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Darrell Owens Profile picture
Darrell Owens
@IDoTheThinking
Housing and Transit wonk. My tweets and retweets do not represent the opinions of my employer.
2 subscribers
Sep 13 • 12 tweets • 2 min read
2023 Census estimates just released.
Top 11 fastest growing CA cities from 2019 vs. 2023.
Bakersfield +29217
Irvine +27,228
Menifee +18,687
Roseville +17,634
Victorville +16,472
Fresno +14,136
Sacramento +12,763
Clovis +11,251
Santa Clarita +11,064
Visalia +10,397
Merced +10,019 Top 11 most shrunk CA cities from 2023 vs 2019.
Los Angeles -158,574
San Francisco -72,561
San Jose -52,171
San Diego -35,540
Santa Ana -21,809
Arden-Arcade -17,293
Fremont -14,906
Long Beach -13,149
East LA -12,987
Riverside -12,514
Glendale -12,269
Aug 31, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
In my reading and convos with abolitionist scholars at UCSC, the immediate proposals to reduce material causes of crime is good. But the lofty, more visionary ideology of no incarceration falls into the same theory issues of Anarchism where states are undesirably re-defined. i think its like an twitter/online thing because in abolitionist adjacent courses (led by Angela Davis) they didnt focus much on stateless, no jail ever utopias twitter talks a lot about but instead how crime is often materially motivated, directly and indirectly, and prevention
Jun 25, 2023 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
The co-housing experiments in Berkeley, Fremont and Sacramento where residents pools money to build new homes and removes the for profit developer -- collectivist development -- all cant afford to provide low cost affordable housing at current construction costs. People who'd just mandate higher affordability should reflect on why communal development where housing is priced at cost are closing in on $1 mil. And that things deemed deregulatory like upzoning, streanlining, removing reqs etc would be done in a socialist system as well.
Jun 10, 2023 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
I despise protected right turn lanes they are trash and should be banned. Every time i gotta play chicken with speeding drivers trying to make quick rights without stopping *just* so that i can press the beg button on a tiny lil concrete island flanked on all sides by traffic. Image The one by Milpitas BART is more egregious than anything because BART or VTA has that stupid fence hiding vacant land so the drivers come flying in blind.
May 26, 2023 • 11 tweets • 3 min read
Ok, now the Citi Bike story is 100% clear to me.

The teens were riding the bikes and docked them / ended their ride to basically avoid a charge when you take the rent-a-bikes out for too long. Its why I dont use those bikes cause they're strict.
1 / The teens sit on the docked bikes. The bikes no longer belong to them but they see fit to sit on them because they're about to undock them again in a few mins and if dont sit on them, someone will undock and *they wont have one. This is a nothing burger.
(* key dispute here)
May 17, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
I cant believe "scare the Soviets" is real. Yeah they worked on the Manhattan project for years to scare Stalin's dumbass & no president or general ever wrote it in their diary. Hiroshima was evil but no American cared about scaring the Soviets who Truman wanted to enter the war. The atomic bombs were dropped because it was the most expensive weapon in history of government and they intended to use it against a nation the homefront fanatically hated. Not to scare Stalin. Not to avoid a land invasion or anything else.
May 10, 2023 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
I think the reason why BART gets higher negativity points than Muni is because bus systems with a transit operator nearby feel a lot safer than 10 cars with 9 of them isolated away. This is why its frustrating 75% of riders have never seen an unarmed transit ambassador before. BART Rider Surveys, BART worker unions and EMC research polls all say the same thing: riders dont feel safe. Blaming it on media hype is lazy. Its okay to acknowledge theres a psychosis and drug problem and to start offering solutions that arent just cops
May 8, 2023 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Now that im driving regularly, im noticing that im catching myself speeding more than I should because the roads are huge and encourage it. Like how are you going to have a 25 mph speed limit on a road the size of a highway. The engineers give me maximum flexibility to break the law. Its why i say that most of our traffic problems are engineering problems.
May 3, 2023 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
The reason Tucker Carlson said the white men bit is because white nationalists regularly watch videos of Black kids fighting online and believe Black boys fight in packs while white men are honorable 1v1 only fighters. They believe it cause they never fought anyone before. So these keyboard warriors with zero fighting experience like Tucker Carlson think fights are like anime battles and not chaotic impulsive circumstances.
May 2, 2023 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
California DOF announced CA lost 138,000 people between May 2022 and 2023, yet again as it has year after year.
The biggest Bay Area population losers in absolute numbers:
San Francisco: - 5,333
San Jose: - 4,489
Oakland: -2,250
Vallejo: -1,496
Livermore: -1,077 Bay Area's biggest losers in percentage loss of population:
Belvedere: -1.7%
Yountville: -1.5%
American Canyon: -1.4%
Union City: -1.4%
Pleasanton: -1.4%
May 1, 2023 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
In 6 weeks i'll graduate from UC Santa Cruz because i was lucky. Too many UC students have dropped out or will drop out because they cant even find a rental let alone afford one. A $900 bedroom in Santa Cruz got 260 applicants in 2 weeks.
archive.is/qapHu One of the places i applied to had 24 apps within a day of posting
Apr 28, 2023 • 11 tweets • 2 min read
Gonna ride a vta bus for the first time in me life Nevermind i forgot my clipper card and its gonna leave. So im gonna uber :(
Apr 26, 2023 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
The Berkeley co-housing experiment, where a community offers up money to build a complex & buy their homes, gave up and couldn't finance affordable units due to costs. Showing that developers pay for inclusionary units by raising rents on other units
berkeleyside.org/2023/04/24/wit… They can't do that because they're buying their homes so they can't raise the cost of it even higher. Co-housing is a European thing that cuts out the developer and its profit-motive, but with Bay Area construction costs so high, it doesn't work to provide cheaper homeownership.
Apr 25, 2023 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
My honest take on the Pamela Price situtation:
A) Whether its Jasper Wu or Nia Wilson, when a community of color is aggrieved about a horrendous crime, the DA should make clear to adhere to the community's needs within the boundary of law. They have a right to be angry and heard B) Price has not removed gun enhancement charges from the Jasper Wu case. That is taken from a memo broadly directly staff on a the larger volume of less significant cases and has been twisted to imply its about Wu's case.

However . . .
Apr 24, 2023 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
This is true altho often the case is middle income whites move into certain gentrifying neighborhoods and that gets projected onto the whole city. For example, Asians and Latinos grew in San Francisco by 28,000 and 14,000 respectively last decade while whites only by 3,800. As for the rest of the Bay Area, its kind of a running gag among locals that an emergent Asian middle class and to lesser extent Latino has been pricing whites out of the suburbs.
darrellowensrcd.github.io/infoTransit/20… ImageImage
Apr 20, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Months ago, California labor was divided on labor standards in major housing laws. Now, a flurry of unions *almost daily* have been joining the "yes" and now the majority of construction labor now backs these major yimby housing laws. And more support is coming. Its very clear that the yimby - houser - labor coalition is the most powerful California housing coalition ever formed and like last year, will push these major laws through the legislature.
Apr 12, 2023 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
Today at 5 PM, AC Transit will vote on restoring a Ashby bus service after a controversial meeting beforehand. Berkeley's councilmembers have adamantly written in favor while ACT staff is strongly against restoration. (thread) #actmtg @berkeleyside
actransit.zoom.us/j/98487175063 ACT has proposed to extend the 7 - Arlington down College Ave and then to Ashby, down to Emeryville.
Staff predicts it'll add the most riders out of 3 pilots, but staff is firmly saying they don't want Ashby restored at all because they promised the other two pilots first.
Apr 12, 2023 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Even Boudin admits he lost the messaging war; evidently clear since Gascon did more reform than Boudin yet is politically safe. It is a warning to Pamela Price that she needs to have messaging down and strong channels in the growing Asian community as well to have a Gascon future In the last decade, Alameda county's Asians grew by 140,000 and Latinos by 50,000 while Blacks shrunk 24,000 and whites 40,000. Price has to get comms in those growing communities down or else its a Boudin outcome. He admitted he messed up here on sensitive messaging.
Mar 14, 2023 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
This is going to be unpopular but the influx of drug addicts on public transit in California is because they don't have housing to do it privately. You dont see this in West Virginia because there, addicts overdose and die in their homes.
latimes.com/california/sto… Now transit agencies are stuck with the unenviable task of tackling a whole host of social issues they have no control over while also trying to make transit popular enough to lure people into post-pandemic with a shoestring budget. They obviously can't do it.
Mar 3, 2023 • 4 tweets • 3 min read
AC Transit just released the Wednesday agenda regarding restoring the 80-Ashby line. Staff is proposing having the 7-Arlington extended from its downtown Berkeley terminus to Ashby Ave and then Emeryville. Claims 80 would cut the line of other restorations
actransit.legistar.com/LegislationDet… ImageImageImage I like it. The 7 currently is basically a school shuttle for Kensington & Thousand Oaks kids. Extended it south would be great. but I dont know why on College instead of via the 79's route through Piedmont and Claremont Blvd. More space to cover. Still close enough to College. Image
Feb 15, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Regarding the East Bay bike attacks, it looks like the vehicular attacks were just stupid teenagers. Stupid kids in cars get people killed all the time, especially in Oakland. I think corrective measures can be taken to teach them rather than treat them as attempted murderers. Apparently the kids are all knuckleheads probably headed for a bad life considering they were driving a stolen car. They should be barred from obtaining any license and permit and put in mandatory training courses to be more respectful and social.