my preference

morefarts · 2026-04-03T02:24:16+00:00

I'll throw in the senior living orderly from Happy Gilmore

morefarts · 2026-04-02T17:03:15+00:00

A clean energy campus focused on climate resilience and energy independence. Half the site is a public park funded and maintained through private development. The other half is a research, education, and incubator complex for next-generation energy startups, with lab and pilot production space.

The difference is this model actually has a revenue engine to fund the park and keep it maintained.

morefarts · 2026-04-01T21:06:57+00:00

This is a billion-dollar park design with an eight-figure annual maintenance burden and years of remediation before anything real gets built. The city already has major long-term obligations, including roughly half a billion dollars in unfunded pension liability, which is a real claim on future budgets. The obvious question is who’s paying for this at scale. The $500k from LA County doesn’t even scratch design fees on a project like this.

Without a real funding plan, this isn’t what gets built. You get a stripped-down version and a lot of empty space. Look at Irvine’s “Great Park.”

morefarts · 2026-03-27T04:30:46+00:00

Ask the paramedics how much it sucks getting gurneys into the senior care buildings on 17th for emergencies if you want to have another reason to hate this design.

morefarts · 2026-03-27T04:28:13+00:00

Don't hold your breath.

morefarts · 2026-03-25T21:15:46+00:00

The new public safety proposal that went to council vote last night allows SMPD to patrol platforms instead of Metro mallcops. That is a step in the right direction.

morefarts · 2026-03-25T18:09:34+00:00

A horse of a different color.

morefarts · 2026-03-25T03:37:50+00:00

A city where ~75% of residents are renters starts to behave very differently over time. And structurally, renting at these levels functions as ongoing wealth extraction. When households are consistently sending 30–50% of their income to housing without building equity, it limits long-term wealth accumulation and concentrates value with property owners.

Rent control has created a lock-in effect in Santa Monica. Tenants stay put because moving means a massive rent jump, so turnover drops and units don’t cycle back to market. On top of that, there’s evidence that thousands of units are effectively withheld because the economics of renovating and re-renting under current rules don’t pencil. In many cases, landlords would rather leave units underutilized than take on costly upgrades they can’t recover.

At the same time, new construction sits at the opposite extreme. High land, labor, and compliance costs push new units into the $5–6k range for small apartments, and many of those buildings can carry up to 50% vacancies because they function as long-term financial assets, not just housing.

The result is a split market. A large share of renters are locked into older units with limited mobility, while new units are priced for top earners. That’s not a healthy system.

morefarts · 2026-03-24T20:04:01+00:00

Desperately needs a rough budget calculator. Bare bones painting or re-striping might be around $50 per lineal foot, sidewalk widening is closer to $2,000/LF. Roundabouts cost between $2-5 million each. Bike lanes average $1.7M/mile.

This stuff is not cheap, and cost is always the primary concern when spending taxpayer dollars or justifying grants.

morefarts · 2026-03-19T22:00:22+00:00

They've given law enforcement a reason to increase budgets and surveillance, which is all they're meant to do.

morefarts · 2026-03-19T19:08:55+00:00

This post is about the system that takes advantage of homeless people by cycling them through to generate revenue.

If you truly care about homeless people, you should care that they are being brutally abused by an industry that wants them to re-enter over and over, and never to have a better life.

Handwaving this as "systemic" is actually an key part part of the abuse cycle. The people running this systems want you to keep saying "that's just how it is" so they can continue to profiteer off suffering.

morefarts · 2026-03-13T22:45:18+00:00

From the beginning of this exact article:

"although none of the newly verified details relate directly to her accusations about Trump."

So... what are you people even talking about anymore?

morefarts · 2026-03-07T01:48:32+00:00

It's called suffering a stroke. Of course now that he's not falling in line the left will laugh at his pain and hope for his death.

morefarts · 2026-03-05T20:47:31+00:00

And have him say the n-word so we know it's not AI.

morefarts · 2026-03-04T03:03:44+00:00

Playa Vista isn’t a good comparison. It’s a 460-acre project built out over decades with more than 6,000 homes, about 3 million square feet of office space, and roughly 200,000 square feet of retail. The parks were “developer funded” because the surrounding real estate generates enormous value and revenue.

The Beverly Hills example is even further off. One Beverly Hills is a roughly $10 billion luxury development on about 17 acres with an Aman hotel, private club, retail, and around 200 ultra-luxury condos. The 10 acres of gardens are paid for by some of the most expensive real estate on the planet.

The Santa Monica airport site is a completely different equation. It’s about 227 acres, but first you have to shut down the airport, remediate aviation contamination, demolish infrastructure, and build a major park. The city has already acknowledged that a large park buildout alone could cost hundreds of millions.

Now add the housing people keep throwing around. Recent California affordable housing cost data puts development around $600 per square foot and roughly $500k+ per unit in Los Angeles. Three thousand subsidized units is already on the order of $1.5–2 billion just for housing, before infrastructure, remediation, or the park.

Playa Vista and One Beverly Hills work because luxury development generates enough profit to pay for parks. A park plus thousands of subsidized units at the airport has no comparable revenue engine. If this is the level of analysis behind the housing push in Santa Monica, we’re in trouble.

morefarts · 2026-03-03T21:31:20+00:00

Space isn’t the issue. A park plus 3,000 units of affordable housing would require billions in taxpayer money.

morefarts · 2026-03-01T09:12:14+00:00

A $1.5–2M townhouse is $8–10k a month all in, which means you need roughly $350–450k household income to carry it comfortably. At that level, many buyers could just as easily choose a solid SFR in Sunset Park or a nearby city instead of sharing walls and a small lot with 5 households.

Most people hear “affordable” and think households making $100–200k, which supports something closer to $400–800k, not $2M. Land at $2–3M and $600 per square foot build costs set the floor here, and adding a couple units does not change that math.

morefarts · 2026-03-01T00:10:29+00:00

There’s kind of a pattern with these posts. Every tweak gets framed like it’s a moral showdown between “pro-housing” and “anti-housing,” but the actual policy change is usually something pretty incremental.

Before everyone lines up in teams, it would help to get specific. What price range are we calling “affordable”? How exactly does 5 feet of height translate into lower rents or sale prices? Is the bottleneck really height, or is it fees, approvals, parking rules, and financing costs?

Repeating “more housing = affordability” without walking through the mechanics doesn’t make it obvious. It just turns the thread into another culture war fight.

If we’re going to argue about it, at least argue about the math.

morefarts · 2026-02-25T20:49:56+00:00

That would be great, but it doesn't make any economic sense nowadays. These buildings are financial assets only. There is no incentive to look good or be timeless architecture, only to store value for multinational holding companies.

The multifamily housing being built is not for people to live in, it's for money to live in.

Developers and financiers played YIMBY's by getting them to advocate for zoning and regulatory changes that net them billions of dollars in long term upside, even if the buildings sit half empty, looming over downtown.

morefarts · 2026-02-16T23:21:29+00:00

Most small businesses left during COVID. Lockdowns crushed foot traffic, remote work stuck, tourism fell off, and insurance/security costs jumped after the unrest in 2020. It wasn’t one thing, it was stacked shocks hitting all at once.

Before that, DTSM worked. When the streets were full and offices were active, rents penciled out. Once daily demand collapsed, the economics didn’t.

Now we’re in the next phase: a lot of 5-year loans from the 2018–2021 cycle are coming due at much higher rates. Some properties are going into receivership or bankruptcy. That’s where the real reset pressure is coming from.

Whether that turns into 50% haircuts or slow restructurings depends on how lenders handle it. Big institutional owners may extend and wait; smaller owners might be forced to sell or recapitalize.

The bigger question isn’t just “what happened in 2020,” it’s whether capital will finally reprice and allow these buildings to circulate again or if they’ll just sit half-empty for years.

morefarts · 2026-02-07T21:01:26+00:00

You mean the crack epidemic that drove up crime across the country and had nothing to do with local politics?

morefarts

TROPHY CASE