Build more housing in America's cities. Build more transit in America's cities. Build more parks and tree canopies in America's cities. Build more community spaces in America's cities. Protect America's public lands, ranches, and wilderness at the same time.

65 units being held up by Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. Our ability to build homes is only as strong as our most incompetent government agency. We must demand top-shelf competency and reliable timelines from our local governments. Anything less is a failure.

I want to be clear this does not come from a place without compassion. It's a mixture of anger, compassion and disgust. I find it absolutely disgusting how we treat our homeless with obvious psychiatric needs. Not to mention the ongoing enabling of horrific drug use and addiction via unaccountable non-profits. For those with severe cognitive disabilities, the compassionate thing would be to take them off the street and place them in a fully staffed mental institution where their bed is always save and clean, they get three warm meals a day, and all the meds they need to take them into their golden years. We would never let children rot on the street in their own literal shit. Why would we let adults with childlike cognitive abilities do the same? For those with drug problems, it's complicated, because so many use because they're mentally ill. For those people, an institutional stay would be needed to address the underlying psychiatric issue. For those without a mental illness, if you're caught using in public, it's immediate involuntary rehab. When you get out, you get support through mandatory AA/NA, placed in a sober house, and connected with jobs programs. Mandatory daily drug screenings. If you're caught using again, the cycle repeats. You get three strikes, then it's prison. For their sake and for the community's sake. Housing first works great for specific types of homeless people. It does not work in the cases above, and in many instances can make their psychiatric or drug problems worse. The status quo isn't working. We have to do something. Funding and building more beds in our existing psychiatric institutions would be a great start.

Just got a call from my wife that there are cops all over our neighborhood looking for a homeless dude with a machete. How much longer do we have to live like this? How many more dudes with knives is it going to take before we reopen our mental institutions? I’m so tired, man.

Housing is upstream of every social issue in the US We cannot defeat the formation of socialist sentiment in the US without making it easy for 24 year olds to buy houses and start families We will either go extinct or become a 3rd world dictatorship unless we fix this This is the linchpin. Build 10m more houses!

Unironically, adding a walkable coffee shop and a pub to a suburban neighborhood would make them 10x more enjoyable and dynamic. Imagine the run-ins you’d have every morning on your walk for coffee, or spontaneous games you watch with the dads at the pub. Sounds kinda awesome.