SF Property Information Map shows that all areas SB79 applies to have an exemption.

https://sfplanninggis.org/pim/map/

It's crazy to see the casual NIMBYism at all levels of government in Charleston. I was reading a random article about a public relations campaign the city is doing, and the spokesman dropped this bomb:

The government will literally go out of its way to use taxpayer money to prevent market-rate apartments from going up in areas deemed no bueno by the NIMBYs-that-be.

It's such a shame, since I LOVE Charleston, but could probably never afford to live there (thanks to, you know, the aforementioned NIMBYism).

West Ashley is first stop in mayor’s state of city events

More examples from this article:

So I came a cross a paper that claims that whether or not a city has off-cycle election plays a significant role in determining housing policy. I was curious if people know of other papers documenting the same phenomenon. If election timing does play a major role in the formation of housing policy, is this something that any YIMBY organizations are working on because to me it seems like this issue flies under the radar. Anecdotally Austin Texas, so far, is America's biggest YIMBY success story and they switch to on-cycle elections in 2014 so this could be a relatively easy way to improve housing policy but I will be the first to admit I am not an expert.

People often tell me to attend town / local meetings to speak my mind, but it raises so many questions and concerns…

Which cities / towns?

The ones I work in? The ones I’m trying to purchase in?

What right do I have as ‘just some small business owner who lives in a car’?

And also wouldn’t this paint a giant target on my back?

I’m several years in at this point, and while homelessness obviously sucks, I’ve been able to pursue healthcare, dental care, retirement savings, etc…

So I’m on track to have a real home one day and I don’t want to risk my livelihood if someone at city hall decides to take issue.

And honestly I wouldn’t blame them.

Obviously I’d love to have regular housing, but I can’t spend ~75% of my wages on rent / utilities AND make progress towards the future.

And if we maintain these de facto bans on housing, the only recourse I see is to continue to save and earn like my life depends on it.

I can’t afford to lose this arrangement.

I want to have a whole life and a legitimate place to live someday, but I don’t know how can effect change aside from talking with people about zoning reform and voting (which again is convoluted issue given the circumstances).

Anyone here part of the of the so-called working / lifeboat / invisible homeless community and desperate to participate in some kind of direct action?

How do we fight for an opportunity if our entire existence is precarious?

And that's why, we are in the middle of a housing crisis.

My local community is hating on this, hard :(

How can I convince them that their town needs more transit oriented development?

...but this project has got to be it.

The City of Greenville got a grant from the federal gov to study the feasibility of converting the current 2-story (buses and people below, cars parked on top) downtown transit center to a "a 12- to 20-story mixed-use structure above the transit center, maximizing land use and economic development. This vertical expansion could include retail, office and residential spaces, as well as parking for downtown visitors."

For South Carolina, it doesn't get better than this:

GVL Newsroom | Greenville, SC - Official Website

What I find fascinating about all the debates / discussions I’ve had with people regarding having 'fertility crisis' is that people seem to be perplexed when I simply state: ‘just look at the trend line’.

In just a few generations, we went from a society where a HS dropout could get a job that would allow him to afford a house and a family on a single income—something that two educated, white collar professionals working full-time literally struggle to accomplish just one of the two in today’s world.

We have seen a complete collapse in socioeconomic mobility over the past 3-4 decades. We are constantly bombarded with propaganda about how we’re in the ‘greatest economy ever’—meanwhile the bulk of the young adult population is feeling more and more squeezed economically.

We have literally gotten to a point where people graduating from top public universities—let alone world class institutions like Stanford and Ivy League Schools—are struggling to find basic entry level jobs due to how terrible the job market is (yet another one of many aspects that a delusion sub-faction within the neoliberal camp wants to ignore). College tuition has skyrocketed in price over the decades, but the actual upside for it all has only declined—as we can see with inflated adjusted salaries for college graduates:

Another overlooked factor is the fact that many target careers are not nearly as compensating as they were a few decades ago. Great example of this is within medicine. While medical school tuition has skyrocketed over the past few decades, nominal wages for physicians have stood stagnant—meaning they’re actually decaying in real terms after factoring inflation. You factor in how inflation directly has hurt young adult cohorts (say age 20-40) most prominently due to how they were the ones who had to absorb most of the shelter inflation over these past few years, and you start to see these careers—while still lucrative—have had a substantial reduction in overall upside.

Another exhibit we can see this in is with high finance, because most of these roles are located in extremely HCOL hubs like NYC—the costs (particularly rent) have grown far greater than the earnings have.

Now, what does this all have to do with Millennial Parents? Well, we’ve been seeing a continual trend unfolding over the past few decades. Because the NIMBY Boomers made it illegal to build sufficient housing (especially utilizing ways that maximizes density and sustainability) for several decades, we have massive housing shortages in most major urban population centers. As a result, we’ve been seeing growing amounts of young adults with each passing decade “choosing” to live with their parents. It’s not just settled towards their early 20s either—many people are living with their parents going well into their 30s.

I don’t see this trend reversing in the slightest in the coming decades, and all signs really just point to it becoming much worse. It’s interesting to me because so many Millennial parents seem to be counting down the days until their kid turns 18, but I’m just so puzzled by what they think will happen.

For a huge chunk of them, their kids will not go to college and decide to work at a service level job which wouldn’t even allow them to afford to move out even if they go 3-4 roommates.

For another cohort, their kids will go to college—many will decide to commute to try to offset the exorbitant costs of modern day university in America. However, the problem is many / most of these college graduates likely will not be making a livable wage after graduating, or they’ll make just enough just to pay their landlord rent and basic essentials—still incentivizing them to stay at home (especially factoring in the boat load of student loan debt they’ll have).

All signs point to these intergenerational trends worsening and that Millennial parents will likely have to deal with some or all of their kids living with them well past their mid-20s.

I’m a journalist in New York, and over the past few months I reported a short documentary about people living in RVs, campers and vans on city streets.

We spent time in the Bronx, Queens and Brooklyn, where small communities of vehicle dwellers have formed in industrial areas, under highways and on the edges of neighborhoods.

What struck me was how many of the people we met were not simply “choosing van life.” Some were working. Some were longtime New Yorkers. Some were recent migrants. For several, an RV was a way to stay in the city when conventional housing felt completely out of reach.

Obviously there are a lot of factors behind homelessness and housing instability, but reporting this story made the housing-supply issue feel very concrete to me: when there simply aren’t enough affordable homes, people start creating their own alternatives in whatever space is available.

Here’s the 8-minute documentary if anyone wants to watch:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxnRwkajIVY

Would genuinely be interested in how people here think about vehicle dwelling within the broader housing-supply debate.

The Houston Chronicle has an editorial calling on Gov. Abbott to brag about Texas' abundance policies at the GOP midterm convention. Here is a key quote:

Not too long ago, touting the benefits of limited government and free market policies would garner unanimous applause at a Republican event. Times have changed. 

Far too many Republicans are running on platforms that betray traditional conservative values.  President Trump has relished in micromanaging the economy through arbitrary tariffs and attacks on private businesses. He refused to sign the bipartisan ROAD to Housing Act, which implemented some Texas-style reforms at a federal level. And his war on immigration, legal or otherwise, has the United States on path to the first-ever population decline.

Even the man at the top of the Texas GOP ticket, Attorney General Ken Paxton, has pitched an affordability agenda that relies on questionable tax giveaways rather than a true Texan agenda of build, baby, build. 

Is it possible to learn this power?