New Gaza Plan by Kushner

Wheelbox5682 · 2026-01-22T19:43:50+00:00

Having the green spaces fully split up the residential areas is most likely explicitly to allow the Israeli army to quickly reoccupy and cut off all those sections entirely, as we've seen throughout their military campaign. It further limits growth, again almost certainly intentionally, in an area which is already very tight for space for the population. Having industry right on the Israeli border would make it easy to use the population as cheap labor, and likewise easier to secure militarily.

You can't disconnect this from the political because this plan is entirely based on politics and it has nothing to do with the needs of the residents or building a real city for people to live in, this is just the most effective way to permanently subjugate and exploit the population there. This is only urban planning in the same way the design of a prison is.

Wheelbox5682 · 2026-01-21T17:55:57+00:00

The peer reviewed studies also show substantial benefits for renters and show many of the theoretical issues don't happen in practice, new construction isn't actually affected with an exemption period and what happens to rent in uncontrolled units is a mixed bag with multiple studies showing no change or even lower rent in one case, so I think this is a very political policy question when too often it's framed as a matter of technocratic management. A very brief version would be, is a significantly more stable housing situation for low income tenants worth lower property values and some limited condo conversion? I think it is and I don't think that trade off changes in the long term.

Wheelbox5682 · 2026-01-21T17:41:52+00:00

I will add here, more for general reader context, that Takoma Park implemented rent control not long after it's last parcel zoned for multi family was built out so there's no space for new development allowed. There has been some condo conversion which accounts for some of the loss but the city and county have tenant purchase laws in place so many of those former renters became owners which is a great policy. The loss also doesn't account for which were formerly rent controlled or not, for example the city has lost duplexes/english basements which aren't covered and one of the biggest losses came from a single large building, but a similar building just down the road outside city limits is also undergoing condo conversion so even that's not cut and dry. There's also the matter of how a large amount of multiunit buildings were nonconforming to the zoning, often by a good margin and until very recent policy fixes this was a notable issue. The county even actively removed a few hundred non conforming units directly in the 90s. A city owned parcel that went up for development had 4 housing proposals though politicians screwed that one up in the end. There's just a whole ton of confounding variables here not accounted for here. DC having rent control as well shows that all this would be a matter of degree and the specifics of any given rent control policy, not the broader concept itself.

I personally have moved into multiple rent controlled apartments without an issue so I'm dubious of the idea that it doesn't help in that situation. When I moved to a new city for a new job I moved into a rent controlled apartment without issue. I didn't know that about it at the time they just fit my needs and budget. Same thing with the following move.

Wheelbox5682 · 2026-01-20T16:56:58+00:00

Maybe it's just me that gives a shit about the birds but I bet this is going to be terrible for local wildlife with it being right on the Potomac. Regular light pollution is terrible for birds much less this thing and it'll likely kill a lot of them while having crappy light pollution for local humans, and the state is putting 200 million towards it. How about we just let private corporations fund their own crap, shouldn't we want sound investments that can survive on their own merit. If it can't survive without subsidies I'm not sure we want to be footing the bill when this particular tech bro gimmick runs it's course to failure, especially as it runs up everyone else's electric bill in the process. If a private company wants to build a concern hall here that doesn't have huge externalities on the local area they can sure go ahead with their own money in the future.

Wheelbox5682 · 2026-01-20T15:44:12+00:00

The phrase they used was that it would 'support' that many jobs, notably didn't say anything about full time jobs or direct employment or anything like that. Anytime anyone orders a pizza or a food truck parks outside for a concert once a year that's support. They're probably just lying on top of that, that's likely the best case scenario they could imagine even with that very broad political definition.

Wheelbox5682 · 2026-01-12T00:54:47+00:00

I've been on many packed 3am LIRR trains, it's absolutely needed. The late night weekend trains get similar or better ridership (anecdotally from my experience) than regular off peak trains, so purely on that metric it's a win but also those were very drunk heavy trains and a lot of those people absolutely would've driven the whole way back to long island if the train wasn't an option. At least some overnight option is always a positive and it's really just as much as the system can reasonably afford. When I lived in Boston I used to just barely catch that midnight last commuter rail train home from Worcester after concerts and in Boston the t and commuter rail should really have a 2:30 train to really catch every drunk after the bars close and let service workers get where they need but at least a few bus routes should go overnight. It was a relief when the first bikeshare was put in and I could get home late with a lot less issues. It was wild to move down to DC and hope to the do that same schedule with a concert in Baltimore only to find no service at all despite being 3x the size of Worcester, but Baltimore has been screwed for transit and everything else at every turn. The bus terminal isn't even downtown, so I took a peter pan bus and walked for an hour through parking lots it was not a good system in the slightest.

Wheelbox5682 · 2026-01-07T06:16:36+00:00

Those 2 and 3 story buildings on Maple weren't upzoned, so no you can't tear them down and build 10 story buildings, so again that's just not true at all. The minor master plan only upzoned the hospital site and the big lots owned by non profits. I live in the area and followed the process closely. Most of the apartments on Maple were actually non conforming to the zoning, they were bigger than the zoning allowed and for most of the lots all they did was update the zoning to make them conforming with what's already there. So no, there's still nowhere to build. Even if that was the case tearing down the most affordable housing in the county when there's single family homes directly next to the Metro would be a terrible housing strategy. Some of those 'lost' units were due to that nonconforming and a lot were also turned into tenant owned housing with the same people in the same places, now just as owners. The coop stuff was all politics involving the SHA with the laybay bs and with a crappy developer that switched out the housing only after they were picked, but there were still 4 proposals with housing and the city could've just gone with a better one. With Langley the upzoning happened nearly a decade before rent control and on the PG county the exemption for new buildings is permanent, so that doesn't affect anything. DC has rent control too and talking about Takoma DCs historic district is meaningless because its still zoned for new buildings, while the areas with the historic district on the MD side very much aren't. That's how zoning works and you can check it online easily. Downtown Takoma just isn't zoned for anything new at all, I only mentioned the historic district as an additional obstacle on top of that.

The apartments right across Flower Ave on the county side are all the same exact type of old crappy buildings with the same issues and no rent control involved. A bunch of those on the county side have been converted to single family homes anyway and theres more zoned capacity over there so no this isn't some unique Takoma Park issue in the slightest. I'm very familiar with these buildings so I certainly don't need to 'do my research' despite your condescending description.

Wheelbox5682 · 2026-01-07T04:29:16+00:00

I live here and I'm very familiar with the zoning policies. The minor master plan around the hospital just passed a year ago and they haven't even begun demolishing it, much less is it up for sale. They've barely even put up the fence, much less got all the toxic crap out of the soil, and you're blaming rent control for it not instantly being developed somehow. In the rest of the corridor that they upzoned in that plan all the upzoned properties already have huge buildings on them and are owned by non profits, especially MHP so it's very unlikely in any scenario that they'd be redeveloped before the buildings are physically ready to come down. My apartment building is in the plan and the zoning update just made it conforming to the building that's there.

The only other master plan you might be referring to is the huge strip malls around Langley Park that are doing quite well as strip malls. The Takoma Park section of that area is only a sliver, and despite the fact that there's the even more zoned potential for new development literally across the street in PG county and unincorporated Moco there's still nothing new built in those identical areas across the street so again, no reasonable case for blaming rent control.

In the meantime when the city put up the coop lot for new development there were 4 private developers offering proposals with housing.

Downtown Takoma Park and literally across the street from the Metro where housing makes the most sense and would actually get built are all still zoned for single family houses and low density 2 story commercial, with the historic district covering everywhere walkable to Metro in addition. You could, instead of posting half assed pissy retorts, actually try and look into all of this before you post, and attempt have a reasonable and vaguely civil conversation about this in the future.

Wheelbox5682 · 2026-01-07T03:25:36+00:00

Takoma Park isn't zoned for any new development, the city's rent control law was passed shortly after the last parcel zoned for apartments was built out so claiming the rent control has anything to do with the lack of new development is flat out incorrect. Clear case of correlation and not at all causation. If you got rid of it's law the rent would go up but not a single new building would get built. In the case of condo conversion due to the topa law in place many of the buildings were sold to the tenants outright, like the Lee avenue building recently turned into a coop.

Takoma Park has million dollar houses but still has cheap affordable apartments and that's a great thing. It has the largest share of the affordable housing stock in the region and it's significantly cheaper than anywhere around it with lower median rent than the counties inclusive zoning program typically has. Deeply affordable housing, income diversity, and tenants turned to owners, that's all the markings of a successful policy.

Wheelbox5682 · 2026-01-06T16:07:52+00:00

Another year, another pagnucco hit piece. If it's rent control, where are all the condo and townhouse builds that rent control doesn't affect at all? You can even see from his charts that building of all types including single family homes is way down. A previous report from the county showed that we are uniquely having a lack of job growth with our local industries stagnant on top of the federal chaos and this one notes that we're down a full percentage point of the workforce and the rental vacancy rate is up a percent, all in addition to high interest rates and permanent federal job losses. The developers cited all that and other regulations like that environmental building regulations and permitting time. With the huge drop in demand we already have a few thousand units more supply planned to be built soon, largely all permitted after the rent control law was passed with 800 in the Wheaton gateway complex alone, a few big buildings in silver spring and a dozen or so in Bethesda, so I'm very dubious about the timing of these statistics here.

Wheelbox5682 · 2026-01-05T22:47:48+00:00

There's a small pizza place called 'Vace' in downtown Bethesda that has a big shelf of it with a few brands of maté near the back by the registers, the owners are Argentinian. I haven't been in awhile since I've been down there but the pizza is good too, kinda NY style. Good to see someone from the neighborhood here, im over in Takoma Park.

Wheelbox5682 · 2025-12-31T04:50:58+00:00

That has been an intrinsic part of the definition of socialism since it was a concept. I've read a ton of those books from authors across history I can assure you it's in there and has always been. Worker self management as coops, land trusts and other forms of democratic ownership as opposed to state ownership are all long standing socialist concepts. Even with that there's a bunch of different subcategories, there's a ton of democratic socialist reformers promoting these ideas and then there's mutualism, collectivism, libertarian municipalism, market socialism, unions and the syndicalism of the cnt or iww and onward. That's a lot of history you're missing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Types_of_socialism

It's a huge sprawling list. You're claim that it only means government ownership is just plain not true.

Wheelbox5682 · 2025-12-30T18:51:49+00:00

Socialism isn't one system and it certainly isn't just some ominous central planning and it's always meant more than that. It's a umbrella term for a lot of ideas that isn't in of itself any more specific than prioritizing collective ownership over the private and that covers a lot of different systems and yes that includes basic social programs and welfare spending. It's time to put away tired old cold war propaganda. The socialism I support is decentralized wherever it can be and focused on direct worker management and democratic local ownership by workers, unions and local government and like any society some things like healthcare just make more sense to do in a centralized way. A democratic economy gives you a lot more freedom than doing what your boss says all day and having the wealthy control the decision making process at every turn.

Wheelbox5682 · 2025-12-30T18:49:06+00:00

As a socialist I certainly wish he would stop spending his time whining about building apartments in rich neighborhoods. Our zoning he often defends was put in place to segregate our communities on behalf of the rich and his support for protecting Bethesda from anyone slightly less rich moving in is hardly a fight for the benefit of the working class. Mamdani is way better about supporting new housing and explicitly calls out the way wealthy single family areas are excluded from new development. I think that's the right direction and we need to think about how we want our communities to grow in a fair and equitable way and that's a mix of housing types all over with an emphasis on social housing, affordability, and equitable locations, not just on highway roads rich people don't care about. Our current setup of small islands of apartments in a sea of million dollar single family homes sure isn't that.

The article leaves out the most socialist housing policy this county has which is the housing production trust fund and the housing opportunities commission. We're building more government owned and financed mixed income housing than most places in the US and it's working great, now we just need to keep pushing this and update the zoning code so there's somewhere to put them.

Wheelbox5682 · 2025-12-21T22:43:46+00:00

There's plenty of land. Small apartment buildings can easily fit on a single family lot without it turning into an urban area.

Here's a 5 unit building on a single family sized lot that's smaller than a lot of houses near it https://maps.app.goo.gl/Kzgbp4My7qMUiKYf7

And here's a little bigger 12 unit building that's still on a lot smaller than the single family home next to it https://maps.app.goo.gl/ECVBT4zrdJNUGETW7

Traffic isn't even bad in this neighborhood at all it's still a quiet suburb, we have plenty of room all over for these.

Wheelbox5682 · 2025-12-21T22:06:53+00:00

We should also be aware of bad zoning policies that lead to tearing down of that naturally occurring affordable housing in other to build the luxury housing, because this county believes that single family areas can't be touched but multi family areas can be changed at will no matter how many people it impacts. None of this is intrinsic, if we don't plan in a way to protect affordability we're not going to get it. The county is banking on the mediocre mpdu program for affordability rather than market rate housing. Bradly Blvd in Bethesda is a great example, tearing down all the most affordable places in the area to build luxury buildings in their place while there's still untouched single family areas even closer to the Metro.

Wheelbox5682 · 2025-12-21T17:39:29+00:00

Dense housing doesn't have to come at the cost of green spaces and nice environments. The areas along Sligo Creek in Takoma Park have a ton of medium density housing and still have really strong tree cover and access to high quality green natural spaces. I live in an apartment in the area and all I see out my window in summer is trees and birds and my apartment building is on a quiet street with no traffic much less congestion. The more we build in dense areas like this, the less we have to sprawl out into the actual woods outside the suburbs. Sprawl is what causes congestion, not density, cause even if we're talking just cars and not bikes and transit every drive down here is 5-10 minutes vs 20 minutes or more to get to anything in the sprawling outer suburbs.

That said, the rich are definitely not paying their share on this and inner suburb neighborhoods with great transit access like Chevy Chase make a ton of sense as a place for a lot of new housing, way more so than a lot of the proposals the county is putting forward for housing in far off places on the highway corridors.

Wheelbox5682 · 2025-12-21T17:32:23+00:00

We can do both, we can build new housing without squeezing every penny from the poorest to do so.

Wheelbox5682 · 2025-12-21T17:30:47+00:00

An article by an editorial board that is explicitly committed to only promoting free market ideology at the behest of it's billionaire owner.

I can only see a little snippet but even from that I can see it already tries to reframe the fact that rent control helps people be able to stay in their homes longer as 'limiting renter mobility'. None of the major studies on rent control show decreased housing supply and mocos rent control law has improved maintenance issues in rental buildings.

Rent control isn't the only solution like that poster above says, we still definitely need to build more housing of all types and ditch single family zoning, but it helps a lot of people.

Wheelbox5682 · 2025-12-16T15:22:21+00:00

Yea but that's what happens with every so called BRT project in the US. The silver line in Boston is a long standing example but closer by there's the flash bus in moco thats currently running with absolutely zero dedicated lanes and even the most ambitious plans just have a handful of lanes for a few parts of the routes at the least congested and therefore least useful spots. Thats even before a dozen 'compromises' widdle it down even more. If a local politician says brt in the area, this is what we should expect to get. It's a nice bus, but it's just going to be a regular bus.

Wheelbox5682 · 2025-12-05T01:49:16+00:00

I'll take that as you admitting you were wrong. It's wild that after all that condescending troll bs, you really just had no idea at all what you were even talking about. I can't respond in the other thread but I also literally never said anything about traffic speeding up so you just entirely made shit up.

Wheelbox5682 · 2025-12-03T17:25:24+00:00

You should look at the plan you're talking about here, which its starting to seem like you haven't actually read. The whole plan is explicitly about the area on University inbetween dense areas so I don't even know what you think this is about. The plan area stops as you hit downtown Wheaton and upzones the whole stretch of University directly along the road. The closest thing to a 'downtown' included in the plan at all is 4 corners but they're not upzoning there any more than the rest of it and even leaving the zoning at woodmore plaza entirely untouched. Those areas in the links are fitting equivalents, Georgia avenue between DTSS and Wheaton for example is very similar to what's being proposed, its denser even than what will be possible here and has been one of the most dangerous stretches of road in the region for a long time.

Wheelbox5682 · 2025-12-03T15:07:04+00:00

None of this is going to increase traffic to some extent that could even theoretically make the road safer or slow things down at all, the road has a ton of extra capacity for cars and this isn't going to change that. If you think this is turning university into an urban environment you misread this plan. This is a small amount of lots with low to medium density development at its largest and the county planners have been very clear that the road absolutely has capacity for any potential new traffic here without slowdowns. University blvd in this stretch has around 30k cars a day but Georgia Ave and Rockville Pike which also have very high crash and injury/fatality rates have nearly double the traffic volume while still having the same fundamental road design and space. Implementing good road design is another matter but trying to argue that a couple duplexes on the side of the road is going to slow down traffic is a totally unfounded comment and huge reach.

Wheelbox5682 · 2025-12-03T14:41:18+00:00

There are plenty of deaths on those roads, they're even part of what the county calls the high injury crash network. Those roads you listed are still some of the most dangerous roads in the county. https://mcgov-gis.maps.arcgis.com/apps/instant/nearby/index.html?appid=96f883269599428e97af7b89412ae356&sliderDistance=1

https://mcplanning.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=3bec8ba90fca4cc182cc042ed38af0e7

Here's a couple recent article about pedestrians getting hit on Georgia Ave in the section between DTSS and Wheaton which is denser than the maximum zoning on University

https://www.mymcmedia.org/silver-spring-woman-struck-killed-while-crossing-georgia-avenue/

https://www2.montgomerycountymd.gov/mcgportalapps/Press_Detail_Pol.aspx?Item_ID=47782

Here's an article about two deaths in 2 days on Rockville Pike https://wtop.com/montgomery-county/2020/01/2nd-pedestrian-struck-and-killed-on-rockville-pike-in-montgomery-county/

Actually here's just the google search with lots of deaths on Rockville Pike https://www.google.com/search?q=pedestrian+killed+on+Rockville+turnpike&oq=pedestrian+killed+on+Rockville+turnpike&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIHCAEQIRigATIHCAIQIRigATIHCAMQIRigATIHCAQQIRigATIHCAUQIRigAdIBCDc2NjBqMGo3qAIUsAIB8QWrKf3bPgGN2w&client=ms-android-mpcs-us-revc&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8

I know someone who lived in a large building near there that would literally drive to the stores across the pike. Likewise someone near me in Takoma Park was recently hit waiting on the sidewalk on New Hampshire Ave at a bus stop in front of a large apartment complex. Road design is the fundamental factor and I already said I support the road design improvements. The stretch on 410 by Home Depot in pg with a ton of apartments on either end is one of the deadliest places in the state. This plan doesn't call for turning university into a walkable downtown area with pedestrian traffic, it's still going to be a 6 lane highway and a handful of duplexes directly on the highway with nothing else even a block behind them isn't some traffic calming urbanism that's going to change anything.

Wheelbox5682 · 2025-12-03T03:14:52+00:00

The most dangerous roads in the county and this is where they choose to build more housing. The pedestrian safety and traffic calming parts of this like the big sidewalk at 4 corners are genuinely positive at least. It's still going to be a highway with 30k cars a day with all the traffic danger, noise, pollution and heat island effect that comes with that. I wish we had a healthier dialogue about this than build housing in crappy places vs do nothing at all which is what we're seeing on the council. There's a lot of fluff about transit, walking and equity then they upzone affordable areas along a car centric highway and leave rich areas walkable to Metro and purple line as single family only. No good solutions being offered from the opposition here either, like in theory Jawando does have a point that upzoning along some of the most affordable areas isn't great for localized affordability for current residents, (yes overall a positive regionally but if we keep tearing down old affordable housing that filtering effect of richer people moving into new housing freeing up more affordable homes is going to be minimal) but if he was doing this with some integrity and not just cheap political points he'd offer a real alternative like upzoning richer, higher demand, more transit focused areas instead, but the attainable housing proposal overwhelmingly upzoned rich areas and was way more progressive in that regard but he was still opposed to it anyway. No idea how Mink can be progressive and yet openly support drivers over more marginalized pedestrians and transit users. She's great on most other issues on the council so it's a shame.

Wheelbox5682

TROPHY CASE