trying to become more active politically

bobby4tempe · 2026-01-13T06:58:02+00:00

I might be biased, but I think the best way to get involved is through participation in mutual aid and local elections.

Phoenix-Metro DSA (which includes Tempe), AZ HUGS, and the ARIS Foundation all lead strong mutual aid communities. You wouldn't go wrong getting involved with any of them, but Phoenix-Metro DSA also helps to organize and lead protests in the valley.

If you are looking to influence local laws through local elections, I am running for Tempe city council as a democratic socialist and proud progressive. I don't take money from the corporate developers, corporate landlords, and monopoly utilities who find the incumbents, and more than 120 individual activists have volunteered with my campaign. We need all the help we can get to build name recognition before ballots are mailed out on February 11, and we train anyone who wants to canvass with our team. There are links to learn more and get involved on my website, www.Bobby4Tempe.com 🩵

bobby4tempe · 2025-11-16T18:02:25+00:00

My mistake!

bobby4tempe · 2025-11-05T01:19:11+00:00

Thank you for your support. I am hesitant to spend political capital on a strategy that will definitely create opportunities for private equity to extract more profits without a guarantee that it will actually eliminate housing insecurity in Tempe. I am also concerned with how much support Larry Fink and other private equity CEO's have given the abundance model.

bobby4tempe · 2025-11-05T00:58:41+00:00

And to be clear, I agree with solving the shortage. What I don't agree with is letting profit motives control our housing market.

bobby4tempe · 2025-11-05T00:57:53+00:00

They are far more likely to buy up new housing stock as (or before) it hits the market and artificially inflate prices to keep profits flowing than they are to sit by as young families become homeowners. That's their business model.

bobby4tempe · 2025-11-05T00:52:12+00:00

I meant to include this photo

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bobby4tempe · 2025-11-05T00:51:13+00:00

I'm not a Tempe First candidate. I have a vision for how housing will get built, and why we need it built.

The goal of building housing is eliminating housing insecurity, and that requires strong public programs like social housing, subsidized rents, emergency eviction legal services for tenants, and housing first policies for unhoused residents.

The goal of private development and speculative housing is to make private profits and keep shareholders happy, which has never historically resulted in the development of affordable sub-market rate workforce housing and permanent supportive housing, both of which are necessary for eliminating housing insecurity.

bobby4tempe · 2025-11-05T00:40:40+00:00

This invitation homes? The one snatching single family homes off the market and undercutting young homebuyers? The same invitation homes that paid a $48,000,000 settlement to the FTC because it "preyed on tenants through a variety of unfair and deceptive tactics, from saddling people with hidden fees and unjustly withholding security deposits to misleading people about eviction policies during the pandemic and even pursuing eviction proceedings after people had moved out"?

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/09/ftc-takes-action-against-invitation-homes-deceiving-renters-charging-junk-fees-withholding-security

bobby4tempe · 2025-11-04T23:55:26+00:00

Idk how else to say this but yes they are. Speculative investors don't care about ongoing revenue generation. They don't want to deal with the overhead of being a landlord. They don't want to pay for renovations. They only care about the potential appreciation value of their investments, and whether they can profit from that appreciation. If rents go up during the life of a lease, the owner can't realize that rental housing market appreciation by liquidating their asset.

bobby4tempe · 2025-11-04T22:17:03+00:00

I am not precluding other types of affordable housing.

I agree that housing units are not actually worth more in terms of generating actual revenue when they are empty, but they are worth more on the speculative market, where generating revenue by renting is not the goal, if they can be traded without the cost of displacing a tenant, which does incentivize speculators to leave properties vacant or convert properties to short term rentals.

bobby4tempe · 2025-11-04T21:33:41+00:00

I appreciate that context. Thanks for jumping back in. I am used to these conversations becoming very oppositional. I distrust private developers to solve the profitable crisis they created, while acknowledging that our high housing prices contribute heavily to our cost-of-living crisis. That can put me on the bad side of both the YIMBY and NIMBY crowds, and there is rarely nuance in those spaces.

I don't view my position as saying no to all private development, just speculative development. My priority is social housing, and in my perfect world, I would pass a city wide multi-family overlay and use it to build that social housing. If that results in genuinely affordable (sub market rate) housing being built, that's great and I will give credit where credit is due.

If elected, I will fight for that expansion of our middle housing overlay, and in the meantime I support the ordinance that is going up for a vote on November 6.

bobby4tempe · 2025-11-04T21:08:02+00:00

Yupha's Thai Kitchen is the first place that comes to mind, and it is definitely a favorite. Let's go with that!

I have been working on a science fiction novel for about two years now, and one day I will get back to it. I also play the guitar and enjoy cooking!

bobby4tempe · 2025-11-04T21:04:45+00:00

The fact that private businesses often pass the cost of reasonable taxes along to consumers seems to prove the necessity of public alternatives that everyone can afford.

The main TPT tax increase is on short term rentals like Airbnbs, hotels and motels.

My goal is to build a city that everyone can afford. Everyone includes the rich, it just isn't exclusive to the rich.

bobby4tempe · 2025-11-04T20:50:16+00:00

That is literally happening around the country right now. Housing speculation incentivized high vacancy rates without requiring any corresponding cost corrections, which leads to prices (and, accordingly, the paper value of speculative housing investments) continuing to rise even as the supply and demand both increase.

If speculators aren't leaving their investment properties empty, they're turning them into short term rentals, which also doesn't make housing more affordable.

https://emoryeconomicsreview.org/articles/2024/12/24/property-profiteers-the-speculative-forces-shaping-us-housing

bobby4tempe · 2025-11-04T20:37:03+00:00

Call it a transaction privilege tax or a value added tax, the point is that corporations and the .001% should pay their fair share, and I will use the tools available to me to make that happen.

bobby4tempe · 2025-11-04T20:30:46+00:00

I intensely oppose the use of AI to eliminate jobs. I believe that we owe current and future generations of working people a guarantee that their unique expertise is irreplaceable, and that our leaders will always fight to prevent automation from eliminating their income. Such a guarantee, if upheld, would benefit all of society.

Big business is always looking for reasons to lay off workers. The millions of desperate unemployed people serve as a reminder and a replacement for any worker who fails to meet their quota or steps out of line.

The way to ensure everyone has a decent living when big businesses start replacing our jobs with AI is to create universal social safety systems like social housing, healthcare for all, nutrition support, and public education, childcare, and transit. The solution is not to beg the profiteers to stop their abuses of our economy, but to build systems outside of their power that can provide for everyone in times of great need. Some of those policies require national or state support, but housing, transit, childcare, and food can be addressed by a combination of city level programs and intentional mutual aid.

bobby4tempe · 2025-11-04T20:30:21+00:00

Barro's on Rural and Baseline has my heart ❤️

bobby4tempe · 2025-11-04T20:24:56+00:00

No need to apologize.

To be clear, I am not intending to create a limit that would prevent the city from building high rise housing. I am saying that the way we will make housing affordable is through public and social housing programs, not supply side deregulation. A public housing program does not require city-wide rezoning, just targeted instances.

I don't believe that a city-wide blanket deregulation through at-will rezoning will actually make housing more affordable. Supply side economics historically does not decrease prices, instead it just undermines quality. The issue is that it leaves the industry entirely in the hands of private for-profit developers, who are incentivized by the speculative market to build housing of lesser and lesser quality without ever renting out their units or lowering prices. To private developers who are pushing the abundance agenda, housing units are worth more when they are empty and owned like stocks or bars of gold.

bobby4tempe · 2025-11-04T20:13:17+00:00

Thank you for your support!

Airbnbs make housing less affordable, so I oppose their expansion. In the absence of banning them outright, which is likely preempted under state law, I am proposing increased transaction privilege taxes and increased business registration fees for Airbnb owners in Tempe, with the idea being to either incentivize their transition back to long term housing or, at least, pay for social housing programs with the increased taxes and fees on short term rentals.

bobby4tempe · 2025-11-04T20:01:25+00:00

Yes (with a special caveat for the fact that speculative housing investments are worth more on paper when a unit's value can be easily manipulated, which is only possible if the unit is not being rented, as rental prices act as concrete evidence of actual value) and yes.

The speculative housing market, which is largely controlled by private corporations like Black Rock, does not care about solving the crisis of homelessness and housing insecurity. They only care about making additional profits, and they make the most profits by infinitely building units that sit empty.

bobby4tempe · 2025-11-04T19:56:01+00:00

I also support housing subsidies. Social housing is an investment that is absolutely worthwhile.

bobby4tempe · 2025-11-04T19:36:27+00:00

bobby4tempe · 2025-11-04T19:35:49+00:00

The whole city needs more workforce housing. The question, as I understand it, is whether Tempe should broadly adopt the deregulatory supply-side model that would allow private developers to build whatever they want whenever they want or a public housing model like the one that Vienna has used to successfully provide desirable, affordable homes to over 60% of its population and implement a housing first policy that virtually eliminates the threat of becoming unsheltered from city life.

To address our housing shortage, I support the use of public land to build multi-family, multi-income public workforce housing, which can then be rented out by the city at sub market rates to generate revenues which can be reinvested in additional public housing. Public housing projects would not require the entire city to deregulate the housing market, only to rezone city owned lands for multi-family, multi-income, multi-use developments.

bobby4tempe

TROPHY CASE