CloseReadings? www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and.... I follow, though don't subscribe; just listened to latest, on #Frankenstein, with an especially plummy-voiced guest
July 28, 2025 at 8:53 PM
lol good meme, am working on case of rn
July 28, 2025 at 5:42 PM
for #YIMBYtown2025 Sept 14-16 in #NewHaven, I'm invited to present, join panel w/ @pacificlegal.bsky.social, on #homelessness responses. My topic: "Homelessness is a Housing Diversity Problem" www.tmccormick.org/writing/home... comments & #counterpoint welcome. bsky.app/profile/yimb...
#YIMBYtown
July 26, 2025 at 2:55 AM
to advocate via framing, I —or those who most need the housing and qualify, unlike those who arrange these matters— might suggest "Must #InclusionaryHousing funding go to the most-needed and cost-effective housing?" (vs just to apartments in new, large, market-rate buildings, if and when any built?)
July 25, 2025 at 6:40 PM
sounds like the alternative/social housing legislation the outcome of which was to request a study from the City Administrator (who's to ask the Portland Housing Bureau, is the purpose, says the Impact Statement, In a maneuver I don't understand): www.portland.gov/council/docu...
July 25, 2025 at 6:22 PM
would you say any of the participants personally or professionally disagrees with with what's advocated, i.e. that ' #InclusionaryZoning' (a strategic misnomer, vs #InclusionaryHousing) must be funded by taxpayers? Seems like, in Lincoln-Douglas terms, "Must the expansion of slavery be stopped?"
July 25, 2025 at 6:09 PM
can you gather all needed 'building-block' ideas for political science [or other topics] from meme posts? I'd say yes, it's in the ancient rhetorical/conceptual tradition of using ' #topoi', topical 'commonplaces', to speak, write, think. Key idea behind #Toposcope project
bsky.app/profile/mosh...
July 15, 2025 at 11:58 PM
it's only a matter of time, imo, before people realize, admit, or ask why not forms of what's now called/run as ' #InterimHousing' can be the hugely-needed low-cost, flexible housing today's #PermanentHousing complex won't build. It's like a love that dare not speak its name
bsky.app/profile/real...
July 15, 2025 at 11:17 PM
in many contexts, change is accepted more in the abstract than the concrete or local. The latter is the conceptual definition of #NIMBYism: [collective action failure due to] scale-dependent preferences/impacts, per e.g. hankinson@bsky.social 2018 www.mhankinson.com/documents/re...
July 11, 2025 at 5:17 AM
don't they call it 'Regelungszuwendung' ?
#Regelungszuwendung
July 3, 2025 at 8:10 AM
VAT used for "planning uplift" re-socialization? That would interesting. I asked an assistant about this, they said: not really, but it somewhat happens via other taxes/levies in some countries.
bsky.app/profile/jwbe...
July 3, 2025 at 7:59 AM
"Regulatory givings" by govts, perhaps requiring compensation, naturally follows. It sounds way nicer than ' #ValueCapture'!
See, e.g: Bell, Abraham, and Gideon Parchomovsky. "Givings." Yale Law Journal, vol. 111, no. 3, 2001, pp. 547-610. www.yalelawjournal.org/article/givi... #RegulatoryGivings
July 3, 2025 at 6:45 AM
perhaps, but it seems a question you can imagine a business owner or neighbor reasonably asking, in good faith even, like: what *would* be right?; and which having no answer to could disadvantage one. As in #RulesForRadicals #Rule11, "The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative."
July 1, 2025 at 2:48 AM
in what circumstances, if any, would you find it acceptable to restrict or remove an unhoused person from any public space? if offered immediate Affordable Housing?; w/assured affordability, for how long?; or PSH? Perhaps choice of any unit available? Or, this offered, and chosen by that person?
July 1, 2025 at 2:12 AM
interesting project and story. It's in Gresham; cost $6M + $8M / 70 units = 200k/unit right? #ProjectTurnkey was I'd say launched mainly for homeless interim housing oregoncapitalchronicle.com/2024/12/09/o... and imo remains the worthier goal, as homelessness is skyrocketing in the region.
June 18, 2025 at 4:37 PM
though that ADU exemption requires a 10-yr covenant against STR use www.portland.gov/code/17/14/070 so may be infeasible or unattractive to many people. Seems odd to me—if the goal is 5000 new homes of any kind, why exclude one of the lowest cost and least disruptive types?
June 18, 2025 at 4:15 AM
Ok. We meet at midnight, usual place, It begins NOW.
youtu.be/Jml7NVYm8cs?...
June 13, 2025 at 5:50 AM
as a child, visiting Utah and Omaha beaches, and the American Cemetery in Normandy, learning the enormous scale, stakes, and costs, conducted and paid for mostly by a nation of which I was a citizen but had never seen and knew little about, was a life-changing experience.
June 7, 2025 at 6:22 AM
great steps, but this #MiddleHousing focus is producing almost none of what is most needed: homes lower-income people can afford. What if we aimed higher, for all, and for #HousingJustice? eg by extending the logic to #MissingSmall & #MissingMovable? c/ @trufahey.bsky.social
bsky.app/profile/ande...
June 5, 2025 at 8:45 PM
Full article www.dannyhayes.org/uploads/6/9/.... Imo this & precedent studies problematically center & support a backward-looking, incumbent industry perspective, via focus on what #NewsMedia did or does; vs, what might be done today towards stated public & civic goals?
c/ @albrgr.bsky.social
May 9, 2025 at 3:41 AM
Great tip, new to me also and right to the top of my watch list!; and of (on? off?) course I looove the opening credits. I'd heard of the Algren book, probably via the Lou Reed song. TIL the book title is attributed to an earlier, 1952 country song.
May 8, 2025 at 7:35 PM