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◥◤Kriston Capps Profile picture
◥◤Kriston Capps
@kristoncapps
Writer and editor for @CityLab. Texan. I like housing and buildings and art and chili. 📸: @kriston_capps 💌: kriston.capps@gmail.com
Apr 22 • 22 tweets • 4 min read
Justice Elena Kagan: "For a homeless person who has no place to go, sleeping in public is kind of like breathing in public." Justice Sonia Sotomayor: "Where are they supposed to sleep? Are they supposed to kill themselves not sleeping?"
Feb 17 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Virginia lawmakers may build an arena financed with an unprecedented revenue stream: personal income taxes of the workers employed at the arena bloomberg.com/news/articles/… New detail in this story: Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin, who is asking taxpayers to finance $1.4 billion toward a sports arena in Alexandria, is an investor in a $600 million Saudi-backed MMA fighting league bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
Jan 24 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
Almost every dollar of tax revenue generated by the Potomac Yard campus will go to subsidize the new arena, including Alexandria taxpayer dollars. The $1.4 billion doesn't include interest payments. Virginians will pay $3 billion to move the Caps and Wizards eight miles Alexandria residents could instead gain tax revenue from private development at Potomac Yard, shop at Target, actually drive on Route 1 and GW Parkway in the evening and still enjoy Caps and Wizards games — without paying billions to Ted Leonsis
Nov 20, 2023 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Any story about the demise of H Street NE that doesn't start and end with Ben Ashkenazy has missed the story.

Ashkenazy Acquisition's bankruptcy has had punishing consequences for Union Station and Hechinger Mall — the literal retail anchors of H Street. washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/… Amtrak cannot proceed with multiple multi-billion-dollar investments at Union Station because Ashkenazy controls station operations, with a lease that runs through 2084. So Amtrak is now trying to seize the lease through eminent domain. washingtonpost.com/transportation…
May 17, 2023 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
It's professional malpractice to write about rent control in 2023 and not talk about St. Paul, where developers walked away, permits plummeted and the policy had to be partially rolled back bit.ly/3MzXTkU In most places zoning restrictions make it hard to tease out the impacts of rent control. Data are limited in St. Paul for a bunch of reasons. But don't say economists are stuck in theory and not even mention the apparently severe consequences for St. Paul bit.ly/456mt4i
Apr 20, 2023 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
This listing costs $2900 per month. For that to be affordable a family would need to earn $150K per year.

That's 3x higher than the median household income for Cincy: $45K.

Only two earners in the 75th percentile for Cincy incomes could afford this

zillow.com/homedetails/33… Cincinnati is fortunate: There are enough apartments (in the metro area) for renters making average incomes or even 80% of area median incomes.

But the figures fall off for poor households. The Cincinnati metro area has a deficit of 22K units affordable to 50% AMI households.
Jan 19, 2023 • 11 tweets • 4 min read
Breaking news: The Biden administration is introducing a rule that will require pretty much every city, county and state to draw up an "equity plan" for fair housing, or risk losing federal funding. bloom.bg/3HdjYmP The Fair Housing Act — passed a week after MLK's assassination — requires jurisdictions that receive federal funding for development to actively work to desegregate.

It's an (unenforced) mandate known as Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing. bloom.bg/3HdjYmP
Jan 18, 2023 • 5 tweets • 3 min read
The White House is weighing a range of actions to expand tenant protections, including sealing eviction records, standardizing fair leases and taking on abusive corporate landlords.

Progressives like @RepBowman and @SenWarren want the WH to go further: bloom.bg/3wbVx2J Tenants and advocates who have met with the White House see @FHFA as a key agency to expand protections for renters, because one-third to one-half of rental units are in properties with a federally backed mortgage. bloom.bg/3wbVx2J
Dec 9, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
"Fare-free transit sounds great in theory, but American bus networks are far behind global leaders in offering good service."

@JerusalemDemsas thinks D.C.'s decision to cancel bus fares is wrong and she is right: bit.ly/3iLSgDU One argument for free bus service from @ggwash and others is that boarding will be faster without transactions.

That isn't on the table in D.C., since Virginia and Maryland riders still have to pay.

But D.C. has already *stopped collecting fares* and service is not better.
Oct 18, 2022 • 10 tweets • 5 min read
San Antonio already met and exceeded its goal of finding housing for 1,500 homeless people by the end of the year. The city is setting the pace for the Biden administration's House America campaign: bloom.bg/3MGBzoi Counts for unsheltered homelessness are difficult, especially through the pandemic, and specifically in San Antonio because the major downtown shelter (Haven for Hope) stopped making people sleep outside in its courtyard. But the figures are consistent: bloom.bg/3MGBzoi Image
Oct 16, 2022 • 5 tweets • 3 min read
This week's Sunday building column is by @LangeAlexandra, who talked to SO-IL about their design for 450 Warren, a Brooklyn condo project with a prison vibe, but in a pleasant way: bloom.bg/3D1iRUZ SO-IL designed 450 Warren for a Brooklyn lot between rowhomes and Gowanus Houses towers, so the condo has a jagged blocky in-between feel. bloom.bg/3D1iRUZ
Oct 16, 2022 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
Are all the annoying obstructive new security features that museums around the world will install a cost worth paying so Roger Hallam can fundraise with these museum stunts? I think that's the question and I think the answer is no This particular Van Gogh painting was under glass but other artworks subjected to similar stunts — paintings by Picasso, Rubens, Botticelli and others — may have suffered some light damage. Nothing conservators can't fix but nothing museums can ignore, either
Jul 28, 2022 • 13 tweets • 6 min read
NEW: A House investigation into Invitation Homes and three other major corporate landlords found that the companies filed evictions against nearly 15,000 residents while the federal moratorium was in place — three times the number previously known. bloom.bg/3PHQNdo Invitation Homes, the largest single-family landlord in the U.S., told Fannie Mae that only 6% of filings within a 6-month span resulted in evictions. But the House investigation found that the share actually pushed out was 27% — thousands of households. bloom.bg/3PHQNdo
May 21, 2022 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
This is an old take by now but I can't believe how truly useless Moynihan Train Hall is. Architecture critics in New York wrote cringe about it too. That's so embarrassing In a way Moynihan Train Hall is great because I was able to board my train quickly by waiting on the platform while everyone waiting in Moynihan Train Hall had to cross the street to get to the actual train station
May 20, 2022 • 11 tweets • 4 min read
Factory-built homes accounted for an astonishing 60% of all new single-family houses in the early 1970s. Then the traditional "stick-built" homebuilders struck back, squeezing manufactured homes with regulations.

Biden wants housing factories back online: bloom.bg/3LupoZr At their peak, housing factories were shipping nearly 600K homes per year. That was four to five times the number of manufactured homes just a decade earlier.

So why don't we all live in factory-built homes today? bloom.bg/3LupoZr
Jan 27, 2022 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
On Monday Jan. 24, Senator Ron Johnson held a panel discussion to share covid vaccine disinfo. One of the speakers was Leigh Dundas, a conspiracy theorist who joined the attack on the Capitol.

I saw her there (green coat). Dundas was calling for Mike Pence to be executed. Image Leigh Dundas stood out to me at the insurrection. I didn't know who she was at the time, but as @VoiceofOC has reported, she's an Orange County lawyer who has emerged as a leader in the anti-vaxx movement bit.ly/3o0joPq
Nov 11, 2021 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
In St. Paul, three apartment projects are now stalled and an investor pulled out of a different apartment development, one week after voters passed the nation's strictest rent control measure. twincities.com/2021/11/09/as-… This is part of the problem. This measure is like 75 words long. That's not a law! Other progressive rent control policies run many dozens of pages long.
Nov 10, 2021 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
This is an interesting thread but it misstates some of my points. Inflation is absolutely a concern when it comes to material or labor costs, and that's a real issue for renters if landlords put off maintenance, as many did during the pandemic. Rent control policies tethered to inflation — like those in D.C., California, Oregon and other progressive places — enable adjustment for inflation while preventing rent shocks. Berkeley's strict rate of 0.65% CPI = 4% today. St. Paul's rate is 3% even if inflation gets worse.
Nov 10, 2021 • 9 tweets • 4 min read
With U.S. inflation at a 30-year high, I want to point out that St. Paul just passed a 3% rent cap that is not tied to inflation. If inflation persists, it means landlords are required to lose money on their properties: bloom.bg/3bHFL5y Progressives say that St. Paul's iron rent control policy is based. But what if I told you that we live in a seller's market and St. Paul landlords would be crazy not to convert to condos
Nov 9, 2021 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Evictions should be plummeting right now. With winter and the holidays coming families aren't moving around as much. That evictions are rising tells you that something is off with the narrative that there's no eviction crisis. nyti.ms/3CZZrxn Once school starts in the fall and especially as the holidays near, households and families make fewer moves. That means fewer options or longer vacancies for landlords. Landlords are more reluctant to evict over the cold weather should season.
Oct 13, 2021 • 4 tweets • 3 min read
The owner of the Barclays Center is installing a new public artwork, "You Belong Here/We Belong Here," on the site where crowds gathered organically during protests last summer.

But note that the developer hasn't ruled out building over the plaza itself. bloom.bg/3DEoBl4 Originally the plan for Atlantic Yards was to build an office tower (below) dubbed "Miss Brooklyn," designed by Frank Gehry, at the intersection of Flatbush and Atlantic. The vision was scaled back substantially, but "B1" is still (maybe) in the works. bloom.bg/3DEoBl4