Leslie Ridings

Thanks Joe!

Copy that. We got the advocacy muscle, well bother them. Thanks for the heads up.

Joe, any idea how advocates can make sure we get a fair share of these in pedestrian heavy (and fast-car prone) DTLA? We really need them!

The longer California squabbles over 'local control,' the more people it pushes to other states | Opinion California’s housing crisis proves that control and decision-making authority can no longer be local when the consequences are universal.

I've got an op-ed in @calmatters.org today about SB 79 and "local control." If a city's policy decisions hurt people outside its borders, then it's the state--not the city--who should be given the final say.

#NowThatsWhatICallAProtectedBikeLane New concrete Toronto Barriers on 3rd St. bikeway in #DTLA

Thank you ‪@asmmarkgonzalez.bsky.social‬, ‪@jessearreguin.bsky.social‬, and ‪@scottwiener.bsky.social‬ for championing transit funding in this year’s budget!

Thank you for inviting us and your message of unity, @mayor.lacity.gov !

Good eye! With thanks to the Mayor for inviting us, I was there representing the @dtlara.bsky.social and the residents of Downtown, who stand by our immigrant community. We’ve got 90k folks living down here and over a third of them are immigrants, so the subject hits close to home.

the nytimes doesn't get LA and never will

Scarcity benefits the wealthy—those who control all the pieces already on the board.
They don’t want you to have your own pieces, they want you to need theirs.

Abundance benefits the working & middle class; it dilutes the power of the wealthy by adding more pieces to the board.

🚨MAJOR HOUSING VOTE TODAY (2/25) 

TODAY AT 2PM, City Council’s Planning & Land Use Management (PLUM) committee is voting on The Livable Communities Initiative, which could bring MORE housing, BETTER sidewalks, and SAFER streets to LA. 🏘️🚶‍♀️🚲

Agenda: lacity.primegov.com/Portal/Meeti...

The thing the right-wing took away from non-prosecution of W-era torture wasn't that they were fortunate that Obama was willing to look forward, it was that installing John Yoo's to write memos saying "[illegal thing] is actually legal" is a cheat code to rewrite the laws however you want

Image says "If their Tesla looks like this, they bought it after this". The image of the Tesla is the 2025 Tesla Model Y, highlighting the distinctive brake light which extends across the width of the car, and the headlight which also extends across the width of the car. At the bottom of the image is Elon Musk delivering a Nazi salute on January 20, 2025. This is the event that a person who purchased a 2025 Model Y would have purchased their car after.

You've already covered it, but here's a handy little guide for people that want to spot the new Model Y for whatever reason they might want to do that!

If I think about what Uncle Xi or Putin would want the U.S. to do, it aligns almost perfectly with what our current tinpot kleptocracy seems hellbent on doing.

The intellectual inconsistency and dishonesty is shocking. They are harming America and our future, while strengthening our enemies.

Agreed, but the strength of the court isn’t at issue.
The admin’s blitz of actions, ranging from legal grey areas to unconstitutional, will result in some findings for them & some against. But the damage will have been done to our govt, our international presence & stature, & our democracy itself.

Kind of annoying that the people running around screaming “America First” actually seem to be doing everything in their power to break American alliances, cede American power, harm American industry, kowtow to American competitors, and undermine American democracy—all while wrapped in the flag.

Very darkly funny to me that the party obsessed with expanding the 2nd amendment and stuffing guns into every inch of the country to resist a “tyrannical government” is now supporting the ushering in of a tyrannical, tin-pot racist kleptocracy and being very quiet about the whole “liberty” thing.

We chanted “no kings, just trains” at trans. sec. Sean Duffy in L.A. Union Station the other day; people seemed to love shouting it. Highly recommend this format.

(I might recommend _trying_ to keep it to two syllables of equal weight per line — but hey, do whatever and see what works!)

In this thread, I'll be sharing California YIMBY's 2025 legislative package. We are supporting an excellent group in legislators in running one of the most ambitious pro-housing agendas in California history—and this is only the beginning.

Musk has tweeted more than 220 times in last 24 hrs.

That's not counting the replies.

You’ve probably heard about the proposed LA County Resolution that would ask the state to suspend a bunch of housing laws.

Is it as bad as people are claiming?

Let’s go line-by-line through the resolution:

LA relief centers were inundated with donations over the weekend and are in desperate need of volunteers to sort and deliver things during the week. If you are safe & have a flexible schedule or can take PTO, now's the time. Consider volunteering w/ Ketchum YMCA in DTLA at 401 S. Hope!

A huge share of the housing California has built over the past 50 years has been in disaster-prone areas. There's no sustainable alternative to making it easier to build more infill housing.

NYT is softening every edge in the framing but this article is a bombshell

Conclusive evidence that environmental scientists have been willing to use the ESA to knowingly invent "conservation species" and then using the newly created NEPA (passed in 1970) to litigate

Everybody Wins with Congestion Pricing Yes, even drivers!

🎉We did it. The 3rd circuit has rejected New Jersey’s last minute request, meaning congestion pricing is officially going to begin in exactly 11 hours. 🎉

I wrote an article about how everyone benefits from congestion pricing, feel free to share with any skeptics!

open.substack.com/pub/betterci...

Why can’t you take a train to Joshua tree smh

LA's Tourism $30 Minimum Wage Approved By City Council The Los Angeles City Council approved the gradual increase of the city's tourism minimum wage to $22.50 next year and to $30 by 2028.

"‘No one should work a full-time job in the city of LA and not be able to afford a place to live,’ Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson said.”
Min wage hike for select group is good for them, but seems like it’d be equally effective to make it easier to build housing?
patch.com/california/l...

Nothing pisses me off more than reading a CA suburban city's zoning code.

Most of these appear to purposefully be designed to make it impossible to build anything in multifamily zones

What do you mean your "R4" zone only allows one unit per 1,740 sq ft of land area??

There is no word in the tongues of elves or men to describe how happy and excited I am for this extension. Now let’s get the SPTC and Vermont Corridor done as HRT and convert the G line to a B line extension that runs above grade 😤🚃

We’ve had viable solutions for mobility both within & between cities for a long time, like high-speed rail, prioritized public transit and networks of protected bike-lanes. We need leadership. And we need to stop letting “shiny new tech” distract us from implementing them. Image via UrbanThoughts11