Michael Yarne

Cofounder, entrepreneur, urbanist, housing policy geek, cyclist & seeker.

[Michael Yarne @MYarne]

Love on wheels

[Michael Yarne @MYarne]

@48hills Good riddance 48 Hills. Commissioner Moore is an embarrassment.

[Daniel Owens @daniel_w_owens]

Boundless peer reviewed research shows that even *luxury housing* built in high demand areas like SF creates spillover effects that soften markets, reduce evictions and displacement.

Do you want rich people eating up older existing housing stock, or the new housing? Your choice

[Daniel Owens @daniel_w_owens]

I’m voting for @Scott_Wiener. Easy choice.

SF’s biggest problem by far is housing affordability. We’ve spent decades digging ourselves into a housing shortage emergency, and Scott has been remarkably one of the few electeds willing to fix it.

Good luck, Senator.

[Senator Scott Wiener @Scott_Wiener]

https://t.co/smM6rLuB1R

Connie Chan's congressional platform in one word: NO.

No to new housing. No to transit improvements. No to Sunset Dunes and JFK Promenade.

Mine is one word too: YES. Yes to building a fun and affordable city, with plenty of housing for future generations.

[David Watkins @djw172]

The speed with which the urbanist left is turning against IZ is encouraging.

[Michael Yarne @MYarne]

@CSElmendorf @otterbo54348271 @LeeHepner Hallelujah. I’m 100% on board.

[Chris Elmendorf @CSElmendorf]

Great @LeeHepner 🧵⤵️.

Solutions:
- repeal tariffs
- end mandates for above-market construction wages (misnamed "prevailing wage")
- audit & simplify building code
- ban local building code amdmts
- repeal IZ
- replace impact fees w/ parcel or property taxes

Who's on board?

[Michael Yarne @MYarne]

@FareedZakaria 100% correct

[Kim-Mai Cutler @kimmaicutler]

Lee and I often disagree but this is correct.

[💥Susan Dyer Reynolds🗞️ @SusanDReynolds]

“When revelations of corruption come to the fore because that level of accountability and checks and balances isn’t there, then people get frustrated — and then they want people who are willing to ask tough questions.”

Peskin helped fund Nuru’s legal defense the first time he was caught. He continued to support (and ignore) Nuru’s corruption until my exposé in the Marina Times brought it to light. Same goes for Harlan Kelly and Dwayne Jones. All three were protégés of Willie Brown, with whom Peskin breakfasts weekly. Moderates didn’t beat progressives, progressives beat themselves with years of ignoring corruption, crime, and the drug crisis.

https://t.co/N5NHMgFlpq

[Armand Domalewski @ArmandDoma]

i think it says it all that Aaron Peskin defines progressivism as saying no to things

[Michael Yarne @MYarne]

@garrytan @otterbo54348271 You are in good company. He persecuted me for years.

[Saad Asad @realsaadasad]

Prop 13 promised to protect homeowners from rising taxes.

What it actually did: locked in big tax breaks for whoever bought earliest, pushed cities to favor malls over housing (better for sales tax revenue), and left renters and newer buyers holding the bill.

[Garry Tan @garrytan]

Centrist common sense local politics is the only way you can have a city that works

We have to keep it this way

[Frank Smith @frank_smith1111]

Like many, I thought the Family Zoning Plan was finally going to bring cranes to San Francisco.

Think again!

The new law is technically active, but I am hearing developers won't touch it because the law is subject to a massive CEQA lawsuit from "Neighborhoods United SF". They aren't risking millions on a 350ft upzone while the lawsuit winds its way through the courts.

And guess who is co-funding the lawsuit? The Telegraph Hill Dwellers. Yes, good old Aaron Peskin.

Nothing says "for the people, not the powerful" quite like weaponizing shadow studies and air quality complaints under the guise of environmentalism to protect your private Telegraph Hill views.

https://t.co/FVc1uUeuQK

[Michael Yarne @MYarne]

@Sr_Lazarus 48 Hills is the San Francisco equivalent of Pravda at the end of the Soviet era: a mouthpiece for a failed ideology refusing to accept the reality of its own irrelevance.

[Andrew Gebo @GeboMpls]

Car dependency is a mandatory tax on your freedom and bank account. True fiscal conservatism is living in a walkable neighborhood where you don’t need a $40,000 depreciating asset just to buy groceries.

[Michael Yarne @MYarne]

@Sr_Lazarus These SF Progressives are blinded by their dogma and an addiction to blaming “capitalism” for their own failures.

[Anthony Lazarus @Sr_Lazarus]

maybe #SF progressives are having trouble because more voters seem to feel that their policies, particularly on housing, kind of stink. but by all means go to town on some new messaging

[Saad Asad @realsaadasad]

New apartments are 76% electric-heated, and their residents drive less and use less land.

Building more of them cuts carbon emissions by up to 14% in metro areas, while also lowering rents.

Housing abundance and climate progress are the same investment.