I look at this map of bike paths and lanes in LA County and I want to say something like "thanks, fragmented governance among 88 different cities," but a huge share of this is the city of LA and it doesn't look any better. If your trip is more than a few blocks then you're probably dodging cars.

I'm playing around looking at median family income data and noticed that Washington DC has a way higher median than other large metros (chart 1) but a pretty run-of-the-mill 80% MFI (chart 2). Also, note how 80% MFI increased a lot faster than MFI in LA and NYC (chart 3 + 1). What's the deal?

Unintentionally well-targeted spam

Ontario, what is going on with these very straight long roads? Across the border in Michigan and New York at the same scale for comparison. Is it topographical (fewer mountains and hills requiring indirect routing)?

I had Claude give this a go using Census and ACS data. I also added unmarried couples, which I think makes sense? They only started tracking that in 1960.

Needs more articulation IMO

Good use of land within a couple blocks of one of the best public universities in the world in the largest city in a state with an economy bigger than every country's except the US, China, and Germany? Who's to say.

Here are the prices of all the recently sold homes within a half-mile of my office at UCLA.

- These migration patterns are at the heart of the moving chain research by Mast (2023) and others. Mast found that roughly 60–70% of people moving into new market-rate apartment buildings came from the same metro area, mirroring the 30–40% coming from outside the metro area seen in this dashboard.

Updates based on today's vote drop. Of the 12 scenarios I posted yesterday, Raman beat Pratt in 6. After the 6/4 vote drop, she wins in 8. If turnout meets projections, she needs an ~11.4 point margin over Pratt. Her margin was 10.4 in the 6/3 drop and 13.3 today.

I was curious about how the primary for Los Angeles mayor might turn out, so I modeled some scenarios with different turnout levels and vote splits. Upshot: Raman still has a decent chance, esp. if turnout exceeds projections. 2nd place scenarios marked in green. Notes and caveats in the replies.

Interesting chart from @kevinerdmann.bsky.social, with this even more interesting commentary: "Since [the 1990s], the growth of owner and renter households have moved in opposition to each other because the housing shortage means that more of one requires less of the other."

Much appreciation for this abundance of seating

Hotel Lay

This is such pathetic petty tyrant bullshit. People should point and laugh at this guy every time he goes out in public.

Frotomac

@michaelwiebe.bsky.social we didn't have time for my question about this in the interview, but one caveat to note is that credit scores have increased across the board pretty significantly over the past two decades. Got some pushback over LinkedIn over this www.federalreserve.gov/econres/note...

Where we're headed, very very quickly

My favorite part of the tariffs is how, in addition to the tax itself, I also get to pay an even larger fee to the broker. More than doubling the additional cost to me, the consumer.

...that drove up rents, and that disproportionately hurt lower and middle-income households and communities. (The black line in this chart is price-to-income in a low-income Atlanta census tract; the red line is a high-income tract.)

The result was a post-2008 crash that was much deeper and longer-lasting than it had to be, that decimated the construction industry even as it kept growing in peer countries like Canada and Australia, that dramatically shrank the market for new construction...

Tightening of lending standards leading up to and following the crash ended up shutting out roughly a third of the conventional mortgage borrowers — mostly people with good credit scores and low borrower risk.

Very strange that LADWP's rebate program for high-efficiencly appliances, thermostats, etc. also applies to TVs. I have to assume almost no one actually claims it since it's so small, but in that case why even have it?

These figures really capture the problem — a problem that poorly design construction defect liability laws contribute to, but by no means fully explain. The report that our conversation focuses on is here: ternercenter.berkeley.edu/wp-content/u...

For those interested, here are the model inputs for the different financial models, with "Ideal Loan Product SPR" being the preferred, and the one referenced in results throughout the report. (This table is on page 65 of the report.) The second table (pg. 80) are assumptions for the owner model.

I also share this chart because unlike the others, it shows SPR returns only *during* the tenancy—which is why they appear lower than elsewhere. But the comparison to homeownership also shows that they're quite high, especially when we make reasonable assumptions about ownership.

Using relatively simple financial models, the report shows that this housing model could be feasible in some markets, meaning that it produces tenant financial benefits *and* yields competitive returns for project sponsors. Here's a comparison of "returns" for an SPR tenant and typical homeowner.

Behind the idea for SPR housing is the fact that homeownership just isn't the answer for many Americans. Homeowners are much wealthier than renters, but the "homeownership society" has always been unequal and volatile—it hasn't worked for everyone, and it never will.