Brian Goggin

Here at my hostile bus stop wishing DC had a guerrilla bus bench/shelter effort à la @idothethinking.bsky.social and others. Or, you know, localities took responsibility

this is fantastic news and I'm grateful to the eight councilmembers who voted to move Montgomery County forward. you can thank them using this handy form ⬇️ ggwash.org/morehousingnow

A new report from @zoningatlas.bsky.social shows that it's largely illegal to build most housing types, other than single-family, across the vast majority of Massachusetts land.

“We still have yet to address the fact that it is simply illegal to build housing in most places."

Vote for Ghazala Hasmi for Lieutenant Governor in the Democratic Primary

Be sure to vote today, Virginians! The YIMBY chapters have endorsed Senator Ghazala Hashmi! @yimbyaction.bsky.social

Corollary: I wish we could shift local governments’ default position from ‘how can we extract concessions’ from new housing to ‘how can we help facilitate’ new housing

Are you a renter who doesn’t own a car? Senator Wahab wants to raise your rent.

California is in a deep and worsening housing crisis, and the two most ambitious bills to address it are in trouble. Please read and sign on to my open letter to the Senate Housing Committee Chair asking for support on SB 79 and SB 677.

Take action to save Metro funding & DC: Urge Congress to support & bring the DC Local Funds Act to a vote to restore DC's spending authority. Recent Congressional budget prevents DC from spending $1.1 billion of its own revenues, including $214m for Metro
secure.everyaction.com/lVdw10pZ6U67...

For anyone still emailing Congress, here's what I wrote to "yes" vote senators today in case it's of any help:

CALLS ARE WORKING - it has bought us precious time, but we NEED to keep the pressure up.

Tomorrow is the cloture vote.

KEEP CALLING: (202) 224-3121 ☎️☎️☎️

Tell your Dem Senator to vote NO on Cloture and NO on the Republican spending bill.

Do NOT assume your Senator will be good on this. Trust me.

🚨 To folks not in DC: Please take a few minutes today and give the Senators on the list below a call. Nearly 700K District residents are facing the immediate loss of over $1B from our local budget tucked into the current Continuing Resolution. DC isn’t a federal agency, and this is local $. #FreeDC

"following RIP’s adoption in 2021-22, average sale prices for new middle housing decreased by $200,000"
www.portland.gov/bps/planning...

750 23rd Street South – Melwood Site 750 23rd Street South – Melwood Site

2. Sign up for commission hearings or county board to tell them you support proposal for 105 homes + training center for people with disabilities: www.arlingtonva.us/Government/P...

Adding two other opportunities to support building more housing in high-cost Arlington:

1. Online survey for project to transform a Walgreens into 276 homes and retail: publicinput.com/a06002

This one is along Plan Langston Boulevard in exclusionary north Arlington

If you live/work/study in Arlington, Virginia and are frustrating about the high cost of housing, spending 30 seconds to submit favorable feedback on this proposal to build 323 homes is an easy and meaningful thing you can about it!

Tell the Montgomery County Council it's time for more housing More Housing N.O.W. is an important first step towards building the housing we need and making it possible for more people to call Montgomery County home.

here's how you can let the Montgomery County Council you support them doing something about housing already secure.everyaction.com/LUob_21Ef0GD...

is it good or bad that a billionaire oligarch with close ties to foreign dictators is currently downloading the most sensitive information the us federal government has about its citizens to his own private servers?

Kendra's setting up a database of federal de-funding in transportation research. If you are a researcher, and you have had a federally funded (or NAS/TRB) research project cancelled or paused, filling out this form would be helpful:

This should be a national scandal: Today, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors unanimously passed a resolution asking the state to suspend various legal protections for property owners in burned areas—of their right to build a duplex or ADU, to reasonable permit timelines, and more.

Getting Corporate Money Out of Single-Family Homes Won’t Help the Housing Affordability Crisis Since the Great Recession, a new sector has emerged in US housing markets: Wall Street firms are buying large portfolios of single-family homes to manage as rentals. As housing costs across the countr...

@kevinerdmann.bsky.social explains that institutional investors purchasing single-family houses is a result of changes to lending standards since 2008 on top of exclusionary zoning. Right now, they are a rare source of credit that can fund housing construction: www.mercatus.org/research/pol...

We did it!

All traffic & pedestrian fatalities in Fairfax, Mont. Co., Prince George's and DC, 2023. Source: https://www.bestreetsmart.net/docs/2024/Street%20Smart%20Fall%202024%20-%20Fact%20Sheet.pdf

Devastating: 50% of all traffic and pedestrian fatalities among big 4 DMV jurisdictions occur in Prince George's. These tragedies in PGC are more than 2x the loss of life in peers. We urgently need to fix PGC's dangerous, wide, high speed roads.

Live posting council meetings, urbanist Bluesky has officially arrived

Tell the Montgomery County Council: we can't afford a pause Montgomery County has a housing shortage, and the County Council has had over four years to do something about it. Doing nothing comes at a big cost, and residents like us are paying the price. Let t...

anyway. the County Council needs to be reminded to do their jobs, and if you have just a few minutes, you can do so right here secure.everyaction.com/Z5qs3AYACkSt...

American Red Cross Los Angeles Region The American Red Cross Los Angeles Region is a non-profit humanitarian organization serving Los Angeles, lnyo, Mono & part of Kern County.

My home is in West Los Angeles—distressingly close to the fires, but well-ensconced in an urbanized area, and so almost certainly safe. Please consider donating to the Los Angeles Red Cross to help those who are less fortunate:
www.redcross.org/local/califo...

A driver ran over a man on Christmas Eve, then ran away Ronnie Clark is the 51st person, and the 19th pedestrian, to die in a car crash in D.C. this year. He was hit while on the sidewalk.

RIP Ronnie Clark the “51st person, and the 19th pedestrian, to die in a car crash in the District this year” wapo.st/41RQQfG

Americans are ~2.5x more likely to die in a crash than a Canadian, ~3.5x more likely than a Spaniard, and ~5x more likely than a Japanese person.

Here are a few of the articles I wrote in 2024 trying to understand why the US is uniquely terrible at road safety.

🧵

Walked around the City Ridge development (~700 units) recently and great to see a new mixed-use neighborhood behind the old Fannie Mae HQ building. Love the variety of brick colors and wide sidewalks. Really shows the potential of more housing in upper NW DC

Thanks!