Jake's blog
Let's talk about how the California state government has reformed the California Environmental Quality Act, making it significantly easier to build more housing.
One of the big reasons that California has a housing crisis is, ironically, an environmental law, the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). CEQA (pronounced SEEK-wha) is a major obstacle to building new housing. Governor Newsom is expected to sign a reform bill on Friday exempting new urban apartments from CEQA. Wait. How could something called the California Environmental Quality Act possibly be bad? Really, it's because of the law of unintended consequences. But to explain why, I'm going to first give some background on what CEQA actually is. CEQA, signed into law by Ronald Reagan in 1970, requires state and...
Jake's endorsements for NYC Mayor
In order of how I think you should rank mayoral candidates them in the Democratic primary: Zellnor Myrie. Brad Lander. Scott Stringer. Adrienne Adams. Zohran Mamdani. Here's my reasoning: Zellnor Myrie is my first choice because his housing policy is the best by far, and if you're following me, you know that I support building as much housing as possible. Brad Lander is quietly competent and also pro-housing. I voted before Trump's ICE agents arrested him on nonsense charges, but good for him for standing up for the rule of law. Scott Stringer and Adrienne Adams are fine, and neither...
A primer on what it takes to publish a book
I ran into a friend a little while ago, and she mentioned she's putting together a manuscript. She wanted to pick my brain about getting a book published, and I figured it'd be about time to make a blog post about this, since I get a lot of requests from would-be authors. Keep in mind, this is going to be about general nonfiction; I have no idea what the market for fiction or academic books look like. If you want a specific timeline, check out this post I wrote two years ago. The first step is to write something really,...
Let's talk about how poorly LA is meeting its state housing quotas.
Bottom line, up front: the quota system has been as toothless as the old quota system, and more aggressive measures are needed to build more housing. A few years ago, I was hopeful that the new state housing quota system would get LA's cities to get off their tuchuses and build more housing. I'm sad to say that I was wrong. Let's go back a few years to 2021, where the state established that Greater LA needed 1.35 million new units between 2021 and 2029. The grand total permitted, halfway through this eight-year cycle, is 132,839, less than 10% of...
My review of the new NYC subway map is out!
Check it out at Vital City.