Joshua Houdek
@jdhoudek
Bicycling. Walking. Transit. Electrification. Clean transportation & housing for all. @SierraClubMN senior program mgr. @PWUnion1 mbr. Tweets are my own.
Today on Volts: Montana has suffered from a severe housing crisis. In response, over the last two sessions, the legislature passed a series of sweeping housing reforms, everything from legalizing ADUs and duplexes to getting rid of parking mandates. I talk with two leg leaders.
Here's Tom Emmer fist-bumping and laughing as he strips away healthcare and nutrition assistance from millions of Americans and adds 3.3 trillion to the national debt.
Reduce VMT by nearly $2B🤯
Decisions about whether to invest future transportation dollars in highways vs transit have huge implications. CCI modeling finds that every $1 billion shifted from highway expansion to transit saves at least $1.7 billion in social and environmental costs. climateandcommunity.org/research/letti…
First Zohran Mamdani now Omar Fateh. The Dem Tea Party might actually be a thing.
There's a new episode of Mill City Hall, the podcast I now co-host with my friends Jesse Mortenson and Cam Gordon. You can find it here: millcityhall.com/episodes/2025-…
Say their names with me, and @aurinmpls, in your favorite order: @DeWayneForMPLS @OmarFatehMN @jazzformayor
aurin chowdhury says “if we’re going to get a new mayor, we can’t have a slogan that centers the old one,” referring to don’t rank frey. asks that we start naming omar fateh, dewayne davis & jazz hampton to increase their name recognition. @aurinmpls would not say mayor’s name
This is still highly illegal in 95% of U.S. residential neighborhoods.
👏 @MinneapolisDFL Transit Oriented Convention
i'm glad the city convention is at a central location easily accessible via transit to the entire city instead of a far flung high school with a big parking lot
If you have enough resources and enough passion for the cause of pretend environmentalism, you can tie up a bike lane in court forever. streets.mn/2025/07/14/sos…
WORLD RECORD! Sierra Club and vols from all over the world mailed in origami fish to bring awareness to protecting the #GreatLakes and #ShutDownLine5. In total, the Fish for the Future campaign collected 86,262 paper fish, over 4x the previous record!
"At every stage of life, Minnesotans should be able to find a home that meets their needs — but city rules are intentionally holding us back" ~Alexa Bobyak of @moreneighbors minnesotareformer.com/2025/07/14/leg…
Hey, remember when car and oil companies successfully lobbied governments to create car dependent cities and suburbs, and once we became car dependent, WE became the loudest, angriest champions of unhindered road space for cars, unnaturally cheap gas, and subsidized free parking?
I’m so grateful you’re my Council Member.
Not to be overdramatic, I think this event healed something in me. Watching 60 plus of neighbors in orange vests dot our neighborhood as we did clean up under the Summer sun was community care illustrated and realized. Caught me off guard how much it moved me.
Regretfully for the haters, Minneapolis is pretty astounding.
Thank you @drvolts for referring to it as the GOP bill. Because that’s what it is. Not just the Trump bill. Not a single Democrat voted for this atrocity. GOP owns the Big Ugly Bill.
Today on Volts: I talk with two of the smartest folks in energy world -- @JaneFlegal & @JesseJenkins -- about how the GOP budget bill turned out, what survived & what didn't, & what clean energy advocates can learn from all of this. Absolutely crucial episode.
No I’m not over it, have not moved on. A political assassination happened in our country—(not just in Minnesota, in the United States)—and I feel like we have collectively treated it like any one of the other many forms of violence we experience almost daily. But this is…
Thanks to Senate Republicans, 17 million people will lose their health care. Thanks to Senate Republicans, rural hospitals will close. Thanks to Senate Republicans, three million Americans, including veterans and seniors, will lose food assistance. Thanks to Senate…
Minneapolis Park Police now routinely closing pkwys in the name of public safety. Commissioners Shaffer, Abene and others on the Park Board maybe shouldn't have killed the open parkways pilot? Installing gates for occasional closures would've been useful! startribune.com/in-continued-e…