@LPInvestor @credealjunkie It probably helps that they already own the land. In places like SF, prevailing wage is pretty close to market wages already too.
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Rafa
5.2K posts
Rafa
@Rafamonsta
Housing and homelessness advocate| Sue the Suburbs | Former California Democratic State Central Committee delegate
Santa Cruz, CA Katılım Ekim 2010
1.3K Takip Edilen573 Takipçiler
@credealjunkie Wonder how they are making this pencil with the AB2011 affordability requirements AND prevailing wage....
Love the NIMBYs losing their mind over it....
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Loving Safeway going super long California housing, total scorched earth move
California YIMBY@cayimby
Safeway is partnering with a homebuilder to build nearly 4,000 homes on underused parking lots across five Bay Area sites — a direct result of state housing law, AB 2011. sfgate.com/local/article/…
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@lb_412 @mikesimonsen A married couple is exempt from up to $500k capital gain for their primary residence. Most of that gain in wealth is in the form of land value appreciation in most cases. You don’t need to tax it as a capital gain if it’s already being taxed as land value, but it should be taxed.
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@mikesimonsen Or reduce the capital gains tax significantly
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If we're serious about affordability, we should be serious about the Land Value Tax.
Kim-Mai Cutler@kimmaicutler
“In the Los Angeles area, for example, the average exit tax for homeowners 65 and older is $185,000, while the annual cost of insurance, maintenance and property taxes on a zombie home is only about $10,000, the data showed..” nytimes.com/2026/04/30/rea…
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@SanAntonioTim @trogglodytes @SidKhurana3607 And the A’s had given the Giants the rights to the South Bay market which allowed the Giants to do that to keep the Giants from leaving the Bay Area. A favor returned with a sucker punch.
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@trogglodytes @SidKhurana3607 If I recall correctly, the Giants blocked this as San Jose is considered part of their territory.
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Is Oakland the only city to lose a team in each of the Big 4 leagues?
NBA: Warriors move to San Francisco
MLB: Athletics to Vegas
NFL: Raiders to Vegas
NHL: Golden Seals to Cleveland (this was back in the 70s)
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@SukritGanesh @robparolek That would require at least three separate California constitutional amendment referendum votes.
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How to fix California:
- Implement 1910s building laws (zoning, permitting, etc.) on 50% of all urban land. Basically unfettered YIMBYism.
- Remove Prop 13.
- Abolish CEQA
- Uncap home insurance rates
- Eliminate corporate income taxes
- Adopt urbanism as state policy
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Rafa retweetledi
I support spending a lot of money on affordable housing, but this is not offsetting the other restrictions CA places on housing supply.
Subsidized housing should be additive to a functional housing market, not in lieu of one.
M. Nolan Gray 🥑@mnolangray
California spends the most of any US state subsidizing deed-restricted affordable housing, yet on every objective measure of housing affordability (price-income ratios, rent burdens, homelessness) we're either the worst or second worst on outcomes.
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@rsgore @CohenSite It can be a simple preference for teachers in the application process, not a requirement of the occupation of the unit.
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@CohenSite This is a great idea, but I have qualms about *reserving* for teachers (what if teachers don’t want to live there?) but maybe instead say height bonus if 10% of units are allocated to teachers and if utilized developer pays property taxes for them for 5 years or something.
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Thinking about how a “save our schools” act could work in practice…
For any public school that is at < 70% of student capacity…
- 1/4 mile walking distance
- 4 floors of height
- 50% of units need to be 3+ bedrooms
- Get an extra floor of height if at least 10% of units are reserved for public school teachers?
Chris Elmendorf@CSElmendorf
Where are the teachers' unions demanding an SB 79 for schools? Upzone for family housing within 1/4 of mile of neighborhood schools and you'll save at least some of them from closure.
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@IVO824 @CohenSite This bill would need to be set up so it doesn’t overburden schools that are full in places like the Central Valley. It’s more needed for coastal schools with declining enrollment. Maybe tie it to school capacity.
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@CohenSite Good points. I also think School Impact fees need to be reduced within this buffer area to half. This would make the construction of these projects more financially feasible for the multi-bedroom units. It’s a pipe dream for now cuz it would require a change on the CA schl code
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Rafa retweetledi
Where are the teachers' unions demanding an SB 79 for schools?
Upzone for family housing within 1/4 of mile of neighborhood schools and you'll save at least some of them from closure.
Hunter📈🌈📊@StatisticUrban
Many don't know how bad the school enrollment decline in big blue counties is. E.g. Los Angeles USD went from 646,683 kids enrolled in 2014 to 392,654 in 2025. Nearly a 40% decline in 11 years. There are both fewer kids in the country as a whole, and few families can afford LA.
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@us712171 @SukritGanesh Many cities think the new taxes new residents bring don’t offset the costs of services for those new residents.
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Cities like to talk about "local control", but the decisions they make have impacts that are almost never limited locally.
For instance, a city that builds a ton of high-tech offices but no housing will cause rents to rise in every other city within a 30 mile radius ...
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@jake_jmc20985 @mnolangray Raising the threshold to put better props on the ballot would require a public vote, w/ big, clear campaign that explains how it would be done so it wouldn’t infringe on democratic principles. The major barrier to bad law being made at the ballot box is the cost to win the votes.
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@mnolangray Couldn't the legislature step in anytime they want and raise the threshold or put better props on the ballot?
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I think people underrate the extent to which California is broken because of (a) insane ballot initiatives, e.g. Prop 13, and (b) insane court decisions, e.g. CEQA. These policies would not have passed out of the legislature.
Sheel Mohnot@pitdesi
Everyone is getting this wrong: The politicians in California are pretty terrible, but you can't blame them for the wealth tax... they actually killed the idea 2 years ago. Our uniquely bad form of direct democracy is the actual culprit. Democratic Socialist assemblyman Alex Lee introduced the wealth tax in Sacramento (AB 259) 2 years ago. It was not popular, it actually did not even make it to a vote. It was deemed too leftist even for the California legislature. So why is it back? California's uniquely bad form of direct democracy lets you bypass the legislature if you get enough signatures... You can put almost anything on the ballot if you get signatures. That is what the SEIU-UHW, the healthcare workers union did. Union leadership spearheaded this initiative and funded the campaign directly to collect signatures for the wealth tax. They collected signatures by going around asking if people want more money from billionaires to fund hospitals, healthcare, food aid, and schools... naturally people said yes without realizing the consequences. The only major currently elected official from California that supports it is Ro Khanna. My guess from seeing his support on twitter is that Ro decided to support it without understanding it and then dug his heels in for some stupid reason (he actually acknowledged that it is bad as written). Tom Steyer and Saikat Chakrabarti who are running for office also support it (we need to do everything we can to oppose them). I can't believe I'm defending California politicians, but remember - they actually rejected a wealth tax. This is a union-backed ballot initiative trying to go around them.
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Fear the mega blocks. 😂 This one called the Calypso, is thought to be breaking soon as 233 studio apartments with 100% below-market rents for income-restricted residents around the corner from the beach in Santa Cruz.
Stefano@stefanoscalia
I can't believe that legitimately the coast and our cities are gonna kinda get uglified with 5 over 1's becuase the boomers resisted growth so long, that's all that's left. We could have had sea ranch style townhomes in Santa Cruz, instead we'll have mega blocks.
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@stefanoscalia @kimmaicutler It should probably continue to apply to multifamily housing as well. At least to new buildings less than 30 years old.
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@kimmaicutler Prop 13 is easy to fix:
- doesn’t apply to anything but primary residence
- doesn’t apply to commercial property
Entire state is fixed
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Ironically, there is a billionaire going after Prop. 13. Steyer wants to re-open the split roll debate.
Stefano@stefanoscalia
If only the billionaires had gone after prop 13, the state wouldn’t be looking for money in the couch cushions
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@buhhhryan @jasonc_nc @izurietavarea Property taxes aren’t regressive. They scale with the value of the asset — a $3M house is taxed like a $3M house, a $300k house like a $300k house. If someone with low income feels the squeeze, that’s an income and housing‑cost problem, not a flaw in the tax itself.
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Hope this helps.
Property tax is regressive. You're just viewing property owners as a different class of people.
2.5% flat on property value is going to impact lower income and lower-middle income families more, even if they live in "cheaper" houses.
There may be disproportionate racial impacts, but you can fix that by making it more progressive like Maryland which has means tested property tax credits.
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Property tax is becoming the world’s fastest IQ test
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@buhhhryan @jasonc_nc @izurietavarea This book is a good place to start: The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America epi.org/publication/th…
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@buhhhryan @jasonc_nc @izurietavarea Property tax isn’t regressive. People who own property have far more wealth than people who don’t own property. And it’s based on value of a very large asset that is not progressively distributed; some would even characterize the distribution of home equity as a racial inequity.
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@6thJenerationCA @AbbyNormalSF It more severely punishes people who were savvy enough to inherit property from their parents or grandparents.
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@AbbyNormalSF It punishes people who were savvy enough to buy at the right time and held onto their homes and improved them! It’s catastrophic for people who bought in the last downturn, and who did so strategically.
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Many people believe the fantasy that getting rid of prop 13, will reduce their own property taxes
The truth is that politicians would simply take the additional revenue & spend it. I believe there are around 90 propositions statewide to increase some kind of tax this year
Trevor Acorn 🔰🌹🇺🇸🌎@trevoracorn
If we raised the property tax bill on the blue lot to match the others on a $/SF basis, the overall tax bill for the houses/businesses would go down. People who want to see lower property taxes should be all over this!
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Rafa retweetledi
As California’s housing crisis continues to dominate state politics, candidates for governor are increasingly positioning themselves as pro-housing, a shift driven in part by the growing influence of the YIMBY movement.
mercurynews.com/2026/04/26/cal…
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@ChuongIsHere In a perfect world, the landlord asks for income verification of their tenants, but in CA, can only do so upon initial screening, not at lease renewal. Idk if the initial proof of income is good enough. A developer acquiring a vacant property should offer price based on this info
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HCD technical guidance just published several definitions of what is considered a “protected” unit.
Imagine if a tenant vacates a unit on their own. Now you need you need to reach out to the tenant for proof of income otherwise the unit they vacated is not default “protected”.
Who is going to want to do that?
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