Category: Local

Denver Election – Initiatives 300, 301

Initiated Ordinance 300
Shall the voters of the City and County of Denver adopt a measure that secures and enforces basic rights for all people within the jurisdiction of the City and County of Denver, including the right to rest and shelter oneself from the elements in a non-obstructive manner in outdoor public spaces, to eat, share accept or give free food in any public space where food is not prohibited, to occupy one’s own legally parked motor vehicle, or occupy a legally parked motor vehicle belonging to another, with the owner’s permission, and to have a right and expectation of privacy and safety of or in one’s person and property?

Mayoral candidate thoughts collected at 5280

Initiated Ordinance 301
Shall the voters of the City and County of Denver adopt an ordinance to the Denver Revised Municipal Code that would make the personal use and personal possession of psilocybin mushrooms by persons twenty-one (21) years of age and older the city’s lowest law-enforcement priority, prohibit the city from spending resources to impose criminal penalties for the personal use and personal possession of psilocybin mushrooms by persons twenty-one (21) years of age and older, and establish the psilocybin mushroom policy review panel to assess and report on the effects of the ordinance?

via ballotopedia

Supercommuter

FOUR DAYS A week Andy Ross travels—by car, train, and bus—120 miles from his home in Auburn, California, to his job at a bank in San Francisco. His eight-hour round-trip typically begins at 6 a.m. He’ll be at his desk by 10, having begun work earlier on his laptop. He leaves the office by 4 p.m. and arrives home about 8.

Ross became a “supercommuter” eight years ago, after he left a tech business and took the bank job. He joined nearly 105,000 people who spend at least 90 minutes getting to jobs in the Bay Area. Ross and his wife kept their four-bedroom home in Auburn rather than move to San Francisco, where the median price is $1.4 million—more than three times that in Auburn. “I love working at my job. As a result, I’m now doing this crazy commute,” he says. “There are a lot more of us long-haul commuters” than a decade ago.

National Geographic April 2019 edition

Hyper-local news

But there are a great many more tales that take place every single day at what has become an iconic and notorious Mile High City location. A lot of them are sad. Others are crazy. And as visitors to the Instagram account dubbed McShelter Denver know full well, plenty are both at the same time.
…
Posts like this one soon attracted a sizable audience. Quite a few of the page’s 500-plus Instagram followers have gigs in the area, too, and they’ve come to see McShelter Denver as a prime source of hyper-local news.
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Law enforcers and emergency personnel are hip to the pages, too. McSD reveals, “We tagged the police department, Denver Health and the fire department, and they’ve become followers. We’ll call things in, but they’ll also respond to a live stream.”

Interesting article – Michael Roberts at Westword 
https://www.westword.com/news/mcshelter-denver-documents-sad-crazy-scenes-at-16th-street-mall-mcdonalds-11269000

Gig – What I do is

AUTOMOBILE PARTS SPECIALIST
What I do is I sit behind a counter and I sell parts, just Honda parts for Honda cars. I get a salary and a little commission for each sale.

COMPUTER CHIP LAYOUT DESIGNER
What I do is translate this technical information into the way the chip will actually look – how all this information will be contained in this tiny space. I draw it out using a computer program.

A&R EXECUTIVE
What I do is go out and see bands or listen to their tapes, and if I like them enough, I sign them, and then as long as they’re with the company, I kind of work with them on all aspects of their career.

PHARMACEUTICAL COMPANY SALES REPRESENTATIVE
What I do is visit practices and try to influence the physicians’ prescribing habits versus other products they might use. So I talk about Eli Lilly’s product versus Pfizer’s product, versus SmithKline Beecham, versus, you know, all our various competitors’ products— and I try to explain how our medication has better features and advantages over theirs.

from Gig: Americans Talk About Their Jobs

Why America’s New Apartment Buildings All Look the Same

Cheap stick framing has led to a proliferation of blocky, forgettable mid-rises—and more than a few construction fires.
These buildings wouldn’t be going up if no one wanted to move in, of course. Growing demand, brought on by demographic shifts, job-growth patterns, and a renewed taste among affluent Americans for city (or citylike) living, has shaped the mid-rise boom. So have the whims of capital. Most multifamily developers build to sell—to a real estate investment trust, an insurance company, a pension fund, or some other institutional investor. These owners aren’t interested in small projects, and their bottom-line focus determines not only materials but also appearance and layout.
Justin Fox, Bloomberg

Denver Teacher Strike Imminent


Denver is so expensive that teachers have to get creative to make ends meet

For 14 months, teachers in Denver have been negotiating with Denver Public Schools for more pay. On Saturday, the Denver Classroom Teachers Association said talks had broken off and they’ll walk on Monday.

Yes, it’s about money, many have told CNN. But it’s also about the uncertainty of living paycheck to paycheck. It’s about the necessity of taking on a second or third job. It’s about the untenability of carrying on this way much longer.

Christina Zdanowicz,  CNN 

Sonder / Copenhagen


All those people in their cozy little apartments from CozyPlaces

via reddit

sonder
n. the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk.

Alternative Housing – Dorms, for non students

Instead, Starcity residents get a bedroom of 130 square feet to 220 square feet. Many of the buildings will feature some units with a private bath for a higher rent. But Jon Dishotsky, Starcity’s co-founder and chief executive, said a ratio of one bathroom for every two to three bedrooms makes the most sense for large-scale affordability. The average one-bedroom apartment in San Francisco rents for $3,300 a month, but Starcity rooms go for $1,400 to $2,400 a month fully furnished, with utilities and Wi-Fi included.

via nytimes

Meanwhile, in Minneapolis – “By doing away with single-family zoning, the city takes on high rent, long commutes, and racism in real estate in one fell swoop”

The claim of that lawsuit—that a denser, more populous city might be an environmental hazard and should require environmental review—will sound familiar to pro-growth advocates in California. There, local NIMBYism has pushed housing demand into the desert, lengthening commutes and helping to turn transportation into the state’s largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions.

Interesting article in Slate

https://slate.com/business/2018/12/minneapolis-single-family-zoning-housing-racism.html

Marriott Strike – settled this week

Together, we won what we set out to achieve: life-changing raises and improvements to our working conditions in the best contracts we’ve ever seen. After 61 days on strike, I now go back to work without worrying how I’ll pay for my kids’ health care. I’ll be able to stop working a second job. I can spend time with my kids and take care of myself.

Larrilou Carumba