8 ms·

I've noticed it tends to hinge on whether you own a single-family home.

jdavis703 9y ago
I 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 ago
  I 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 ago
    Moved 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 ago
      It 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 ago
        For the record, Boston's mass transit is not always 'viable' - it pretty much hates 'weather' and we do get that here :-)
    - nikanj 9y ago
      In 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 ago
      Oh 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 ago
        did 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 ago
        I 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.
        rlanday 9y ago
        It's fortunate that you only rode BART once as a kid, otherwise you probably would've suffered life-long hearing loss. That thing is loud...
  - mark212 9y ago
    Oh 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 ago
      That'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 ago
    I'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 ago
  Rent 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 ago
If 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 ago
  Actually, you want to maintain scarcity to keep supply low relative to demand.
  - timothycrosley 9y ago
    It'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 ago
  You'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 ago
    It'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 ago
I own a SFH and am a YIMBY. Higher density is better for the neighborhood, my family, and the planet.
- xster 9y ago
  Ya 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.
  - deltr0n 9y ago
    Even cheaper than that - I paid 6 cents/kWh last month in AZ.
  - mahyarm 9y ago
    The guys blasting AC in AZ is also in a solar panel hotspot. How much would solar panels on the roof offset your AC energy usage?
dmode 9y ago
I own a SFH and I am a YIMBY. But you are probably right.

I 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 ago
I 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 ago
  Moved 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 ago
    It 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 ago
      For the record, Boston's mass transit is not always 'viable' - it pretty much hates 'weather' and we do get that here :-)
  - nikanj 9y ago
    In 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 ago
    Oh 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 ago
      did 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 ago
      I 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.
      - rlanday 9y ago
        It's fortunate that you only rode BART once as a kid, otherwise you probably would've suffered life-long hearing loss. That thing is loud...
- mark212 9y ago
  Oh 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 ago
    That'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 ago
  I'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 ago
Rent 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 ago

If 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 ago
Actually, you want to maintain scarcity to keep supply low relative to demand.
- timothycrosley 9y ago
  It'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 ago
You'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 ago
  It'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 ago

I own a SFH and am a YIMBY. Higher density is better for the neighborhood, my family, and the planet.

xster 9y ago
Ya 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.
- deltr0n 9y ago
  Even cheaper than that - I paid 6 cents/kWh last month in AZ.
- mahyarm 9y ago
  The guys blasting AC in AZ is also in a solar panel hotspot. How much would solar panels on the roof offset your AC energy usage?

dmode 9y ago

I own a SFH and I am a YIMBY. But you are probably right.