Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

dereksagehorn.bsky.social @dereksagehorn.bsky.social · 41m

She was the first candidate to release a substantive housing policy that emphasized supply and land use restrictions in 2019.

1 5

dereksagehorn.bsky.social @dereksagehorn.bsky.social · 2h

Just ordered my copy

1

dereksagehorn.bsky.social @dereksagehorn.bsky.social · 2h

Those exits also showed up in land prices for NorCal wineries and vacation homes in the North Coast, Central Coast and Lake Tahoe.

With the exception of North Coast, those places either now have transportation challenges or in case of wine have declining industry-wide revenue.

2

dereksagehorn.bsky.social @dereksagehorn.bsky.social · 2h

Tech 2.0 exits 2012 - 2017 mostly got capitalized into existing home prices or tear downs for new SFH.

SF has more flexible land use and more predictable permitting for Tech 3.0 but condo finance and condo defect risk means a lot of that value will still go into SFHs instead of new construction.

1 3

Reposted

Stephen Jacob Smith @stephenjacobsmith.com · 14h

I can't stop thinking about this. We're pursuing zero fire risk in multifam, while tolerating much more in single-fam. People respond by building and living in single-fam, where they're exposed to not only one of the highest fire death risks in the developed world, but also TONS more car crash risk

Emily Hamilton @ebwhamilton.bsky.social · 14h

Love this new report on buildings' relative fire safety from @alexhrwtz.bsky.social and Pew colleagues.

www.pew.org/en/research-...

8 100 390

Reposted

East Bay for Everyone @eastbayforeveryone.bsky.social · 14d

Save the date: our next monthly meeting is in-person on Wednesday, October 8 from 7:00pm to 8:30pm. We are gathering in downtown Oakland at 1111 Broadway, 2nd floor.

We'll also be broadcasting on Zoom.

1 2 6

dereksagehorn.bsky.social @dereksagehorn.bsky.social · 18h

wonder if the rate conversation is a fixation bc it’s a lowest common denominator for many commentators.

Due to the intensely local nature of land use, building code and permitting regimes the binding constraint is often variable.

Rates are uniform and thus attract a lot of national punditry.

1 4

dereksagehorn.bsky.social @dereksagehorn.bsky.social · 19h

Agreed — rates are holding back production in many cases.

But a lot of projects stopped pencilling out in 2017 in the Bay bc hard costs went out of control.

Also some projects may have pencilled prior to 2022 but lengthy permitting processes dragged them beyond the cycle go-point.

1 7

dereksagehorn.bsky.social @dereksagehorn.bsky.social · 19h

Fixing the hard cost premium that attaches to housing as it gets denser seems more tractable (and a more valuable use of my time) than simply adding to a chorus of voices about rate direction and velocity.

morehousing.substack.com/p/mid-rise-r...

2 6

dereksagehorn.bsky.social @dereksagehorn.bsky.social · 19h

There are so many diverse interests in the US that care about interest rates going up or down beyond housing advocates.

What does it mean to “focus on rates” in that context?

1 7

dereksagehorn.bsky.social @dereksagehorn.bsky.social · 19h

A strange tendency of skeptics of land use, building code, permitting and modern methods of construction reform:

“The problem is not [constraint on the built environment] but interest rates. Why don’t you talk about that?”

Bc reformers have more power over land use rules than the Fed?

4 23

dereksagehorn.bsky.social @dereksagehorn.bsky.social · 19h

If both institutional investors and small investors benefit from land scarcity and spatial exclusion, it seems straightforward to focus on reducing barriers for new builders, renters and small holders to access these markets but ymmv

1 1

dereksagehorn.bsky.social @dereksagehorn.bsky.social · 19h

So you’re saying that their concerted actions that inflate values prior to sale don’t matter?

1 1

dereksagehorn.bsky.social @dereksagehorn.bsky.social · 19h

> smallholders very rarely act in concerted ways

have you ever been to a planning commission hearing in person?

1 4

dereksagehorn.bsky.social @dereksagehorn.bsky.social · 19h

In suburbs with a thousand discrete owners, the largest holder may mean owning 4 homes.

Does anyone seriously believe that owning those four homes constitutes pricing power?

1 3

dereksagehorn.bsky.social @dereksagehorn.bsky.social · 23h

It’s still a pilot. MTC/Clipper staff and operators have been reluctant to expand it without more staff to manage the program.

1 3

dereksagehorn.bsky.social @dereksagehorn.bsky.social · 23h

Looks like it’s about 22k as of August 2025 but here sco.ca.gov/Files-PPSD/a...

sco.ca.gov

1

dereksagehorn.bsky.social @dereksagehorn.bsky.social · 1d

There are >25k State of California employees in the 9 county Bay Area.

Lots of other large companies and municipal employers.

MTC should be investing in staff capacity to get these employers into Clipper BayPass.

2 7

dereksagehorn.bsky.social @dereksagehorn.bsky.social · 1d

The current phase 2 trial is capped at 80k participants and is limited by staff capacity to manage the program.

bart.legistar.com/LegislationD...

1 5

dereksagehorn.bsky.social @dereksagehorn.bsky.social · 1d

The increase in trips by Clipper BayPass holders on BART is really encouraging.

Massive increases in trips at San Francisco State and UC Berkeley in September 2025.

bart.legistar.com/LegislationD...

1 5 37

Reposted

Ned Resnikoff @resnikoff.bsky.social · 1d

This is great. More cities up and down California should be planning comprehensive greenway networks — especially the many cities that, like Oakland, have year-round biking weather. oaklandside.org/2025/10/02/o...

Map of a proposed comprehensive bicycle greenway network for the city of Oakland, California.

4 17 110

dereksagehorn.bsky.social @dereksagehorn.bsky.social · 1d

@aceckhouse.bsky.social I believe that we can do this

1 7

dereksagehorn.bsky.social @dereksagehorn.bsky.social · 2d

This was described to me by Mark Chubb as the “original sin” of US building codes. Took me a year or so to fully understand what he meant.

2

Reposted

Sam Alcorn @samalcorn.bsky.social · 2d

This thinking led to the creation of the “Residential” Building Code. For so many years, I’d wondered about why there were two building codes: a simpler and less restrictive code for SFDs (also called SFRs in many US places) and duplexes, and a more restrictive one for everything else.

It was upon that theory that our new housing law in New York State was drafted. And the easiest and quickest way to penalize the apartment house is not through requiring larger open spaces, because I think that would be un-constitutional, but through the fireproofing requirements.
If we require multiple dwellings to be fireproof, and thus increase the cost of construction; 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.
We can show the necessity of these extra precautions where many families live in a dwelling, and at the same time we

have made it difficult to build apartment houses. I recommend that method to the conference. In our laws let most of our fire provisions relate solely to multiple dwellings,
Digitized by Google

CITIES OF HOMES
218
and allow our private houses and two-family houses to be built with almost no fire protection whatever.

2 1 6

dereksagehorn.bsky.social @dereksagehorn.bsky.social · 2d

Wisdom

2