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[dwelling-on-downtowns]

I really really need people to understand that it is both. There is 100% a housing shortage. And if you care about ensuring there is enough affordable housing for everybody, then you need to include the construction of new housing in the conversation.

I don’t like airbnb, but the truth of the matter is that airbnb is a small piece of a much, much larger problem. Nobody who actually studies the housing shortage would agree that putting every single airbnb on the market is going to solve the housing crisis. It would make maybe, with a bit of luck, a small dent. (This doesn’t include rentals, so I checked Zillow to see that Austin currently has nearly 20,000 rentals listed— so no, airbnb is not taking up all the available residences in Austin)

The term “Vacant” encompasses way more than short term rentals. If there is an apartment that is occupied for 8 months of the year by a student, it is often counted as vacant because that student considers their parents’ house as their primary residence. “Vacant” also includes residences that are currently on the market, residences that are tied up in inheritance disputes, houses that have been foreclosed on that haven’t been sold yet, residences that are undergoing renovations or repairs, residences that aren’t currently occupied because the owner travels a lot for work.

It also includes seasonal residences. It’s great to say that there are a lot of empty homes, but if a decent portion of them are cottages out in tiny resort towns that only have jobs for four months of the year, it’s not going to solve the wider problem. In the US, “Vacant” includes housing that is kept for seasonal migrant workers, particularly on farms, which again, is not helpful to the housing crisis.

As long as it wasn’t actively being lived in at the time of the census, for LITERALLY WHATEVER REASON, it is “vacant”. And it’s also worth noting that cities with the worst housing crisis, usually have very low vacancy rates.

Investors who view housing as a way to make money ARE a problem. And I hate landlords too. But the affordable housing crisis goes beyond investors and landlords, no matter how much they profit off of it and exacerbate it.

Saying “there’s enough housing for everybody, we just need to redistribute it” is making the solution much more complicated. As soon as that’s the focus, you need to navigate who decides which homes should be forfeited to go towards providing affordable housing, you need to navigate a whole list of property rights issues. It’s all well and good to say that nobody SHOULD own vacant homes, but it’s another thing to actually apply that ideal. Especially in a country that prioritizes property rights as much as the US. Building more housing IS A GOOD SOLUTION to the housing crisis, and saying that “we already have enough” fuels NIMBYism. Which actively functions to keep housing prices and rent high.

We need to crack down on investors and landlords AND build more housing. Simplifying an issue like the housing crisis into “landlords and airbnb bad” is never going to put very many unhoused people into homes. Landlords and airbnb ARE BAD, but we need more housing too.

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@amtrak-official can we please borrow some of your passenger rail. just for a bit.

VIA Rail network in 1978

Current VIA Rail network

This is my villain origin story. Why doesn’t Canada have passenger rail to our 4th biggest city? Like. You cannot get to Canada’s 4th biggest city by rail AT ALL. It’s not like there is local rail between Edmonton and Calgary, you cannot get to Calgary by rail. Also Banff, one of our most beautiful national parks is practically one its way to becoming a large parking lot and we could have passenger rail that goes there. But we don’t.

ALSO there’s only two trains a week in Edmonton. This is why Western Canada doesn’t go anywhere by rail, it’s entirely useless to us.

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VIA Rail network in 1978

Current VIA Rail network

This is my villain origin story. Why doesn’t Canada have passenger rail to our 4th biggest city? Like. You cannot get to Canada’s 4th biggest city by rail AT ALL. It’s not like there is local rail between Edmonton and Calgary, you cannot get to Calgary by rail. Also Banff, one of our most beautiful national parks is practically one its way to becoming a large parking lot and we could have passenger rail that goes there. But we don’t.

ALSO there’s only two trains a week in Edmonton. This is why Western Canada doesn’t go anywhere by rail, it’s entirely useless to us.

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Found two:

This of the Toronto area which is a really good example of EXACTLY what you’re talking about.

Then there’s this one which goes only by province

This isn’t nearly as helpful because it doesn’t break it down further than the province/territory. I would anticipate Alberta to be higher than Quebec and Ontario but Alberta would include emissions from the oil sands so it doesn’t accurately reflect anything about urban planning/lifestyle. Although Saskatchewan doesn’t have the oil sands so there’s that

When people say that cities are the real polluters, I kinda want to laugh at them

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When people say that cities are the real polluters, I kinda want to laugh at them

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I mean yes, it is, there is no way to run a high speed rail that stops in McCook Nebraska, population 7,500 and have it still be effective as High-speed Rail. The whole point of High-speed Rail is to connect major cities with fast transportation.

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via @/_weloveyou__ on tiktok

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Well that's an interesting academic intellectual framework you've got there, buddy. Be a real shame if I, the biggest idiot that you've ever met, were to be exposed to it out of context on social media.

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“Rich kids should go to public schools. The mayor should ride the subway to work. When wealthy people get sick, they should be sent to public hospitals. Business executives should have to stand in the same airport security lines as everyone else. The very fact that people want to buy their way out of all of these experiences points to the reason why they shouldn’t be able to. Private schools and private limos and private doctors and private security are all pressure release valves that eliminate the friction that would cause powerful people to call for all of these bad things to get better. The degree to which we allow the rich to insulate themselves from the unpleasant reality that others are forced to experience is directly related to how long that reality is allowed to stay unpleasant. When they are left with no other option, rich people will force improvement in public systems. Their public spirit will be infinitely less urgent when they are contemplating these things from afar than when they are sitting in a hot ER waiting room for six hours themselves.”

— Everyone Into The Grinder

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sorting my books rn and i opened this one about graffiti on the best possible page

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they should make this a legal requirement everywhere

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My saturday was very divalicious, I went to pride and there was a car fire that happened during the drag performance.

Car fires are very divalicious #publictransport

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