Toby Muresianu

Good morning. CEQA can no longer stop critically needed urban housing in California. It’s a new day.

We are back on American Exchange with housing advocate and funnyman @tobyhardtospell.bsky.social getting a firsthand account from LA on the 'riots', the protests and ICE raids.

Surprise it wasn't what the media or Trump made it out to be.

WATCH HERE: www.youtube.com/watch?v=yP6Z...

The unidentified maybe-cops trying to deport people remind me of Putin's "Little Green Men"

Hundreds of mentally disabled people are being evicted from supportive housing to Skid Row in LA, apparently due to losing Medicaid coverage.

1) This seems very bad and to be an illegal eviction
2) Is this going to happen nationwide if Trump's Medicaid cuts pass?

And parents who are afraid to attend—bc they aren’t legal, or they are but have seen how this administration has deported people here legally for minor paperwork errors or entirely by accident—are staying home and watching over Zoom.

This isn't the America I know.

This was my son’s LAUSD preschool graduation was last week.

This week, nearby ICE raids caused parents to flee mid-ceremony.

Today, LAPD officers are forming rings around ceremonies to stop ICE officers who don’t have valid legal justification from entering.

Hello. I live in Los Angeles. The president is lying.

It's wild housing opponents will say "We can't have housing unless we have transit" and then it's literally defined to be right by transit they oppose it

The walkability of part of transit-oriented development is often overlooked.

If you allow 7 story mixed use buildings by train stations (SB79), you don't just get apartments.

You also get grocery stores, gyms, and restaurants residents new and old can walk to.

She's supporting other housing bills and given how she made misspoke several times during the speech I wonder if her decision was changed and rushed at the last minute.

I hope that she reconsiders her position and I can support her again.

It's also worth noting Menjivar ran as a public transit advocate who wanted to improve things for families on public transit, reduce air pollution from cars, and have an "all of the above" approach to addressing the housing crisis.

It's a really weird turn.

Then she claims the the transit isn't something "working class residents" use because they have to drive far away for work.

-Have you ever been on transit in LA? It is working class! There's data!

-There are lots of working class jobs in the valley!

-Building housing near transit creates more!

Then she says "we don't have the transit infrastructure yet, we shouldn't put the horse before the carriage [sic]"

-LA has the #1 light rail system in the US and #2 transit system, with 300m+ rides taken per year

-The horse in the analogy is the train! The bill legalizes *carts after horses*!

First she says a new light rail line across the Valley (her district!) goes from "nowhere to nowhere."

-The SFV has 1.8 million people. It'd be the nation's 5th largest city on its own!

-The train connects 3 major transit lines!

-The bill enables stops to grow into "somewhere"!

Dismayed by this speech opposing apartments near transit from Caroline Menjivar.

It's a betrayal of her campaign promises, her constituents facing high housing costs, and the housing and environmental advocates who endorsed her (including me).

It's also...nonsense. ⬇️

I can't believe Ben Allen gave tribute to Donald Shoup--and then 4 days later opposed a bill to legalize apartments by train stations. That just sucks, man.

Property/ Land taxes are really the ultimate “value capture” mechanism it’s annoying that all this energy trying to extract community benefits agreements on a project by project or bill by bill basis aren’t just focused on Prop 13 reform.

Sen. Caroline Menjivar: Triumphantly appears at the event celebrating a federal award of $900 million for East San Fernando Valley Light Rail

Also Sen. Menjivar: "The utter audacity of planning more housing in my district, don't you know this is garbage transit that goes nowhere & serves no one"

If your suburban town is "too rural" to have apartment buildings near train stations, it is too rural to have state funded train stations.

Anyone who says "local communities can plan best" to argue against a bill that *legalizes apartments by train stations* needs to explain why they have not done such an incredibly basic planning step yet.

It's like not allowing kitchens near cafeterias.

SB 79 (Wiener): Transit-Oriented Development and Upzoning SB 79 will make it faster and easier to build multi-family housing near transit stops, like train and rapid bus lines, by making it legal for more homes to be built in these areas and streamlining exi...

It's do or die for SB 79, the bill that would legalize multifamily housing around rail and BRT stops across the state. The vote could be held as early as tomorrow morning.

Californians: call your state senator tomorrow morning to help us get out of the senate!
cayimby.org/legislation/...

Call the State Senate to pass SB 79! Please call your State Senator and urge them to vote YES on SB 79!

SB 79 may come up for a vote today -- now is the time to call your State Senator to urge them to vote YES on this bill to legalize multifamily housing around rail and BRT stops across the state. Click here for an easy way to make your call:

Very counterintuitive that the federal government can try to stop teenagers from smoking weed and fail miserably, but obscure local government bodies can stop big universities, businesses etc from building needed housing by just saying no

I haven’t tried it yet, but the transit app has a surprisingly rich interface for bike directions that includes road safety information.

Antitrust and YIMBYism should be allies

The reason housing is expensive is property owners in prosperous cities act as a cartel: blocking competition (new housing) and forcing customers to pay higher prices for the same product.

The people doing are just HOAs and not corporations.

Land Use Reform Could Solve the Los Angeles Budget Crisis Our high-level analysis shows how restrictive, exclusionary zoning has accentuated the City’s financial crisis, and how targeting upzoning could help balance budgets. Senate Bill 79 would create capac...

The City of Los Angeles could largely solve its $1 billion budget shortfall by allowing more homes to be built near its transit stations, according to a new report out today from Streets For All.

Read the report here: data.streetsforall.org/blog/sb79_zo...

The City of LA is SPENDING money (during a budget crisis) to STOP Venice Dell - an affordable housing project that the public wants, the City desperately needs, & that 👏 WAS 👏 ALREADY 👏 APPROVED 👏 by the City & the State.

(Even a federal Judge spoke up about it 👨‍⚖️)

Austin leads the country in new affordable housing construction, study finds After years of falling short, Austin is making gains in growing the number of affordable housing units.

The story that building regular housing comes at the expense of building subsidized Affordable Housing is false.

Making housing easier to build yields more of both types. www.kut.org/housing/2025...

Austin isn't just building so much housing that rents are plummeting...

...it's also producing more subsidized Affordable housing than anywhere else in the nation.

California HSR should figure out what would actually be necessary to build it LA-SF by 2035—like, expedited eminent domain, ignoring local objections, just building the damn thing—and put it to voters again.

Yes = do what it takes, no = pull the plug