But people don't have to give up single family homes to create density -- we just need to build more of everything else, wherever we can, to increase housing.
No one is coming for existing single-family homes -- they can peacefully co-exist alongside properties that house 5x the amount of people.
It's not impossible, but people are stubborn and the voices of home owners/drivers dominate the conversation over anything else.
Those things are scalable -- LA's light rail network is one of the biggest in the country and it's incredible efficient. Over a million people (of a city of 4 million) use LA Metro on a daily basis.
There's no reason LA's fundamental character as a city would change if we allowed duplexes in already dense neighborhoods or as much BRT as possible. But instead we've prioritized voices like the Bel-Air Homeowners Association or some NIMBY idiots in Santa Monica to make policy decisions and are stuck with environmental review on projects that demolish, say, 4 parking spots to build 40 affordable housing units.
Exactly this. Look at the slow-moving nightmare happening in Berkeley because of NIMBYism and CEQA reviews. The city/state/UC system is going to lose an incredible amount of funding and student enrollment is going to plummet because some rich Berkeley assholes don't want new apartments in their neighborhood.
California (and all states) need to build massive amounts of housing (any kind! public, social, market-rate, affordable -- it doesn't matter just do all of it at once) to address the immediate demand while we also work on destroying the concept of housing as an asset and not a guaranteed right.
placardabuse really shows you how many of the most egregious traffic violations are done by unrepentant, repeat offenders. I think there was a story recently about an SUV who ran the curb and killed an 18-month old in Manhattan -- the driver had thousands of dollars of unpaid fines for blowing red lights, speeding, double-parking etc.
I think people should be at a much higher risk of losing their license or driving privileges permanently for this stuff, not to mention offenses like repeat DUIs.
I don't think it phases in fast enough, tbh, but it's a start. Someone the next block over from me runs their leaf blower around 7 AM everyday and it is godawful noise -- the sound carries at least 2 or 3 blocks in every direction
To add another comment, pro-police commentators should look at clearance rates for crime in their areas. Police are generally very very bad at their jobs! I looked up SFPD clearance rates for the last year -- they solved about 10% of all bulgaries and less than 21% of robberies. 10%!
These organizations have enormous budgets and they can't solve simple, non-violent crimes. Why do they need more funding and resources? Is all of that double OT going to finally stop those "brazen" CVS pickpockets?
I was the victim of a home robbery a few years ago in Cleveland. Thieves hit multiple homes on my block in a few hours, TRASHED my house looking for valuables and stole about $1000 worth of stuff from my home (an easily identifiable bike, cash)
Cleveland PD showed up, shrugged their shoulders, gave me a police report for my home insurance claim (which covered nothing that was stolen) and said there was no chance the crime would be solved.
A few weeks later I had to contact the same CPD district office because someone I sold something to online threatened me with physical violence and showed up at my house at 11 PM to "settle the matter." I went to the police station and was again told directly by the police there was nothing they could do, even though the man was parked outside of my home at the time, waiting for me to engage.
“Login.gov is already used to access 200 websites run by 28 Federal agencies and over 40 million Americans have accounts,” Wyden wrote in a letter to the IRS today. “Unfortunately, login.gov has not yet reached its full potential, in part because many agencies have flouted the Congressional mandate that they use it, and because successive Administrations have failed to prioritize digital identity. The cost of this inaction has been billions of dollars in fraud, which has in turn fueled a black market for stolen personal data, and enabled companies like ID.me to commercialize what should be a core government service.”
Yep! The police unions hold massive sway over cities, media (especially local media) and politicians by threatening to simply stop enforcing laws if they don't get their way. They can then use the media and scare tactics to drive up "crime is out of control" narratives (see: 500 stories about shoplifting, "organized robberies" sweeping cities, etc), argue they need more funding by creating work stoppages and then wait for public opinion to come back around to their side.
Correct, yes, politicians who have contributed to the militarization of US policing are also to blame, along with the massive military industrial complex and its lobbying arms in Washington. This country has been on a downward spiral since 9/11 to arm our police forces as if they're elite counter-terrorism units.
But saying "they're just using the tools available" also evades accountability of the police. Police use legal no-knock warrants, yes, but they also routinely murder people during those no-knock warrants with no legal authority to do so and then press to cover up, obfuscate or avoid accountability of those actions:
This story specifically is about police using the blurry overlap of local, state and federal authority to specifically target businesses serving dispensaries. These officers targeted Empyreal with pre-textural stops that directly targeted these businesses that have the right to operate in CA.
These officers are deliberately lying and falsifying information to target businesses they see as easy targets. In this instance, the police literally are the problem.
from the og link:
"During the December 9 stop, the deputies claimed a drug-sniffing dog alerted to the van, which Empyreal says is not true: "Video footage from the vehicle does not show the dog alert on the vehicle. Instead, it shows the dog is barely interested in the vehicle."
The deputies obtained a search warrant prior to the November 16 seizure, but Empyreal says the application included several false or misleading statements. It says the deputy who applied for the warrant mistakenly claimed that Empyreal converts money from marijuana businesses into cryptocurrency and falsely asserted that some of the company's clients were not licensed by the state. The deputy also said Empyreal did not have a marijuana business license, which is not required to transport money from dispensaries to banks. Furthermore, a 2020 law says a company that provides such services to state-licensed marijuana businesses "does not commit a crime under any California law."
Almost all of the SoCal police departments (LAPD, LASD, San Bernardino Sheriffs) are out of control, with massive, sprawling budgets (the city of Los Angeles gives more money to police than any other category and just added more money for the next year after their "defunding" in 2020) and a complete lack of oversight.
Villanueva, in charge of the LA County Sheriff's Department, has refused to participate in basic oversight or accountability from the LA County Board of Supervisors and routinely oversteps his legal boundaries in dealing with issues (his bizarre "sweeps" in Venice, as one example).
The police are an uncontrollable force in this country and will only grow more violent and brazen in their actions as public trust continues to erode.
"Reels users said they sometimes stopped the sessions early, finding it hard to hit the 10 minutes required because the videos were “stale, boring or repetitive,” while TikTok users self-reported using the app for hours a day beyond the study. The Reels users also found that Facebook’s algorithm didn’t stop showing them content they weren’t interested in, and rarely showed videos made by people of color to white viewers."
obvious they can't innovate on their own at this point
The subheading says so much