u/External_Koala971

1. The SF Fed's "Supply Constraints" Finding (February 2026)
   The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco just published a paper showing that across US metros, housing units have grown faster than population -- even in expensive markets. Supply elasticity doesn't explain price differences between cities. The Fed found that it's average income growth -- driven by high earners -- that tracks house prices, not supply constraints. Adding units doesn't lower the floor when demand is being driven by the top of the income distribution, not the median.

2. The LSE International Inequalities Institute Paper (January 2026)
   In a working paper titled "Inequality, Not Regulation, Drives America's Housing Affordability Crisis," researchers from LSE, UCLA, and NYU confirmed that deregulation is a trickle-down fantasy. Through empirical simulation, they showed that even a massive expansion of market-rate supply would take decades to generate widespread affordability in high-cost US markets. The problem isn't a constrained market -- it's rising inequality concentrating demand at the top.

3. The "Abundance for Who?" Report (Georgetown Center on Poverty and Inequality, February 2026)
   Georgetown researchers analyzed new housing construction in six high-growth metros -- Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Phoenix, Seattle, and DC. Their finding: new housing mostly served moderate and high income households. The share of units serving lower-income renters decreased or stagnated, and rents rose fastest for the poorest renters. Supply grew. Affordability for the people who need it most got worse.

4. The Land Value Trap (Patrick Condon, Broken City, 2024)
   UBC professor Patrick Condon's research documents what he calls the core problem with upzoning: when you rezone a parcel for higher density, you don't make housing cheaper -- you make the land more valuable, because developers can extract more profit per square foot. That land value jump filters through to surrounding parcels and pushes out small businesses and lower-rent tenants. The speculative premium eats any affordability benefit before a shovel hits the ground.

5. Upzoning Raises Property Values Without Adding Supply (Yonah Freemark, Urban Affairs Review, 2020)
   Freemark's peer-reviewed study of Chicago upzonings found exactly this dynamic in practice. In the short term, upzoning produced significant, statistically robust increases in property values -- including for existing residential condos in the area. What it didn't produce: any measurable increase in new housing permits over five years. Upzoning signaled to every landowner that their parcel was now a development asset. Prices went up. Supply didn't.

The Bottom Line:

We are being sold a "simple story" that any new building here will lower rents because it is incredibly profitable for institutional REITs and developers. But as these 2025 and 2026 studies show, adding high-end density doesn't "soak up" demand—it induces it. It resets the price floor for every slice of pizza and every studio apartment in a two-block radius.

Real affordability comes from protections and public investment, not from the "trickle-down" crumbs of a 26-story luxury tower or bailout failed lab projects

Primary Sources:

SF Fed / Fortune: The Housing Crisis and Income Inequality (2026) https://fortune.com/2026/02/07/housing-affordability-crisis-home-prices-income-inequality-supply-growth-population/

LSE: Inequality, not regulation, drives affordability crisis (2026) https://ideas.repec.org/p/ehl/lserod/131070.html

Georgetown: Abundance for Who? Report (2026) https://www.georgetownpoverty.org/issues/abundance-for-who/

Patrick Condon: Broken City & Land Speculation (2025) https://www.ijurr.org/book\_review/broken-city-book-review/

Anyone used the Terravia 36L for 3-4 night trips? On paper it looks good, internal frame sheet, 36L, 1066g.

This would be for Sierra high country/sections of JMT.

https://www.patagonia.com/product/terravia-roll-top-backpack-36-liters/196924908406.html

Tldr; got stranded in a tight shoulder in an off-ramp highway for an hour and a half. Tesla support was absolutely useless, provided reckless recommendations, and lied about a tow being on the way

Posting this as a warning for anyone considering riding with Robotaxi.

My friend and I called a robotaxi to get from SF to Oakland at 12:30am. After crossing the bay bridge, we got a low tire pressure warning, so our driver started to takeover the car to find the nearest exit. At this time, Tesla’s dispatch line calls and advises him to get off the nearest exit so they can send in maintenance and a new robotaxi for us. But within seconds, we could hear the front right tire deflating, and eventually, the car was hitting the rim. 

There was a strong smell of burnt rubber, so the driver pulls over immediately. At this time, we are on the off-ramp to the 24 East from the 580, in a very small shoulder barely wide enough to fit the car (see photos for gmaps image). We even hit the side of the guardrails to get as close to the edge as possible. 

At this point, dispatch calls again and our driver tells them we’re in a pretty dangerous situation between two highways and that we need a tow truck immediately. Tesla says they’re sending a tow out to our location but does not provide an eta. Some cars were passing by us so fast that it shakes the car.

We wait in the car, with intermittent calls telling us a tow was coming our way. At some point, they tell us to all get out of the car, but our driver refused that request because of how dangerous it was given the volume of traffic. They even ask him to continue driving forward, but again, our driver says that the tire is at the rim and he cannot enter the highway since people were driving extremely quickly.

About 30 minutes pass by, and we are all getting pretty anxious about the cars that are flying close by. We watched the traffic through the back window (so we can anticipate if we were getting hit???), and my friend and I ask about calling 911. It seems like our driver is not allowed to suggest it or call 911 himself and agrees that it would be a good idea. We call the emergency line and ask for highway patrol to help block the lane so we could not get hit. 911 said they will send out a car.

Another 20 minutes pass by. No tow, no highway patrol. Eventually, a Caltrans tow truck pulls up in front of us (thank god for the department of transportation for having regular patrol) and lets us know that we are in a restricted area for other tow trucks (due to high volume of traffic) and that he would tow our car to a safe location, for free given the hazardous nature of the situation and the fact that other tow trucks cannot reach the area. Caltrans gets me, my friend, and the driver into his truck and tows the robotaxi. 

At this point, Tesla’s dispatch is frequently calling the driver, providing uncertain etas and empty promises that a tow is coming. Our driver relays the information that Caltrans has told us and that we were getting in the tow.

Caltrans drives us to the Bay Bridge Toll Plaza. On the way, robotaxi says our ride is complete, and we try to get a hold of Tesla to figure out how we would get home. Apparently, there is no dedicated robotaxi support, so we are on the line with Tesla support, who cannot pull up our information from the app easily. We inform them we are in a tow because the car broke down on the highway and Tesla told us there was nothing they can do, as we decided on our own to get in the tow and it was our responsibility. We informed them that we had no choice but to get in the tow because we were in an extremely dangerous situation. Tesla support says we can only end the ride a call a new one (that would come in 30 mins). We tried to escalate to someone higher up, but they would not forward us to anyone else. We call support twice, same answer.

By the time we reach the toll plaza, it’s been about an hour since we were stuck on the highway. Tesla dispatch seems unhappy with our driver having accepted the tow from the state; even Caltrans intervenes to tell them that it was necessary and that they wouldn’t even charge them (video here: https://imgur.com/a/mprkkyx). Tesla dispatch say they are coming with maintenance workers and another robotaxi for us. However, they cannot find the car’s location because the gps relies on the tires (which weren’t moving on the back of the tow). They ask our driver to send his location on a Microsoft teams chat. He does. They say the area is too big and that we would need to be specific. At this point, my friend and I interrupt saying there are only three cars in the lot, it’s not big, and they could find us easily. The dispatch never responds to us directly. (Our driver tries to answer his phone privately but it’s connected to the car which is why we could hear most conversations.)

We ask our driver if the situation is okay for him; he says all he cares about is our safety and would wait for the maintenance people to take him back to the office. We ask if it would be okay to leave on another rideshare (Uber); he encourages us to go.

Our ride comes about ten minutes later, still no Tesla support. 24 hours later, Tesla has refunded the ride but hasn’t reached out even though we ask them to make a note of this in an earlier convo, called several more times after, and submitted a ticket.

Landlords, especially in marginal and poverty stricken areas, are responsible for turning around distressed assets and improving them for habitability, for putting money at risk to build additional housing units, and for growing the US rental stock.

About 70% of rental properties are owned by individual investors rather than institutions.

Comparably.com: Landlord annual earnings range from $28,808 to $239,808, depending on portfolio size and location.

Talent.com(2024): Median landlord income sits at $60,107 per year, with top-earning regions such as Maryland reporting averages above $103,750

2021 - 2026 the average us house appreciated by 39%. With 20% down, that’s a return of 24% per year, more than double the S&P.

I realized today that electric door handles are The Worst. I hate them- they’re never intuitive to me to open, they require extra steps, and they signal to thieves “hey look, this car is unlocked!” when they’re popped out.

Which EVs still have regular door handles?