38 Harriet's micro-apartments get a lot into a small space. (Image: Panoramic Interests 2011)
In which I let out my inner commercial real estate and urban planning geek. From the April 2013 issue of the Marina Times:
REAL ESTATE INVESTOR Micro-Apartments Come to the City By John Zipperer
Micro-apartments. Twitter-apts. Mini-flats. There are many descriptive names one could come up with for the small apartments that we will soon be seeing more of in San Francisco. But judging from the opposition, you would think they were named like the media names disastrous East Coast storms: Apartmogeddon, Frankenapt, Apocalyptment.
Scary thoughts aside, in November 2012 the Board of Supervisors passed legislation by Supervisor Scott Weiner ...
The latest issue of Northside San Francisco is out, and the editors have just posted it on their web site, too. Here's my latest column, which is an interview with Premal Shah, the president of online micro-finance site kiva.org.
Common Knowledge
Be the Bank
By John Zipperer
Would you rather destroy a bank or become one? A financial industry blogger using the pseudonym “Edmundo Braverman” has been peddling his plan to take down one of the big U.S. banks in retribution for the recent financial panic. It’s a far-fetched plan that is arguably unworkable, but it has been receiving a lot of attention, including from The New York Times and other national media.
But as alluring as Braverman’s caper might be to some angry citizens, another option exists: become a banker yourself. No, not in the sense of accepting deposits and giving away toasters. Rather, you can be the lender to small business people near and afar, even successfully lending money to people who wouldn’t qualify for a loan from the drunkest bank loan officer.
David M. Walker, the U.S. comptroller general, discussed America's spending/saving/payment problems during a September 14, 2007, panel at The Commonwealth Club of California. The panel was part of a bipartisan Fiscal Wake-Up Tour.
Sobering stuff, this. I appreciated the fact that there were bipartisan views on the panel -- joining Walker was Alison Acosta Fraser from the conservative Heritage Foundation and Isabel V. Sawhill of the liberal Brookings Institution (and a former Clinton administration budget official). Both parties got us into this mess, and most Americans have participated in trying to vote ourselves rich.
And our children and grandchildren will rue the day they ever let us borrow the national credit card and hit the mall.
