Aaron 🏗️🚲🌲🏀

@aceckhouse

Sixplex enthusiast. Redwood irredentist. Lake Merritt booster. Erstwhile Prince of Prosciutto, now Policy Director at California YIMBY. Cities are for people not cars. California is not full. he etc

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Aaron 🏗️🚲🌲🏀@aceckhouse· 8d

Most cities are doing their best to follow the law, but some are not. The worst is probably Beverly Hills, which is trying to use a shell game to disappear nearly 3,000 homes worth of zoned capacity. HCD should have nipped this in the bud, but there's still time for them to bring down the hammer.

Beverly Hills was the first city to propose a local TOD alternative plan, which are allowed under SB 79. The core logic of those plans is straightforward: The city can move some of the zoned capacity from one place to another; the alternative plans are then reviewed and certified as compliant by the California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD).

But Beverly Hills is trying a shell game by which they just make that zoned capacity disappear instead.

A local alternative plan under SB 79, also referred to as an “Eckhouse Plan,” must maintain the same “net zoned capacity” as the state zoning standards. Net zoned capacity is calculated by subtracting the density & floor area of existing uses from the capacity allowed by the zoning.

Since the law requires cities “maintain at least the same total net zoned capacity” between SB 79 and the local alternative plan, the city should do that on both sides of the ledger: subtract existing uses from SB 79’s capacity, and from their local plan’s capacity.

Instead, Beverly Hills calculated net zoned capacity from SB 79, and then compared that to the total zoned capacity of their local plan. The result: overcounting their local plan’s capacity by nearly 3,000 homes, or 15% of the total capacity.

Most troublingly, HCD did not address this problem in their initial review of the city’s alternative plan. We will continue to work with HCD and other stakeholders in Beverly Hills to ensure that their final Eckhouse Plan is compliant with the letter of the law.

Aaron 🏗️🚲🌲🏀@aceckhouse· 8d

Let's start with the good news: we've already seen proposals for hundreds of new homes in transit-rich, high-resource areas! These areas were not building apartments before SB 79; now there's a surge of interest.

Headline: Hundreds of New Homes

While it’s difficult to track projects across the state, by the end of July, builders had submitted proposals for at least several hundred new homes across 15 projects in 5 cities – Palo Alto, San Mateo, Atherton, South Pasadena, and Santa Monica.

In South Pasadena and Palo Alto, the proposed SB 79 projects would be more new, multifamily housing than either city has built in decades (since 1999 in Palo Alto, and since at least 1980 in South Pasadena).

Aaron 🏗️🚲🌲🏀@aceckhouse· 12d

Aaron 🏗️🚲🌲🏀@aceckhouse· 17d

“what if we had a gaudy flower that also looked like a tube worm?”

in a garden, tube like stalks rise up with a profusion of big pink flowers at the end

Aaron 🏗️🚲🌲🏀@aceckhouse· 26d

other highlights: the average Affordable unit produced by IZ costs nearly $800k in higher payments for other renters IZ policies shift homebuilding from high cost neighborhoods to low cost neighborhoods IZ stringency correlates with more restrictive land use, lower housing elasticity, and…

Jurisdictions with more stringent policies have higher
household incomes, higher rents, and higher home values. They also have higher educational at-
tainment, a higher share of white residents, and higher democratic vote shares.

Aaron 🏗️🚲🌲🏀@aceckhouse· Jun 3

Californians, remember:

white text on red background: a stylized crown below which “Keep Calm and Count the Votes”

Aaron 🏗️🚲🌲🏀@aceckhouse· May 28

contrast to the realization that gave us Frog and Toad, the greatest children's books of all time

Wiki excerpt:
Lobel explained that he wrote these books by imagining what children would want to read. However, as he continued to write, he realized the books he was writing didn't have the "weight" to them he wished and that he was going to have to tap into himself in order to create better writing. Following that epiphany, he began taking inspiration from his own experiences and emotions, and acknowledged that he was writing "... adult stories, slightly disguised as children's stories."

Aaron 🏗️🚲🌲🏀@aceckhouse· May 23

SFPD sent 20 cops to Oakland to arrest a teenage robbery suspect who had stolen a fake gold chain when the security guard at his (girl?)friend's apartment building asked to see a warrant, they broke down the door instead oaklandside.org/2026/05/22/s...

According to the search warrant obtained by SFPD, the police were seeking items related to a robbery incident, including clothing worn by an 18-year-old suspect, a firearm, and a stolen “yellow metal chain.” They also appear to have been looking for the suspect himself.

A group of about two dozen officers, not in full uniform, searched and reportedly detained a young man, whom building staff identified as the suspect named in the warrant, outside of the 7th Street property. The teen doesn’t live in the building but often visits one of the residents, they said. The warrant says he lives in Pittsburg.

Aaron 🏗️🚲🌲🏀@aceckhouse· May 20

fyi you shouldn't be using Census data for California building permits, since it omits ADUs accurate data (via housingdata.app, sourced from California HCD's annual progress reports) shows a clear jump in homebuilding from 2023 onward

bar chart showing homebuilding in San Diego from 2012 onward, with different colors representing different building types

the line jumps up in 2023

Aaron 🏗️🚲🌲🏀@aceckhouse· May 4

bruh

long story short: the study critiqued attributed 20% of studied reforms to the wrong cities

Aaron 🏗️🚲🌲🏀@aceckhouse· Apr 30

well, you see, according to the wise Justice Scalia, the VRA is "perpetuation of racial entitlement", in their secret hearts Congress wanted it gone but they were too scared of cancel culture to act on that

Antonin Scalia is referring to during the arguments in Shelby County v. Holder:
The problem here, however is. . . . a phenomenon that is called
perpetuation of racial entitlement. . . . . Whenever a society adopts racial
entitlements, it is very difficult to get out of them through the normal
political processes. I don’t think there is anything to be gained by any
senator to vote against the continuing of this act [reauthorization of the
Voting Rights Act of 1965]. And I am fairly confident that it will be
reenacted into perpetuity unless a court can say it does not comport with
the Constitution. You have to show, when you are treating different states
differently, that there’s a good reason for it. . . . .this is not the kind of a
question you can leave to Congress [author’s emphasis].34

Aaron 🏗️🚲🌲🏀@aceckhouse· Apr 30

ah, it was Scalia during oral arguments

Aaron 🏗️🚲🌲🏀@aceckhouse· Apr 16

65913.13(b)(2)

Aaron 🏗️🚲🌲🏀@aceckhouse· Apr 13

this is what the people wanted! (at the community engagement event I attended almost a decade ago)

an old tweet from a public meeting, showing results of the at meeting poll on the maximum height of new buildings in downtown San Rafael; 7 stories or more winning in a landslide

another old tweet showing similar results for the Northgate Mall area

Aaron 🏗️🚲🌲🏀@aceckhouse· Apr 9

sic semper traitors & slavers

a satirical death certificate for the Confederacy

"Conceive in sin, born in iniquity, nurtured by tyranny
…
Rest CSA from every strife
Your death is better than your life
And this one line shall grace your grave
Your death gave freedom to the slave"

Aaron 🏗️🚲🌲🏀@aceckhouse· Apr 1

look at this www.sandiego.gov/fire/communi...

map of the City of San Diego with most of the area shaded red for very high fire hazard

Aaron 🏗️🚲🌲🏀@aceckhouse· Mar 29

why do traffic engineers do this??

close up of a bike lane weaving across a right turn lane

Aaron 🏗️🚲🌲🏀@aceckhouse· Mar 22

… oh no

Aaron 🏗️🚲🌲🏀@aceckhouse· Mar 20

drivers over 80 have a worse rate of fatal crashes per mile driven than even teenagers!

A chart of crashes & fatal crashes per 100M miles driven, by driver age

Teens have 2.5-3.75 fatal crashes per 100M miles; drivers 80+ have 3.85; all groups of drivers ages 25-79 have <2

Aaron 🏗️🚲🌲🏀@aceckhouse· Mar 20

apt as ever

screenshot of a Liam Bright (@lastpositivist) post on Twitter in 2021:

Adding a single principle to utilitarianism ("ok, but no galaxy brain stuff, alright?") an thereby perfecting moral philosophy

Aaron 🏗️🚲🌲🏀@aceckhouse· Mar 15

I see a lot of room to narrow that outlet (if not closing it off entirely & rerouting traffic via 23rd)

satellite view of an intersection that is too wide, contributing to unsafely fast turns

Aaron 🏗️🚲🌲🏀@aceckhouse· Mar 13

It's a real shortcoming of speed cameras that the law precludes them from being used to hold repeated scofflaws accountable We should take these people's keys away! www.sfchronicle.com/eastbay/arti...

The data also showed that most drivers — 64% — only triggered a warning once. But a smaller group of repeat offenders accounted for nearly two-thirds of all violations during the pilot period. About 30% of warned drivers were caught two to five times, and 4% received six to 10 warnings.
A handful of drivers pushed the numbers even further: 11 motorists racked up more than 30 warnings each during the five-week pilot.
“Who are those 11 people and why are they driving?” Rowan said.

Aaron 🏗️🚲🌲🏀@aceckhouse· Mar 6

this doesn't really make sense to me; isn't a core purpose of habeas to force the government to physically present the detained person? www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/arti...

De Bremaeker suspects ICE officials swiftly moved Gutierrez out of California to prevent attorneys from filing a habeas corpus petition, a legal procedure attorneys have used to free people like Gutierrez whose detention they believe was unlawful and arbitrary. *highlighted* Attorneys must know a detainees’ physical location in order to file the petition, he said. *highlighted*

Aaron 🏗️🚲🌲🏀@aceckhouse· Mar 4

comparing apples to oranges: actually pretty easy!

a cartoon orange says to a cartoon apple "well, we're both fruit"

Aaron 🏗️🚲🌲🏀@aceckhouse· Feb 17

here's me

cartoon of a guy holding a crossbow, with his helmet visor up, on a castle turret on which the "East" part of "East Bay" is visible

Aaron 🏗️🚲🌲🏀@aceckhouse· Feb 10

austinmonitor.com/stories/2017...

In his book, Wolf argues that part of the reason Metzenbaum argued so fervently for Euclid’s zoning was to preserve the village as it was when his wife was alive.

Aaron 🏗️🚲🌲🏀@aceckhouse· Feb 5

Saw this headline, thought "didn't LA remove bike lanes & undo road diets in Playa del Rey a while back?" and… on that very street 😔😡

headline: Woman and her unborn child killed when she's hit by a car while riding bike in Playa del Rey

headline: L.A. reworks another 'road diet,' restoring car lanes in Play del Rey

paragraph: "Note that two bike lanes - on Pershing, and on Culver through downtown PDR - have already been removed." etc etc

Aaron 🏗️🚲🌲🏀@aceckhouse· Jan 14

it's been 10 years, but I still think a lot about this graffiti I saw on the sidewalk in Buenos Aires

a sidewalk with stenciled graffiti saying La Impunidad Enloquece

Aaron 🏗️🚲🌲🏀@aceckhouse· Jan 13

I really do love the Carquinez tho also working on getting into my neighborhood creek (Sausal)

a shoal of wood posts peaking out of the water in the Carquinez Strait, with green hills on the other side

Aaron 🏗️🚲🌲🏀@aceckhouse· Jan 13

the Bay Area is where all of the rivers of the Sierra Nevada & Great Valley cut through the coast range to reach the sea, which is pretty cool but while I do love the Carquinez, longtime followers may know that I’m really a Lake guy