YIMBY

There's a housing crisis in the Bay Area thanks to decades of under-supply of housing. People who call themselves progressives only want 100% affordable housing projects built, which basically results in no new housing. Then neighbors are opposed to anything tall, or that casts shadows, or that has too little parking (or too much parking!) or is the wrong color, or the wrong style, or might allow "the wrong type or person" (as if such a thing was possible, and wasn't horribly racist) to live near them. So nothing is built and the problem gets worse.

So I spend a fair chunk of my free time at Berkeley city council meetings speaking for more housing. Or arguing with friends and relatives who are NIMBYs (despite what they would have you believe). Or writing op-eds:

• A mayoral candidate wrote an op-ed in the Daily Cal. So I wrote a response. Another person wrote an epic response to me, which is quite impressive in that it manages to encapsulate all manor of privileged NIMBYism and terrible carbon math into just a few hundred words.
• Governor Brown has an excellent plan to increase the amount of housing (including affordable housing) by streamlining the housing approval process statewide. The same mayoral candidate opposes it. So I wrote another op-ed, this time for Berkeleyside.