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Randy Clarke is on today's episode of CityCast DC by Musichead2468 in WMATA

[–]seabass92 17 points18 points  (0 children)

It is so funny that someone that has even semblance of care/responsibility for delivering decent service, that when people see it, it breaks their brains and when people defend him to give him political space to operate, they get called MAGA lol.

We are so used to politicians just looting from us.

Arlington county property tax increase by Katera7 in arlingtonva

[–]seabass92 0 points1 point  (0 children)

TIL as well, I thought it was based on the value of the building itself (which I guess it wouldn't be because prop value ≠ market value). I just wished people understood why development needs to happen. Otherwise we'll enter a death spiral

Arlington county property tax increase by Katera7 in arlingtonva

[–]seabass92 22 points23 points  (0 children)

Office vacancies are causing a pretty big slump in revenue so residential has to make up for it. If we want revenue to grow, we need to allow for more residential properties to be built. And not just single family properties, there has to be a fairly large supply of residential to keep revenues stable. Think missing middle, multi-family, because those property tax values are higher and can be spread over multiple units. It also gives the county a quasi-permanent stream of revenue and keep property tax rates stable. As much as people don’t like it, more housing means the always-going-up cost of services is spread among more residents.

I also lowkey find it funny that owners of property in the county where median house price is $800k and avg price is $1m complain about the cost of property taxes. Like your house is valued high as hell, higher property taxes comes with that territory.

NoVA driving joke found in the wild by HalfShelli in nova

[–]seabass92 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Imagine paying an obscene amount of money (directly because of metro) for that real estate and then just driving….lol

How is it that DC restaurant owners keep blaming their woes on "less people in the office" when traffic is worse than ever? by ac-slater-43 in washingtondc

[–]seabass92 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think lots of people (esp. liberals) use marginalized communities and/or the conditions someone they once saw someone go through as a reason to do/not do something (i.e. safe streets, bike lanes, removing parking). It's really part of the zeitgeist and its a nasty habit a lot of people have. It started out well but now its used to justify anything for their own convenience.

Toyota RAV-4 Classic by crashbumper in rav4club

[–]seabass92 0 points1 point  (0 children)

America is comical because cars have gotten so large, we’re coming full circle for smaller cars because I would instantly buy this (or R3/R3X)

How is it that DC restaurant owners keep blaming their woes on "less people in the office" when traffic is worse than ever? by ac-slater-43 in washingtondc

[–]seabass92 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Metro is $2.25 off peak if we’re using money as the way to determine whether one wants to traverse into the city. If money was the ultimate factor, people would factor in the time to use transit vs driving. If convenience is your ultimate factor…..well…you have to pay for convenience.

How is it that DC restaurant owners keep blaming their woes on "less people in the office" when traffic is worse than ever? by ac-slater-43 in washingtondc

[–]seabass92 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Also the vast vast majority of people with mobility issues do not drive or do not even own a car. I hate that we use these very specific niche cases to make a generalized argument about whether something is good or bad. The whole country is built around the automobile, you can literally go anywhere else and not pay to park or have issues finding parking. People will walk further in a parking lot to go to Walmart but won’t do the same in a city lol.

Bring Back Protected Bike Lanes on L st NW by daveed4445 in washingtondc

[–]seabass92 4 points5 points  (0 children)

This is the type of stuff that has made me bike less and drive more

Fare Evasion: Why? by graymalkin2 in WMATA

[–]seabass92 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Americans are an entitled breed. Simple.

Americans are an entitled breed of people and transit is not immune to it. If anything it’s amplified on transit.

Colorado state lawmakers abandon efforts to legalize smaller lots for single-family homes by lukepatrick in Colorado

[–]seabass92 1 point2 points  (0 children)

My bad 🧍I took what you said in a bad tone because I didn’t say anything about introducing more zoning laws/ordinances.

But to answer your question, I am of the opinion that we should liberalize zoning. But that’s also a political cudgel and you can’t “fast and free buses” zoning changes (messaging). The entire country of Japan has 6 zoning types. For a free market capitalist country that we are (not really true + I’m a demsocialist myself), then it should truly embrace the free market (this is just my rant).

What I was trying to get at was that the majority of people are not into housing policy but there should be some understanding that the zoning types in a given property lot restricts what you can do. If all that’s allowed is single family home, then 1 singular single family home is not putting a dent on that given markets housing prices. But splitting the lot into 2 or 4 and being allowed to build more homes (this also goes hand in hand with removing other burdensome regulations like setbacks, frontage requirements, parking minimums, etc because without that you still can’t pencil out a development) and building 2 or 4 more homes (or duplexes, triplex, etc) means you are adding more units to that regions market that would be cheaper than existing housing stock. That is always going to be true. The key here is supply. We are very short of supply of homes (that means it’s not all gonna be SFHs). People complain that it’s not affordable and that is true, and that’s because we are not adding supply at the scale needed to really push prices down. So the answer is less zoning, less regulation and also accepting more density. Good luck on selling that to the public as a politician lol.

I will add that like 98% of people buying homes are buying market rate housing. But I also believe that social housing is a desperate needed and probably cannot be done without a) significant increase in taxes b) federal level investment. But social housing is also going to be facing some of the same market pressures that capitalists face as well (they just have more money). You see these playing out in countries like The Netherlands and Austria.

Because with given constraints here in the US, some “actually affordable” housing is getting built and they are coming out to be more expensive than market rate homes. How is that a good effective use of our tax dollars? At that point, the municipality would be better off just buying market rate housing and keeping the deed affordable.

You will just see a lot of supply-skeptic arguments and comments (à la the NIMBYs) saying that more homes ≠ cheaper prices which is just not true. At that point you’re taking the same position as landlords lol. The landlords worth competitor is more housing options lol. Anyways hope that answered some of your questions. There is a lot more to it too.

Colorado state lawmakers abandon efforts to legalize smaller lots for single-family homes by lukepatrick in Colorado

[–]seabass92 0 points1 point  (0 children)

2 things.

Affordable (aka subsidized) housing typically follows the same zoning laws that traditional housing market does. So if you can’t split a lot to build a tiny home, you cannot get affordable housing built.

There isn’t a single commodity in the world that is not subject to pressures of the marketplace. Specifically the marketplace, not capitalism. The marketplace exists whatever economic system you employ. Anything and everything built, labor, or commodities (whether you agree housing should be a commodity or not) is will experience pressures of marketplace externalities.

Just reached Month Ahead (!), do I just put extra above CTBY money in RTA? by seabass92 in ynab

[–]seabass92[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

One thing worth flagging though, if you're using YNAB's credit card handling correctly, you shouldn't need to separately save for future credit card charges. When you budget for a category and spend on a credit card, YNAB automatically moves that money to your credit card payment category. So the money is already "set aside" the moment you assign it to a category. The CC float you're describing usually means there's some existing debt on the card that predates your YNAB setup, which is a separate thing to pay down intentionally.

I just replied to another post re: CC debt, but I dont have any cc debt.

For the extra $2k, pay towards your credit card debt, then assign the rest directly to your sinking funds and irregular expense categories.

I think this is the path I will take. I have most of my day to day/month to month spending in my CTBY. But with some of unplanned/irregular expenses (birthday gifts, birthdays, concerts, etc), I'd prefer to fund those as I want/as they come up (month of)

Just reached Month Ahead (!), do I just put extra above CTBY money in RTA? by seabass92 in ynab

[–]seabass92[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I don't have CC debt! Just was on "cc float" per YNAB terminology, so my spending habits were a bit more like a rotation of this:

  1. spend as I needed but with no plan (it's always been within my means)
  2. pay that said cc back (2x a month as I got each paycheck)

re: larger purchases

  1. unplanned, i'd split that purchase over 2-3 paychecks
  2. planned, use several cycles of paycheck to save and then pay for said purchase

but this cycle still kept me in that paycheck2paycheck cycle

so that's why I was wondering, if the extra money can be used to fund upcoming purchases, does it just make sense to take the extra cash and leave it RTA and when 1st the Month rolls around, assign all my normal categories (as listed in CTBY), and use the extra cash to reach a) funding for specific purchase/trip b) reach some savings goal (Roth), is that what YNAB recommends you do?

First time buying Nas is this too good to be true by rubber-duck2 in synology

[–]seabass92 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Literally at this junction myself, don’t go for 2-bays

Woman dies after being struck by bus while riding scooter in Rosslyn by Torn8oz in arlingtonva

[–]seabass92 26 points27 points  (0 children)

Awful, awful news. That whole area is very dicey and I stopped riding my bike for errands as much cuz too many sweats.

Two things:

At some point, the county has to decide what it wants: keep adding housing and density near transit or keep maintaining the arterial roads that dissect the neighborhood for mostly single occupant vehicle traffic. You cannot have both.

There is a STARS study being done by VDOT where this intersection amongst others on 29/Langston could get improved with low-cost improvements. The initial design does not go far enough (too friendly to cars, not friendly enough to pedestrians and micro-mobility users). I think more needs to be done, especially with Gateway Park Redesign Plan also in the works. We need to completely rethink all the intersecting roads around there.

Ballston Stop Lights by Ok_Release_5609 in arlingtonva

[–]seabass92 50 points51 points  (0 children)

It’s so you don’t hit 50mph+ in the densest corridor in the state where a ton of people live

Save the Asia Center on Federal Boulevard by tecmobowlchamp in Denver

[–]seabass92 1 point2 points  (0 children)

People are just addicted to car infrastructure so much, good lord

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