Jonathan O'Brien

Lead @yimbymelbourne // Chief @inflectionptswk // Boundless (2027, Pantera Press) // Emergent Ventures // [email protected]

[Jonathan O'Brien @jonobri]

Australia faces three major crises: housing, energy, and productivity. Boundless is a book about how we might confront these great problems of our time, and it’s coming out in 2027.

Co-written with the excellent @HowardFMaclean and published by also-excellent @PanteraPress.

[Jonathan O'Brien @jonobri]

@hillfolkAU More people need to be more embarrassed more often

[Jonathan O'Brien @jonobri]

Beyond parody to use AI to portray yourselves as a young, diverse group, only to show up and reveal that—shock horror—the only people protesting housing at 2pm on a weekday are retirees.

[Jonathan O'Brien @jonobri]

@mnolangray I believe this more and more!

[M. Nolan Gray 🥑 @mnolangray]

Every missing middle success story is secretly just a story of either ADUs or townhouses.

[Jonathan O'Brien @jonobri]

@db_econ Good Strategic Leeching

[Jonathan Berk @berkie1]

In most Massachusetts cities and towns, the housing that built the middle class and workforce would be illegal to build today. In Boston, 99% of existing residential buildings couldn’t be built today.

Our Commonwealth’s future depends on our willingness to fix what we broke.

[Dom @db_econ]

In case you needed more evidence that 'Affordable' housing is an utter grift, this is how much the peak body is charging for tickets to the "Affordable Housing Investment and Development Summit"

Why do we need $4000 conferences to figure out how to charge people 20% less rent?

[ham 🪴 @hamhammer27]

stonnington council having a normal one

[Jonathan O'Brien @jonobri]

So many people have a revealed preference for losing

[Peter Tulip @peter_tulip]

Advocates for removal of tax concessions on investor housing are not taking much credit for their policy success.
How should we interpret that?
Were they not serious?

[Heritage: Why? @heritage_why]

Checking in on this City of Melbourne plan to build affordable housing on a city-owned carpark. Started in 2020 and...not yet at the planning permit stage.

[Aldith Circe Cowley @boronialinquest]

“Our $2b local infrastructure fund…is not just free money. States can only access that funding if they continue ambitious reform to boost supply.”

👏a win for Australian housing abundance

[sam @sam_d_1995]

Zohran just cited Minneapolis, Austin, and Auckland as cities that lowered housing costs via upzoning

certified ball knowledge, Auckland is a deep YIMBY cut

[Dom @db_econ]

I'm lucky to live in the best setback-free suburb in the country. Everything is brick boxes built right to the footpath and the people absolutely love them.

Why have we banned this???

[Howard Maclean @HowardFMaclean]

Australia has much more sane attitudes to AC than Europe, but in a world where Solar PV forces the price of electricity through the floor whenever teh sun is shining in summer, we shouldn't be afraid to use AC to protect our people against excessive heat.

[Gabriel @gbrl_dick]

the australian national broadcaster leaving twitter for bluesky where they have <0.5% of the followers, but only 3+ years after everyone else is the most australian thing i can possibly imagine.

[Heritage: Why? @heritage_why]

Communism means we allow apartments to be built near train stations without car parking

[Mark Di Stefano @MarkDiStef]

So embarrassing

[Dom @db_econ]

@DaveSharma Dave I will bet you ten thousand dollars that CPI rents do not increase by 43% over the next 27 months

[Dom @db_econ]

There's a lot of people out there who simultaneously think:

-Bringing a few thousand houses onto the market via banning Airbnb will be transformative

-Building new houses doesn't do anything to improve affordability unless they're below market rate housing

Hard to square imo!