The Henry George Program

We finally talk about McDonald's, and the big business of landowning with McDonald's expert Alan Joyce. How did the McDonald's Corporation leverage land speculation to grow faster than its competitors? What special relationships did the rise of McDonald's have in common with suburbanization? And should McDonald's just go all-in on becoming a REIT?

The Embarcadero Institute is a think tank based in Palo Alto, producing slick-looking white papers about how California doesn't need so much housing, actually. Stan Oklobdzija, research director for CA YIMBY, is on to pick apart the claims these papers make. We talk shop on headship rates, RHNA adjustments, derpy quadratic fits, and much more.

Senator Stanley Chang is here from Hawaii to talk about Aloha Homes, a proposal to import what works about Singapore-style public housing (cheap, dense condos built on public land). History about housing and land in Hawaii, including its public trust model.

Palo Alto has a large park that has a unique ban on non-residents. They're changing this prohibition... but not if Lydia Kou's referendum has anything to say about it. We have on former Palo Alto councilmember Cory Wolbach to talk about the history of this park, the legal challenge which Palo Alto settled but may resurrect, and how this fits into the particular ideology of many Palo Alto residents: “Residentialism”.

It's been a painful election in many ways (Prop 15 losing, Prop 22 winning), and local races were a mixed bag. Darrell Owens of East Bay for Everyone is one to give a post-mortem. For obvious reasons, we get to talking about municipal annexation, vacancy rate controversies, and value capture.

We check back with Shanti Singh of Tenants Together to find out about Gavin Newsom's eviction moratorium and its many flaws, talk about how this relates to the financialization of housing, and talk about action plans between here and February.

There's one wild race in the South Bay for the state senate, in which one candidate took dubious positions on housing, labor, taxes, and more... but still got the endorsement of Barack Obama. We talk about this race and more, with Prop 15 advocate Natasha Cougoule and transit advocate Monica Mallon; what's the deal with Prop 22, how do local and national political organizations align and depart ... and what's the role for young people in the changing political landscape?

It's election time! We have on Angie Evans and Jordan Grimes of Peninsula for Everyone to talk about each of the roughly 1,000 city council elections up and down the peninsula, plus local and statewide ballot measures... as well as discursions into the weird and woolly world of housing.

John Lashlee is running for Mountain View City Council on a Democratic Socialist Platform; we talk about what this means, in terms of creating a "snowballing" effect for municipal housing policy, police issues, and economic justice for residents. We also talk some theory, getting a marxist perspective to housing policy.

Darrell Owens of East Bay for Everyone is back, and answering the big questions: is disinvestment in minority neighborhoods the right approach for anti-gentrification (no); are there Black anti-tenant NIMBYs in SoCal who get confused for anti-gentrification advocates (yes); are duplexes scary (listen to find out). Finally, hear about Berkeley becoming the first US city to take the police out of traffic enforcement