Muhammad Alameldin

The new missing middle Developers accidentally discovered a solution for homelessness. Will the city kill it?

Double duplexes are a super popular and weird kind of LA housing that you’ve probably never heard of. Originally built as co-living buildings for USC students, they are now getting snapped up by homeless service agencies to give unhoused people a home. Guess who hates them? LA politicians!

@slate.com covered our research paper quite well, I love this publication.

slate.com/business/202...

The Double Duplex: One Response to Los Angeles’s Overcrowding Crisis Introduction  Even before the January 2025 fires, Los Angeles (LA) was suffering from an acute housing shortage, which resulted in high housing costs and overcrowding.[1] According to 2023 census data...

Great report by Valerie Wilke, @edmendoza.bsky.social, and @muhammadspeaks.bsky.social on the double duplex, an LA typology that is bringing back the SRO through a series of code hacks www.mercatus.org/research/pol...

Great question, we just tracked the zoning of which these have popped up. As for the building codes, we recommended changes to streamline these

The Double Duplex: One Response to Los Angeles’s Overcrowding Crisis Introduction  Even before the January 2025 fires, Los Angeles (LA) was suffering from an acute housing shortage, which resulted in high housing costs and overcrowding.[1] According to 2023 census data...

As a research free agent, I worked with @edmendoza.bsky.social and Valerie Wilke to publish this Mercatus study on LA’s Double Duplex phenomenon.

The trade offs are real — should we house many people but lose long-term multi-housing unit potential?

Read more 👇

www.mercatus.org/research/pol...

S.F.’s fight over the ‘Monster in the Mission’ property is back, thanks to a legal loophole A San Francisco developer was certain he’d be building on the site of the old “Monster in the Mission” project by December. An appeal filed by community members could stall that plan.

It is a little known fact that when you consolidate or split parcels under the Subdivision Map Act, you can easily NIMBY that development even if it is streamlined through to state law.

Fortunately, this is an easy legislative fix. Politically, not so sure.

www.sfchronicle.com/realestate/a...

Soon it will come to you

You earned the mug!

Perfect timing: New CA law AB130 caps HOA fines at $100 per violation, effective this month.

Kim: "It solved all of my problems like literally the same day." The threat of massive daily fines vanished overnight

I get mad sometimes thinking about the lost housing potential because we can't easily finance ADUs nationwide.

Using a bunch of different wall materials and articulation (having parts of the building pop out or set back) is far more expensive to build vs a box with ornament, but ornament is not required by planning department design standards.

Bay Area Nightlife Sucks. Here's How To Fix It Why young people are staying home or abandoning the Bay Area, killing local businesses and bars.

Young people arent going in the Bay Area, killing nightlife. But young people ARE out in many cities and we do have a few examples of successful vibrancy in the Bay. It's time for merchants and planners to update their commercial areas for modern times.
darrellowens.substack.com/p/bay-area-n...

In the 90s, British Columbia and Canada generally faced a leaky condo crisis.

The first elected social-democratic government (think Bernie Sanders), responded with an effective construction defect warranty, contractor licensing, and a safe condominium deposit system.

California has 1 one the 3.

SB 9: More in my backyard How the law is supersizing the ADU movement in LA

Oren with a banger SB 9 post on LA

futureis.la/p/sb-9-more-...

tagged you on explanation

@housingpony.bsky.social

California pretty much stopped HOAs from preventing ADUs but we still find a few cases here and there we plan to clean up

Yes! Dan has been ringing the alarms too. I’ll text you during recess!

Too much to keep track of!

It’s the first thing to happen!

Can HOAs stop these ADUs if this passes? That could be next on the reforms list

Ah okay I thought this had to be fixed in the ordinance and was later resolved. Good to know it was just an industry worry that we have moved passed.

This be a great piece for someone in the area to write about because I’m sure this concern will pop up again somewhere else nationally.

There’s always more to ADU policy it never stops! We still push reforms every year

I flagged this to Noerena and Celeste. Should I start emailing the whole board on this kind of stuff?

wait was this ever fixed? If so, how?

Yep it wasn't well thought out and will mess with ADUs a ton.

@shanedphillips.bsky.social here is the thread response on what is going on btw ^

Before foreclosing, servicers must swear under penalty of perjury that none of those things ever happened—by any servicer.
Few will risk jail to certify what another company did, making foreclosure on subordinate liens nearly impossible in California. ADUs are seen as risky in general already.

AB 130 would make many subordinate liens unenforceable on any residential property (ADUs, 1-4 units, apartments, mixed-use) if any of these occurred during the loan:

No borrower contact for 3 yrs
No monthly statements
No servicing/ownership notice
Borrower got a write-off notice (e.g. 1099)

It’s more like we tried to get rid of zombie mortgages and ended up with a bunch of new rules in California making HELOCs and Equity lines of credit less likely to happen across the state.

What happened in Spokane? It sounds different.

Lenders, a very risk adverse group of humans, will see this language and back away on financing ADUs (which we have lending and appraisal issues) since it’s already such a novel building type.

Even just a few players leaving will increase interest rates significantly