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paulbenson.bsky.social
Provincetown washashore. "A home at last." Reporter and editor for the Provincetown Independent. Happy to be here.
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This is a really remarkable achievement: Cambridge, Massachusetts now allows midrise multifamily housing citywide.

This summer, Bozeman Tenants United scored a big win: voters overwhelmingly approved the creation of a study commission to explore changes to the city’s local government structure. They talked to Bolts about how it's related to the fight for fair housing: boltsmag.org/montana...

Spokane passed a bunch of housing reforms recently—eliminating parking minimums, increasing height maximums, reducing lot minimums, allowing more missing middle, & expanding property tax exemptions for new multifamily projects—and now they're building record amounts of housing

Feels genuinely wrong if you say we are quarter of the way through this century

The Santa Cruz wharf collapsing into the sea because some jackasses used CEQA to stop renovations is a perfect encapsulation of how broken it is. The status quo is not neutral, and CEQA's bias is not protecting the environment as much as protecting the environment that existed when it was passed

@scottwiener.bsky.social lays it out well here. Those in America's cities--universally run by Democrats--need to own up to the fact that life in them has become untenable. They're too expensive, too dysfunctional and too impotent to be the showpieces they need to be to improve our party's brand.

Two stages of writing: 1) This shouldn't take too long 2) Oh no

Meanwhile, a lot of cities in California that successfully avoided "impact on school enrollment" by blocking new housing are having to contemplate school closures as a result of shrinking student populations.

An incredibly good piece about being homeless in New England: www.esquire.com/news-politic... Wal-Mart looms large in the story, so the 20 ads for Wal-Mart that the algorithm served me -- interlaced with amazing black-and-white portraits -- made for an extra-surreal reader experience.

the lesson of the election isn’t “we should give up on trans rights,” it’s that the GOP took an issue that negatively impacted almost no one and made it a headliner. why would it help to surrender on an issue if they can create a grievance from thin air?

writing is so funny it’s like “this is my favorite thing to do in the world and my dream” “okay then do it right now” “no thanks I would rather do literally anything else”

Understanding the extent to which “community engagement” is absolutely DOMINATED by older, mostly white homeowners is absolutely key to understanding why your city looks the way it does. Graphic via Boston Planning Department