Stacey

[Toby Muresianu 🇺🇦 @tobyhardtospell]

This image has a key lesson for housing advocates.

Story time...🍿

I live in Katy's district, and help run a grassroots pro-housing neighborhood group (@WestsideForEv).

In 2023, a 24-story building was proposed near transit in this district (1050 La Cienega). Mixed-use, on a vacant lot, with a public pocket park, would singlehandedly double the amount of dedicated Affordable Housing in the area. Still got heavy NIMBY pushback and wasn't clear if it would get through planning commission even though it would probably be illegal to block it.

We supported it. We were on good terms with Katy as we had endorsed her, were aggressively supporting her key priority (a 30-ish bed homeless housing facility in my neighborhood) and got ~70 petition signatures from people in the area in favor of the 24-story building to counter the argument that the "community was against it".

At the hearing, staff report was that all the NIMBY claims were baseless and approval recommended. Katy said the building was "too tall" but her hands were tied by state law, etc. so she didn't officially oppose.

The building was approved. Okay, we'll take it. We kept working with her (successfully) on the homeless housing project.

Unfortunately, she rapidly became worse on housing, perhaps because she feared a NIMBY challenger. She led the movement to roll back LA’s ED1 initiative (streamlining for 100% Affordable Housing projects) in areas with "Historic Preservation Overlay Zones" (which IRL cover lots of non-historic parts of LA), delayed meeting with local housing orgs who'd supported her until after the rollback was codified, and then offered nothing new on increasing housing despite LA home production continuing to crater and having promised to build a lot of it in her campaign. She voted to oppose SB79 allowing ~7 stories of housing near train stations. When it passed anyway, she led the effort to hobble and delay implementation. Etc. We were getting nowhere.

Then I decided to help campaign against her.

@HenryForLA, a Tenants Rights Attorney, wanted to run on a pro-housing platform. I started helping run the digital operation.

We're very much underdogs (she is an incumbent who has literally 10x our funding) but we have some viral successes, got endorsements from pro-housing organizations, are being recommended in an increasing number of voter guides, and are criticizing her housing record publicly.

Now, suddenly it's night and day.

She is literally posting pictures of 2 *67-story* towers and saying "more of this please."

Someone who delayed legalization of seven story buildings by transit *six weeks ago.” Who largely ignored housing advocates even when we'd actively fought for her key priorities. She hadn't even posted on twitter in years!

All this is to tell housing advocates:

Run candidates.

Organizing around projects, speaking up for them, etc is good.

But if your elected officials aren't giving you the time of day, running candidates against them is like having power tools.

You have no idea how responsive government can be until you are publicly running to take their job and telling people how you'll do a better one.

Oh, and please support @HenryForLA. You can trust we like tall buildings; we also did six weeks ago.

[HenryMantelforLA @HenryForLA]

30,000 views in less than a day.

LA voters want change.

[Norman Ornstein @NormOrnstein]

I cannot stop shaking over the loss of my friends, Rob and Michele. Yes, he was a brilliant actor and director. But more important he was an extraordinary human being, as was she. A patriot, of course, a passionate believer in social justice. 1

[Alex Muresianu @ahardtospell]

Rare when you're scheduled to give a presentation on 200 Years of US Tax History and you have to last-minute add a slide titled "Yesterday"

[Toby Muresianu 🇺🇦 @tobyhardtospell]

My ballot guide for LA voters is up: https://t.co/RpLHJ0B3n1

Full endorsements in thread 🧵

[Toby Muresianu 🇺🇦 @tobyhardtospell]

A simple visual guide to the housing crisis.

I think a hidden reason housing "breaks people's brains" is the issues are just hard to visualize.

My full explainer: https://t.co/2cchRjXXCh

[Stacey @weinface]

@tobyhardtospell 👀

[Alissa Walker @awalkerinLA]

If you wondered why LA can’t get a handle on our housing crisis it’s because every announcement that we’re creating homes for thousands of people is accompanied by policies that make thousands more people homeless. Sometimes at the same press conference

[Toby Muresianu 🇺🇦 @tobyhardtospell]

My wife is unsympathetic to how nervous I am. And I have to be like imagine if YOU had a wife who was about to give birth

[Toby Muresianu 🇺🇦 @tobyhardtospell]

On the third night of Hanukkah my entire home heating system died and the irony is not lost on me

[Stacey @weinface]

@tobyhardtospell Oh no

[Alex גדעון בן װעלװל @JewishWonk]

Depressing Jewish news break. Thread of memes I enjoy that I hope you will too.

[Toby Muresianu 🇺🇦 @tobyhardtospell]

My LA voter guide is up!

It covers LA, Culver City / Santa Monica, and LA County and CA statewide races.

Quick reference (full explanations in the link):

Mayor: @KarenBassLA
City Attorney: @GillForLA
Controller: @kennethmejiaLA

1/

https://t.co/ub8PIVStDj

[Jocelyn J. Fitzgerald MD @jjfitzgeraldMD]

A non-medical friend recently asked me to describe clinic. I told her to imagine you have 20 meetings in a day, half of them new clients with urgent needs. Each requires your best self. You are late for at least 10 of them. You must prepare a report and deliverables for each one.

[Toby Muresianu 🇺🇦 @tobyhardtospell]

This is like the speech you give conceding an election loss, not resigning in disgrace after everyone up to Biden has demanded it

[LA Forward @LosAngelesFwd]

We demand that she resign. If she fails to resign immediately, Council should remove her. We created a tool to keep the pressure up -- 1 form that sends a message to all your local+state+federal elected officials demanding they call for her resignation:

https://t.co/WzsFpe1HNJ