21
votes
What is going on in your city?
Care to share some recent local news? (Doesn’t have to be where you live if you wish to stay anonymous and just want to share the news of a city you like!)
Care to share some recent local news? (Doesn’t have to be where you live if you wish to stay anonymous and just want to share the news of a city you like!)
i95 collapsed so things have been kinda crazy.
I feel like I've been living under a rock. I live in the Philly metro area and drive on I-95 pretty regularly (not this week) and I had no idea that it collapsed.
Looks like it'll be a bit rough when I drive down to Baltimore for a few months.
The collapse is in the northeast. You can still take 276 or the Turnpike, but I've always preferred Amtrak anywhere on the Northeast Corridor. It's affordable if you buy in advance: as low as $5 from Philadelphia to Baltimore.
I usually get on 95 after Florence, so I think that would affect my travel. No big deal, though. I can head through Camden instead.
I never end up taking the Amtrak but I might have to try it the next time I have an event down there. I always thought it would be too expensive for what I'm looking for, but I end up putting a whole tank of gas + EzPass when I visit... and then there's parking garages. I might be able to save myself a nice chunk of change. I appreciate the suggestion!
That's a new fear. Any news about why? I want to be able to think things don't collapse without a good reason...
There was a fire, right?
Wow, that's terrible. Apparently, the was victims in the crash, but a fire so strong as to destroy an overpass... I'm speechless about that.
-Google's source
The city council last night approved a ban on short term rentals (AirBnB, etc) in single family zoned districts: https://www.dallasnews.com/news/politics/2023/06/14/dallas-was-still-mulling-short-term-rentals-into-the-late-night-no-vote-by-9-pm/
Good start, Dallas. When my partner and I were moving out of there, our apartment complex was in the beginning phases of partnering with Airbnb to offer residents to become “hosts” despite not owning their unit. They called it an “amenity.” Really, it was Greystar furthering its greed by opening the door for wannabe Airbnb landlords to start renting multiple units each in its buildings while taking a cut. It would’ve absolutely ruined living there—driving up prices as corporations lease more and more residential units to other corporations, not to mention what it would be like to actually live in a complex of dozens and dozens of Airbnbs.
After all the ways Greystar had continued to screw us over, we were out of there. Had I not already received a relocation offer from work, we would’ve absolutely considered our options. Reading the DMN article, it doesn’t sound like these changes will affect the sort of Airbnb bullshit I experienced, but I’m all for placing guardrails on the whole thing.
What are your feelings about that?
In my city, we've had lots of issues with AirBnBs. Parties that get out of control, shootings, general debauchery. So I definitely see the need to crack down on them. That said, when I travel I love getting a place in an apartment or small house in a neat neighborhood. I feel like it gives me a more complete experience of wherever I'm staying than if I were in a hotel. So I'm torn on these bans.
Ideally people should be able to rent an extra room or their house when on vacation, it is the dedicated AirBnBs that are the issue. But it is way easier to enforce an outright ban and most airBnB are full time anyways. Most people do not want to rent a room in someone’s house for vacation and it is too difficult to prepare your house for rent when you leave on vacation.
So as someone that likes to get an AirBnB when traveling, my opinion seems contradictory, but it can be explained with one term: Accessory Dwelling Unit
Most of the places in the US I have traveled to for leisure have laws that allow ADUs, (colloquially known as mother-in-law-suites, carriage houses, etc.) and the AirBnBs I've rented have been almost exclusively these ADUs.
Here in Dallas, ADUs are, for all practical purposes, banned. While there is regulation on the books that technically allows them to be present, but the hoops that must be jumped through to make them happen make them next to impossible to actually have in any area.
So right now we have the very real problem of single family housing that is allowed to sit empty most of the time so people/corporations that own several homes can rent them out periodically instead of allowing locals to have a place to rent/own. This lowers the supply of housing and contributes to inflated home prices.
My overall opinion is it didn't go far enough, but the lengths I think it should have gone aren't something that's based in the reality of what would ever actually be done.
As a Dallas resident.....
I'm pretty effing happy about it. It's also going to reduce the investor greed on single family properties.
Not by a lot, but it certainly makes them re-thunk their investment plans, vs the family that wants to buy a home.
I'm strongly opposed to airbnbs. They often ruin communities and reduce the voting population for the private profits of an absentee owner. I don't stay in them anymore unless I'm part of a larger group and can't avoid it, and hotels have gotten to be more affordable in comparison anyway.
A couple that moved to my city from Portland bought the house across the street from me and applied for a non-owner-occupied STVR permit, then they sent out a letter required by law to all neighbors within 300 feet of the property notifying them of the application so neighbors could fight it in a public hearing. I got their contact info and went to speak to them in person to convince them to withdraw the application before the public hearing. I told them we had defeated numerous other non-owner-occupied STVR applications as a community, and I even offered to leverage my personal network to find long-term tenants to keep the property cash flowing for them.
Guess what? They withdrew the application then quietly submitted a new application for an owner-occupied STVR permit (which conveniently does not requiring notifying neighbors by mail), but they have never lived there and just operate it like a non-owner-occupied property. If they hadn't lied to my face and given the middle finger to my hometown's legal system, I wouldn't be so upset about it. I'm waiting on the city to act on my code violation reports, but the whole process moves at a snail's pace. Part of me just wants to rent the property under a friend's account for a night then tank their ratings out of spite. Absolute scumbags.
It's funny, I wanted to travel after not doing so for around six years and I was dumbfounded to find AirBnB an absolute joke of a website where Booking.com (though forcing you into incognito) offers me absurdly good deals in amazing locations - the two things that AirBnB was perfect for.
It saddened me, and was my first glimpse through the curtain of how mega corporations run the web. When you offer someone absurd, "don't worry about your family's wealth for the next few generations" amounts of money, they'll gladly abandon the product they tried to sell and shift to what's profitable, usually at the expense of the end-user.
The newly elected mayor (only like 16% voter turnout :( ) decided to move the date and location of a beloved local festival, as well as hamstring it by disallowing open containers. It used to be right in the city center, with several closed down streets stages, and now it’s in a park with some expensive restaurants nearby. It’s a huge bummer, he’s not having the best tenure so far.
We just had a wildfire come through our area and directly through our own subdivision. Four of my neighbors lost their homes and a few more lost sheds and shops and vehicles. We were evacuated by order to a hotel and the gov housed and fed us for 12 days while we wondered what was happening with our homes. It was a difficult time and the loss of houses and hundreds of trees in our subdivision is heart wrenching. Im sure some of my neighbors are experiencing grieving, depression and some PTSD over this. We were fortunate to not lose anything.
Here one of the biggest news of the year is that the Palace of Justice scaffolding, which is over 40 years old and has had to itself get renovated, is getting removed this year.
https://www.brusselstimes.com/brussels/545977/end-of-an-era-brussels-palais-de-justice-facade-free-from-scaffolding-next-year
There is also a growing movement for making English an official language here. This would make it the only place in the EU where English is an official language.
https://www.brusselstimes.com/brussels/540987/rue-de-la-loi-wetstraat-law-street-english-may-become-brussels-third-official-language
The scaffolding thing blows my mind. Why hasn't it been fixed before now?
The English thing just seems like officially accepting what the current status is in the city, is it likely to pass?
I posted about it on tildes a while back, the Brussels times has a fantastic article on it:
https://tildes.net/~design/14ic/the_unfathomable_scale_of_the_brussels_palace_of_justice
Given the popularity of delivery apps like Uber Eats, the police is cracking down on bikers who use the streets wrong. One of those things is the use of overpasses.
So, this month, after years of using overpasses in front of police vehicles without a problem, for the first time I hear that bikes are not allowed to use overpasses.
That's the main reason we can't have nice things, I suppose.
At the end of my street, a small sinkhole opened up yesterday. I live in a small town and the town’s response was to place two barriers to avoid having people fall in. They don’t seem to be working on a real fix yet.
I’ve been fascinated with sinkholes for a while now. Any time I see a video of one opening up, I have to watch it. It seems to me like a water main leak is almost always the cause. If the flowing water is ignored for too long, it erodes the sand underneath the street, which eventually collapses. So seeing the town not taking appropriate measures is super interesting. I wonder if this hole is going to become much bigger, there’s quite a bit of traffic there. Luckily my house is not in danger.
This is by far the most interesting thing going on here at the moment!
The rollout of legal weed is a circus:
https://www.thecity.nyc/2023/6/14/23761667/reuben-mcdaniel-office-cannabis-management-control-board-dormitory-authority
The police commissioner quit:
https://gothamist.com/news/experts-say-nypd-commissioner-resigned-because-she-was-made-powerless-the-mayor-disagrees
And the sky turned yellow for two days. You probably heard about that one.
https://gothamist.com/news/like-smoking-30-cigarettes-in-8-hours-nyc-air-quality-crisis-tallied
LEXINGTON, KY--
The endless argument over whether and how to expand the urban boundary continues. The newspaper again informs the public of the dark history of redlining and not having affordable housing available here. Usually the wealthy families' development companies win out and we will get another suburban sprawl mall and subdivisions.
City council debates how to address the fentanyl problem.
The city schools are taking a stand against the state law forbidding sex/gender education and will continue to teach inclusively.
Lots of bourbon-, music-, and horse related events coming up. :)
Zürich, Switzerland
police got VERY heavy handed at a feminist protest. Surprisingly, they had done this before.
Video (you’ll have to scroll a bit)
https://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/polizist-kann-wegen-knieverletzung-nicht-arbeiten-923252008757
My town keeps making celebratory announcements about all the new jobs coming our way, yet we are already in a housing crisis and new housing isn't happening.
There was an announcement that 350 new luxury units were going up super fast (yikes no tku) but those are aimed at the higher income.
Most of the jobs appear to be aimed at middle class, but middle class is already priced out of this market.
To give a clearer picture, thousands of jobs are coming.
Savannah Georgia btw
We got a giant 5-alarm fire at like a pallet warehouse going on right now.
No deaths so far, but several firefighters sent to the hospital.
Mayoral (and city council) election coming up on Tuesday, but pretty sure the incumbent, Mayor Quinton Lucas, will win comfortably. His opponent is a perennial candidate who I don't even think actually lives in Kansas City, MO anymore. Last heard he lived somewhere on the East Coast. Makes no sense. Either way, this will be Mayor Lucas' second and final term if he wins. He's pretty decent. I thought he did well during the pandemic.