Believer, skeptic, humanist, typist & dad. Trying to make places fairer as director of cities + towns for @Sightline. Views here: mine, all mine.
Portland, OR
Joined September 2008
- Tweets43K
- Following1.1K
- Followers5.9K
- Likes867
Pinned Tweet
This was the week things flipped for me: more to read & more post engagement on Bluesky than on twitter.
If you haven't, you should make a starter pack there on your favorite subject + see if your folks have made their own yet. Here's mine.
go.bsky.app/5nxhmgK
This week I posted the 8th & last regular episode. Auckland Councillor Julie Fairey talked about what it’s like to be a pro-housing local elected official.
Coming Sunday: a final episode with a special guest, recapping everything I think I learned from making this show
We also talk about NZ’s potentially pivotal Nov. 7 election.
If Labour wins, she predicts they block a new law that cities must compensate landowners for excessive zoning
If National is re-elected, they say they’ll let Auckland restore parking mandates rnz.co.nz/news/politics_elec…
“I voted for the plan and I spoke in favor of it and championed it. And I got to a point where I was like, you know what? If I don’t get reelected because of this, so be it.
And I topped the poll.”
- @juliefairey
podcasts.apple.com/us/podcas…
Michael Andersen retweeted
If Democrats win the Senate and the House next Tuesday, one concrete goal should be estate tax reform that:
1) lowers the exemption from $15M to (say) $5M per person, and
2) ends "step-up basis," which lets capital gains built up over a lifetime escape income tax entirely at death.
My very rough estimate is that this could raise around $100B a year more than current law (happy to be corrected if the number is off).
Michael Andersen retweeted
Deep lots (like the 50x150 drawn here) are a challenge for urban scale single lot infill, but we need to look not just at the building - but also the urbanism that could be built out over time.
These sketches show our “five/six” prototype (as detached, with side yard & without)
Michael Andersen retweeted
Very big ruling today from the appeals court on Seattle’s tenant protections. For the first time a court has basically said there is a limit to how far govt can go before it’s a “taking”
courts.wa.gov/opinions/pdf/8…
1/
Michael Andersen retweeted
Trump has made more stock trades in his second term than all 535 members of Congress combined.
Michael Andersen retweeted
We spent $600B - $1.2T in real dollars fixing Y2K. It was a huge effort!
The lack of major problems from Y2K was more a result of solid preparation than misplaced fears.
Portland #10...deep hole to climb out of but today's surplus probably won't last forever
Here are 20 MSAs where apartment demand exceeds supply so far in 2026.
In most cases, vacancy rates still remain high due to 2023-25's supply wave, so the story here isn't that the market has recovered. It's about an inflection point where demand tops supply again for the first time in 4+ years.
Surprises: Phoenix, Austin, Dallas. Still somewhat elevated supply, yet very strong demand. Vacancy rates and rents still soft, but seeing momentum for first time since 2021-22.
Upward trend: Other previously high-supplied spots now seeing much more absorption than deliveries: Denver, Atlanta, Nashville, Raleigh, Huntsville, Jacksonville.
Low-supplied markets where supply isn't keeping up with demand: DC (showing positive trends following the DOGE-era slowdown), Philly, Boston, Milwaukee, Detroit, San Jose, Oakland. (No San Francisco only because there's little there to absorb given it's a very tight market, and you can only absorb what is available.)
To be clear: The apartment market in most regions (especially Sun Belt and Mountains) is still very much a renter's market. But 2026 may prove to be an inflection point year where low supply begins to allow demand to catch up, laying foundation for possible upward pressure on rents.
Michael Andersen retweeted
A good YIMBY trend is cities reducing the number of zoning districts in their code
Redmond, WA reduced to 20 zones. Vancouver, WA reduced to just 10 zones. Meanwhile Seattle has 285.
Difficult to analyze feasibility when zones are so arbitrarily dispersed like this
Michael Andersen retweeted
Amazon asked Portland for a Preapplication Meeting for a proposed delivery drone facility.
City staff chose to classify drones as "helicopters" by interpreting rules as strictly as possible, making permitting more difficult.
Now the plan is withdrawn.
portland.gov/ppd/zoning-land…
This job is sort of a big deal
We’re hiring a principal director of program development! Build our next research program (and then the next). sightline.org/principal-dire…
Michael Andersen retweeted
We’re hiring a messaging strategy manager!
Research, test, and refine pro-housing, democracy, and clean energy messages as part of Sightline’s communications team: sightline.org/manager-messag…
Michael Andersen retweeted
My YIMBY group began 100% volunteer, like Canada's YIMBYs now, but Open NY transformed when we got a grant for our 1st employee
If US YIMBY charities tested grants in Canada, would it be welcomed as a kind of trade war reparation, or lambasted as meddling in Canadian affairs?
🏠We've added new attributes to our Affordable Housing Dataset🏠
You can now identify how many supportive units are in each record, and whether they are part of the Toronto Builds Portfolio
Here's the data: open.toronto.ca/dataset/upco…
Michael Andersen retweeted
Totally insane levels of corruption and abuse of power are swirling all around us and my sense is that as angry as voters are about the cost of living they mostly are so awash in cynicism about politics that they don’t understand how egregious Trump is.
Billions of dollars’ worth of contracts predicting oil would fall and the S&P 500 would rise were placed about 15 minutes before Trump announced a U-turn on Iran in a post on Truth Social. CFTC staff began to investigate-- then were told to lay off. bloomberg.com/news/features/…
‘Fields in 2022 floated development of a high-rise in the Pearl District, near the Broadway Corridor. But that project did not move forward.
“The one in Portland I walked away from,” he said Wednesday, citing what he called the “obvious reasons.”’
A 677-bed, 13-story glass high-rise is coming to notoriously NIMBY Corvallis, replacing the defunct muffler shop and car wash.
The building has already been approved by the city council, and has received its construction loan.
Corvallis is changing!
djcoregon.com/news/2026/10/0…
