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California Today: A Spreading ‘Yimby’ Movement
- api 9y agoHere in SoCal I see a massive generational divide. People over 40 tend to be NIMBY and against things like public transit. People under 40 are completely the opposite, especially about LA's expansion of subways and light rail.
- etjossem 9y agoI've noticed it tends to hinge on whether you own a single-family home.
- jdavis703 9y agoI can't speak for LA, but I know many apartment-dwelling renters who are also NIMBYs. It's a general fear of change us humans have, coupled with in many cases for property owners a direct financial reward for resisting change.
- nerfhammer 9y agoI think it's partially a California thing. Coming from New York I was profoundly baffled to see people trying to stop trains from coming to their neighborhood.
- michaelchisari 9y agoMoved to LA from Chicago. I will never for the life of me understand anyone who can be against trains. The train system in Chicago was great, I lived without a car for four years, and never had a problem. Now I'm stuck in traffic to get anywhere, and it's miserable.
- slg 9y agoIt is basically a chicken and egg problem. We all own cars because we don't have viable trains like Chicago, NYC, Boston, etc. No one supports trains because we all already have cars and don't want our taxes going to trains we won't use.
- MarkMMullin 9y agoFor the record, Boston's mass transit is not always 'viable' - it pretty much hates 'weather' and we do get that here :-)
- nikanj 9y agoIn the US, many people associate trains with 24/7 whistles. Remove that noise pollution, and living within 30km of the tracks becomes much more tolerable.
- curun1r 9y agoOh most people in California are very pro-train, they just don't want them close to their homes. We like the convenience, environmental friendliness and you might even say Europeanness of trains, but no one wants to put up with the noise and lower property values that go along with having them run through your back yard. Tell the truth...when you were in Chicago, did you want to live next to the "L"? with the caveat that the SF-LA HSR project seems to be a boondoggle that will cost the state billions more than it probably should.
- michaelchisari 9y agodid you want to live next to the "L"? Yes. I only wanted to live next to the L train. If I were apartment hunting, and it wasn't a quick walk to an L stop, that apartment went straight to the bottom of the list. And when I sought roommates, my place being steps to a blue line stop meant I got literally 70 emails within the first few hours of posting the ad.
- CalRobert 9y agoI think a lot of people in California have literally never seen the inside of a train. As a result, they can't imagine ever incorporating in to their lifestyle, and it represents, more than anything else, a change in life that might, someday, threaten their ability to drive everywhere. Of course, they have a hard time seeing how their driving everywhere affects everyone else, because it's all they've ever known. (E.G. killing loads of walkers and cyclists, emitting horrible pollution linked to myriad diseases, forcing songbirds to change frequency, demanding that land be used to let their car sleep instead of letting people sleep, and generally destroying street atmosphere and liveliness). Growing up in the central valley I took Bart ONE TIME as a kid, and it's still a highlight of my entire damn childhood. I suppose I may like trains more than most, but after that my goal in life was mostly to escape suburbia.
- mark212 9y agoOh God no. Try to build something, anything in Manhattan. Ever heard of air rights? Those don't exist anywhere else but developers will pay millions just to add a single floor to their building.
- nerfhammer 9y agoThat's a real thing. But I don't hear the anything like the passionate, reflexive, absolutist, paranoid anti-development attitudes and the corollary mental gymnastics from common people. It's that attitude I find baffling.
- api 9y agoI've said this before but... I really do not get California's obsession with cars. Of all the places you'd want to be walkable, one that is nice outside almost all the time and gets no real winter to speak of seems like an ideal spot. But no... all the walkable cities are in areas that get run over by a glacier for six months out of the year.
- pcwalton 9y agoRent control is partially to blame for this, in that it creates a huge de facto landlord class out of a group of people who would otherwise have a strong incentive to keep housing prices affordable. They can even reap financial windfalls from rising housing prices by negotiating buyouts. (I say this as someone who personally benefits from rent control. It shouldn't exist.)
- cylinder 9y agoIf you own a sfh, you want development around you... The denser your lands zoning is, the more it's worth. Add infrastructure and the value goes up too.
- twblalock 9y agoActually, you want to maintain scarcity to keep supply low relative to demand.
- timothycrosley 9y agoIt's more complicated than that. Yes by increasing density, you are increasing supply of housing units, but you are also increasing the demand for your property - as now it's not only a single family that would be looking to buy it but but someone building a highrise. Also, counterintuitively, because your allowing houses to be torn down for apartment buildings etc, the supply of SFH actually goes down, and there will always be demand from some for SFH over condos etc. And since most cities can't keep up with the number of people who want to live in them, by allowing more young people to move to the city in apartments, your also increasing future demand as they grow up.
- ucaetano 9y agoYou're getting supply & demand wrong. You want offices near you but no more housing, so that people work near you and are forced to live closer to you, and have to buy houses near you for ever-increasing prices. And people who own homes (older than most of the population) are used to driving everywhere, they don't want people constantly walking in front of their houses. They all want their own cul-de-sacs.
- timothycrosley 9y agoIt's more complicated than that. Yes by increasing density, you are increasing supply of housing units, but you are also increasing the demand for your property - as now it's not only a single family that would be looking to buy it but but someone building a highrise. Also, counterintuitively, because your allowing houses to be torn down for apartment buildings etc, the supply of SFH actually goes down, and there will always be demand from some for SFH over condos etc. And since most cities can't keep up with the number of people who want to live in them, by allowing more young people to move to the city in apartments, your also increasing future demand as they grow up.
- raldi 9y agoI own a SFH and am a YIMBY. Higher density is better for the neighborhood, my family, and the planet.
- xster 9y agoYa emphasis on that. California is one of the lowest footprint places you can live. Everyone we squeeze out is potentially another person blasting AC at 11 cents a kWh in Arizona.
- dmode 9y agoI own a SFH and I am a YIMBY. But you are probably right.
- dmode 9y agoVery true. Also, the divide is between long term residents and recent transplants. I have fights with people on Nextdoor everyday who rally neighbors to fight any development in our suburban city
- mosdave 9y ago> I have fights with people on Nextdoor everyday What a time to be alive.
- jdelsman 9y agoI live in SF (Mission Bay) and just went to the "Mission Bay Citizens Advisory Council" meeting last night for the first time. It was _absurd_ the amount of NIMBYism being spewed from folks over 50 (who accounted for more than half of the occupants in the room, mind you...) whereas the folks nearer to my age were open to the ideas being proposed and discussed. I knew it was bad, but I was bit taken aback. However, I did get a little discouraged that there was a lack of people my age trying to get involved, though. People can complain all they want... but until they do, it won't change.
- xster 9y agoWhere did these over 50 people live in Mission Bay? From surrounding neighbourhoods I assume?
- umeshunni 9y agoAt least your neighborhood meeting was at night. In Noe Valley, half the neighborhood council meetings were on Tuesdays at 10:30am or some such when only the specific demographic that was favorable to their policies were most likely to be free.
- CalRobert 9y agoI went to the meetings of the South Park (San Diego) planning board and it was similar. I could afford to do so because I was wfh at the time and set my own schedule. Taking two hours out of your day is something that's a lot easier for older folks, in general.
- HillaryBriss 9y agoMany owners of SFH in LA are NIMBYs because they know that higher density means lower quality of life. It doesn't necessarily have to mean lower quality of life. But, in LA, that's what has happened most of the time. New three or four story apartment buildings next door to a SFH means less sunlight and the elimination of privacy throughout the yard. More people means more traffic jams, more wear and tear on roads, more crime, more unfamiliar strangers driving too fast on their once-quiet streets, more pollution, and higher demand on a very limited police force, parks, recreational facilities, schools/colleges, airports, open spaces, etc. The LA city government manages infrastructure and resources in a sub-par way. New resources of all types are simply not forthcoming fast enough to meet with increased demand. The city government fails to keep up with existing needs for repair of: water, sidewalk, street infrastructure under current levels of demand. And it's not only quantity: often the quality of new infrastructure (e.g. Red Line train seats) is allowed to detoriorate to a state where it's rather dirty and unpleasant.
- pfranz 9y agoYep. A lot of people in the thread are talking about home values, housing scarcity, etc. All homeowners care about is quality of life--that's NIMBYism. Construction, even if it adds value, is a nuisance and can cause other problems. Trains can increase foot traffic and increase the accessibility for vagrants. That's the exact argument I've heard against connecting Hollywood to the beach from the people in Beverly Hills. I feel like LA city government has been doing better about sidewalk and street repair the past few years. It could be coincidence and certainly isn't exhaustive.
- santaclaus 9y ago> higher density means lower quality of life Ehh? I'd say density is correlated with a higher quality of life. More restaurants, bars, culture (museums, art openings, music), more opportunities to expand your network of friends, etc.
- mosdave 9y agowhat if none of the things you enumerated are important to a person? what metrics are acceptable for them to use to measure their quality of life?
- adrr 9y agoBaby boomers are a very self centered and selfish generation. They'll leave debt that will take generations to pay down, increased the age millennials can retire , and bankrupted most of the pension plans. Because of poor financial planning(45% have no retirement savings, 33% have pushed off retirement), they aren't retiring leading to less jobs of millennials. Its very like them to have a NIMBY attitude.
- seiferteric 9y agoI just read on yahoo finance that social security could be drastically cut by 2028-2034 if nothing changes. Like at what point do we simply refuse to pay into the system if were are going to be shafted?
- sjg007 9y agoOnly if you vote for congressional reps who want to defund it or otherwise take it away.
- bpodgursky 9y agoIt's going to get defunded, either now or when it runs out of money. So you can either raise the retirement age now, cut benefits now, or get totally screwed when it runs out of money in a couple decades.
- mercutio2 9y agoOr, you know, pay out of the general budget, which is what will actually happen and everything will be fine. Governments aren’t like households. They get to print their own money, so budgeting freak outs that apply to one don’t really apply to the other.
- ganoushoreilly 9y agoPrinting your own money doesn't solve the problem, it brings more along with it.
- ucaetano 9y agoI posted this before, but always relevant: It is worth remembering that NIMBYism and real estate prices are one of the biggest drivers of inequality in the world. Housing doesn't have to be expensive. It is, mostly, due to political reasons. https://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21647349-rising-house-prices-may-be-chiefly-responsible-rising-inequality-through https://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/2164734...
- pdelbarba 9y agoI live in Colorado and am constantly perplexed at the presence of blocks full of million dollar houses down the road from hundreds of acres of cow pasture (not parks mind you, actual cow pastures that smell like cow shit). Edit: These are not super nice houses either. They're just small 1-2k sqft houses built on top of each other. The problem is, when some developer manages to obtain one of said cow pastures from the city/rancher (many are city owned and leased to ranchers) they just pack it with 4k sqft mcmansions with barely enough room for a driveway between them. I don't know anyone who wants a 4k sqft house for $650k https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/121929267_zpid/globalrelevanceex_sort/39.870192,-105.222971,39.86815,-105.227982_rect/17_zm/ https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/121929267_zpid/globalr...
- majormajor 9y ago> I don't know anyone who wants a 4k sqft house for $650k I'd love to have that option compared to just seeing 650sqft condos for ~$650k in/near my neighborhood in CA. :)
- pdelbarba 9y agoFair. Personally I'd prefer they halve the lots and put in two 300k 1.5 - 2k sqft houses so even more people can live where they want.
- ucaetano 9y agoIn many cities in CA (and around the US) you can't do that. There are "anti-poor-people" laws, restricting the minimum lot size (in some cases, 1 acre in certain areas of Mountain View, for example), and restricting the number of SFU you can build in a single lot to 1.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- timothycrosley 9y agoGood. There has been a Yimby movement for a while in Seattle which has built several times the housing of San Francisco and Oakland combined over the last few years: http://www.spur.org/news/2017-06-15/keep-building-oakland http://www.spur.org/news/2017-06-15/keep-building-oakland. , and while it is still getting more expensive it is doing much much better than the Bay Area at keeping cost down. All the while, being an equally good place to live (I prefer Seattle by leaps and bounds, many prefer San Francisco.). As a result of this, Seattle is also growing at 3X the rate of San Francisco.
- UnpossibleJim 9y agoIf only people would be as passionate about population control as they are about YIMBY and NIMBY. There is a problem that hits at a majority of these issues and it's a planet's ability to sustain populations. We're out of balance and everyone wants to preach about how it's everyones right to squirt out 6 kids instead of limiting it to one or two, and get the issues under control.
- mjfl 9y agoI'm one of 9. I'm curious, what would you have done to my parents?
- 0x00000000 9y agoHow about paying people to have a vasectomy after they have 2 kids? But that will never happen because if birth rates decrease who will support the ponzi scheme pensions? In all seriousness the resources required for the average American lifestyle and population density is sustainable. The growth rates of some developing nations are pretty terrifying though.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- sethammons 9y agoI'm not convinced that population control is needed, at least in the US. The total fertility rate in the US is under 2, which means we are no longer going to be growing in population, but declining; immigration aside. source: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2127.html https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/...
- zo1 9y agoSo then you need population control on the unnaturally and rapidly-growing portions of the world. Especially if they can not afford to take care of those additional children properly.
- jostmey 9y agoIf this is something you have to talk about, it's not something that's going to get done. Places that don't have this problem don't come up with a catchy phrases to talk about it.
- mlinksva 9y agoI attended a day of the conference mentioned out of casual interest because I live nearby and was mildly and pleasantly surprised that nearly all of the attendees are serious activists and definitely getting things done in their cities, especially Seattle.
- e3b0c 9y agoIf you replace the property tax with an LVT, the problem could be solved already. Lower property tax encourages developments and renewals. Higher land tax incentives efficient use of land and somehow makes yimby a more attractive option.
- aidenn0 9y ago1) This doesn't solve the problem. In many places properties are already built to the maximum capacity allowed by zoning laws. 2) In California, any significant changes to property taxes will likely require a majority vote via a ballot initiative.
- mahyarm 9y agoSure, first lets get rid of prop 13. Good luck with that!
- droidist2 9y agoYeah, Henry George was awesome :) For those interested: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism
- defen 9y agoQuestion: I believe it's "well known" (I could be wrong but I've seen it enough times and I think it makes sense) that building more roads or widening existing ones does not solve traffic problems in the long-run (because people adjust their behavior to the presence of new roads and therefore drive more). So I guess my question is...is there any evidence that building more housing will alleviate home / rent prices? Fundamentally, the prices are high because people really want to live in these places. If you build more housing, won't that just enable more people to live there, which will re-establish a local equilibrium? Going back to the traffic analogy - the solution isn't to build more roads; it's to add mass-transit options, increase density, reduce people's desire to drive, etc. Is there analogous stuff that can be done for housing? Maybe building more housing is a part of it, too - I'm not saying it shouldn't be done. But it does seem like there are feedback effects in play that will prevent increased supply alone from solving the problem. Manhattan has twice the population in half the area (so, about 4x as dense) but they don't exactly have affordable rent.
- resonantjacket5 9y agoUhh your analogy kinda falls apart as people dont really "use more space" as housing increases unlike where one can easily drive more. There is plenty of evidence for more housing decreasing prices. And there is actually a limit to how much people will demand to live in a place. Thats why people commute far from outside sf into it for the lower housing prices. Of course increasing public transportation would also help. Albeit sf surrounding suburbs also have rent control policies so building reallly far away just increasing traffic a lot.
- defen 9y ago> Thats why people commute far from outside sf into it for the lower housing prices. That's kind of what I'm saying, though - won't those people just move into SF when the prices drop low enough, and therefore bring the price right back up to where it was? I'm modeling this as if the supply of "people who want to move to San Francisco" is effectively infinite? Is San Francisco with 3 million people going to have higher, lower, or the same median inflation-adjusted rent compared to now?
- ProfessorLayton 9y agoThe elephant in the room is that much of the US, SF Bay Area included, is still reeling hard from restrictive zoning laws that were extremely racially motivated. Minimum lot sizes, height restrictions, R1/R2 designations et al. were intentionally written into zoning laws so that PoC could not afford to move into primarily white neighborhoods [1]. It might sound like a random tangent, but many of these zoning laws are in the books today, and are the ones used by NIMBYs to restrict new developments in their town. [1] Extensively covered in the book The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein
- nolepointer 9y agoWell, to be fair, neighborhoods don't typically go down hill when white families move in ...
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- dang 9y agoSince we just warned you and you don't seem interested in using this site as intended (i.e. for thoughtful conversation, not political flamebait), we've banned this account.
- mc32 9y agoBut how do you explain the issue of NIMBYism not being as big an impediment in Texas or Nevada, you know, where one might expect those motives to be the same or maybe more prevalent?
- yellowapple 9y agoLand is cheaper, so those sorts of laws aren't as big of a factor. That's starting to no longer be the case in Nevada if you're in Reno or Vegas, since Californians (myself included) fleeing California's high cost of living are driving up real estate prices (the rest of Nevada is fine for now AFAICT; just the cities that are an issue).
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- Shivetya 9y agoso there is a meeting with buzzwords and more but unless they are changing who is running the cities and counties this is just a cash and headline grab without any hope of real results. the push needs to be find candidates for office who believe the problem is a real as you do and then work to see them obtain office. you are going to get past the liberal establishment which has maintained this status quo for years if not decades by getting in the NYTimes. You need to get into city hall. you are going to go up against a wall of feel good phrases and heaps of guilt for all the issues you will cause; likely environmental; and its best to show how letting more people in a smaller area is better than having them commute. what is the coverage of this event in California? Does anyone actually know about it or is it smothered in back pages?
- santaclaus 9y ago> what is the coverage of this event in California? It is all over the San Francisco and Oakland reddits.
- khuey 9y agoSonja Trauss, who is essentially the first Bay Area YIMBY, is running for San Francisco's city council. http://www.sfexaminer.com/barf-density-loving-sonja-trauss-running-district-6-supervisor/ http://www.sfexaminer.com/barf-density-loving-sonja-trauss-r...