In #CAPol (as in California) #housing news, the Senate just voted down common-sense reform to allow newer buildings to gradually phase in rent control.

State law preempts any rent control on buildings newer than 1995 (1979 in SF). This would simply have let 1996 buildings qualify starting next year, 1997 buildings the year after that, etc. Hardly a drastic change. Well, now we know who's on the side of landlords against the rest of us.

The biggest lie the US public ever bought into about public transportation - busses, subways, trains, is that should be a profitable service. They're not a profitable service, they're public infrastructure.

Aside from toll roads (which are a regressive tax on the poor and should be eliminated), we don't expect our roads or sidewalks to earn a profit. They're simply a utility that is granted to the public because you live there.

The roads don't close at 2AM just because not enough people drive on them for them to turn a profit, they're there 24x7x365 for people to be able to get from point A to point B no matter when they need to go there. When I buy a house on a road, I don't have to worry that some future administration will decide to tear up that road in front of my house and leave me with no way to get to work. It's simply part of our social contract that you can get to every location in town via a road and a car.

Why can we not offer the public the same for mass transit? Define an area of the city that is a Guaranteed Free Public Transportation zone. Every home and place of business within that zone is guaranteed to have public transportation service 24x7x365 to every other place within that zone. where you'll never have to wait more than 15 minutes, and you won't have to transfer more than 2 times.

Sure, maybe you say "After midnight, the busses don't run, but the city will pay for your taxis, because it's more efficient to run a fleet of taxis than to operate busses", but you've maintained that public infrastructure commitment.

#publictransit #masstransit