7 ms·

Rise of the yimbys: the angry millennials with a radical housing solution

46 points by readams 9y ago

pascalxus 9y ago
Finally, someone gets it. People are finally starting to see the light. This is encouraging.
vorg 9y ago
This scheme is doomed to fail. 51% of the people will vote for rising house prices because that's their greatest asset. When highly geared property doubles in value, the owners can make 5 or 10 times their initial investment. They don't think about the other 49% of the people -- that's the result of governments chosen by democracy. And to make the prices go up, boost the demand and restrict the supply. So governments bring in long-term visitors to boost the demand: immigrants, international students whose parents buy apartments for them, and guest workers to rent the houses. But governments, especially local ones, also restrict the supply: many regulations to slow down new development, rules against long-term hotel stays, and crackdowns on campervan living in urban areas. The people fighting the yimbies have cash flows and retirement nest eggs to protect, and that's the main decider on which way they vote. The yimbies are fighting a losing battle.
- santaclaus 9y ago
  > But governments, especially local ones California just passed legislation -- with teeth -- to stymie the attempts of local municipalities to block development.
- mturmon 9y ago
  Hmm, your claim does not fit with what I've seen in LA. There has emerged a consensus among people who care about planning that density around transit corridors is part of a solution to the housing problem. This manifested, since the early 00s, in housing construction that was mainly due to the mayor and some council-members influencing the planning department behind the scenes. But then, the YIMBY argument (which is admittedly somewhat wonky) has within the last decade taken root broadly among the electorate, and there has been a lot of such large developments built - Hollywood has been transformed. It has also manifested in the resounding defeat of Measure S (went down 31/69 %, see https://la.curbed.com/2017/3/7/14850898/live-election-results-2017-measure-s-la https://la.curbed.com/2017/3/7/14850898/live-election-result...) in LA. Of course, it's not 100% YIMBY. There are plenty of cases where neighborhoods have been transformed too fast, especially by house flippers (who are not really creating new housing), and there has been strong resistance.
- corpMaverick 9y ago
  > This scheme is doomed to fail. 51% of the people will vote for rising house prices because that's their greatest asset. When highly geared property doubles in value, the owners can make 5 or 10 times their initial investment. You are correct that people think like that. But it is nearsighted because even if the price of your home goes up, you cannot sell it because you need a place to live. It is a lose/lose. It takes away a significant part of purchasing power. Money that could be spent on shopping, entertainment, etc is used to pay the mortgage. Younger people are even more screwed, it is a tax from the young to the old.
  - toomuchtodo 9y ago
    > But it is nearsighted because even if the price of your home goes up, you cannot sell it because you need a place to live. It is a lose/lose. It takes away a significant part of purchasing power. Money that could be spent on shopping, entertainment, etc is used to pay the mortgage. It is forced savings for retirement. Most people downsize once their kids leave home, cashing out their equity (as long as you haven't cash out refi'd your home to buy cars and vacations).
    - _chris_ 9y ago
      > Most people downsize once their kids leave home Except you can't do that in California, because then you're walking away from your Prop 13 "rent-controlled" property taxes.
    - corpMaverick 9y ago
      Some people, those who bought low and sold high at the end of their lives may recover. I can argue that even these people lose because the high prices of housing increased overall living costs during their lives. (e.g. Local business have to pay more on rent, employees need more money,they have longer commutes, etc)
- m0llusk 9y ago
  Value is more complex than that. Many people would like to live among friends and family and have their kids raise grandkids nearby. Housing price bubbles disrupt communities at great cost to society.
- DrScump 9y ago
  51% of the people will vote for rising house prices Homeowners don't constitute 51% in the first place.
clairity 9y ago
i agree in principle to the yimby movement, but i don't agree with some of the antagonism described in the article against the mission's latino population. isn't there a compromise to be reached between the two groups? latinos want to stay in the neighborhood but can't afford $4K rents (who really can? or should? $48K in rent, yikes!). yimbys want more units. so give developers a sweetner so they can be profitable but also build more affordable units. i know it's harder than it sounds, but it's been done many times before, so it's achieveable. but when it starts becoming us-vs-them, that just makes it so much harder.
- readams 9y ago
  The fundamental disconnect is there's a (large) group of people that think building expensive housing is bad for the housing crisis. This is 180 degrees wrong: what's needed to solve the affordability crisis are more units. Below market rate units ("affordable" units) are by definition always in short supply.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- justmyself 9y ago
  I want to live in Bel Air but I can't afford the crazy rents. Government, come save me!
joshuas 9y ago
Sounds more like YIYBYs to me. Doesn't have the same ring to it tho.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- geebee 9y ago
  Fair point, I had that thought myself. If you'd permit me to add another couple letters, though, I might call them YIMAYBY (yes in my and your backyard).
NumberSix 9y ago
In Mountain View, home to Google, there are over 2000 luxury apartments and condos under construction. The situation is similar in several other Silicon Valley cities. This is a huge increase in apartment construction since 2010. It is a similar pattern to San Francisco and other big cities mentioned in the Guardian article. The new construction is aimed toward generally young, generally single, tech workers at Google, Apple, Facebook and other employers within easy commuting distance of Mountain View. Many existing apartments have remodeled and boosted rents, effectively evicting many people with lower paying jobs. There is minimal construction of apartments for lower paid folks. Google has the political clout in Mountain View to get more apartments for its tech employees despite the NIMBYs. Rental costs are a major negative for Google since the high cost means California tech salaries are actually among the lowest in USA adjusting for local cost of living. The disparity with the Plano Texas region (so-called Telecom Corridor) is astonishing. People with lower incomes who are disproportionately Hispanic in California don't have a powerful force like Google to stand up for them. There was a rent control measure (Measure V) passed in Mountain View about one year ago and remarkably actually enforced despite legal challenges. https://mvtenantscoalition.org https://mvtenantscoalition.org
- readams 9y ago
  More units, even luxury units, are good for everyone, even lower income people. The people trying to advocate for lower-income people by blocking housing are making it worse for the very people they're trying to help!
  - NumberSix 9y ago
    That is not necessarily true. Under some circumstances it can be true. For example, if a community builds more luxury apartments entirely in addition to existing apartments, then yes some well paid people will probably move out of the existing apartments into the new luxury ones, making apartments available to the lower paid. However, if inexpensive apartments are either bulldozed or remodeled to become luxury apartments, eliminating inexpensive options for the lower paid. That has been happening in Mountain View and probably in San Francisco which the Guardian article directly discusses.
some-guy 9y ago
Slightly-off topic rant, but as a Bay Area millennial in the tech industry, I find it completely preposterous just how much even us with six-figure salaries are willing to spend for the opportunity to live above their favorite brunch spot in the Mission District. A lot of fresh grads in the industry think that spending 50-70% of their net income on rent is a completely reasonable thing to do. Though my observations are unscientific, plenty of my friends are living paycheck to paycheck, eating out all the time, constantly travelling, by choice because their friends are doing the same. They don't want to take the extra 15 minutes on a train to visit their friends by living in a more affordable area. When I lived in Oakland for instance, my friends in SF would almost never visit me because it was just a bit too far even though I'm walking distance from the Oakland City Center BART station. This insatiable desire for young techies to spend a stupid amount of their money to be part of this elite club is astounding.
- sjg007 9y ago
  I mean, first it was Noe Valley... SF is gentrifying. The Mission isn't necessarily immune to this. People will be pushed out East down the Bart lines. Also I'm surprised East Palo Alto hasn't gentrified completely.
  - DrScump 9y ago
    Also I'm surprised East Palo Alto hasn't gentrified I don't think parents want to be in the Ravenswood school district, for one.
    - sjg007 9y ago
      You can do an inter district transfer, Zuckerberg and Chan have some initiatives going and I believe the high school kids go to me li-atherton.
- eldavido 9y ago
  As an older millennial (33), I couldn't agree more. We're living in boom times, and one layoff or closure will make people rethink their behavior. I don't care how expensive a place is, you're just an idiot, plain and simple, if you're a 25-year old straight out of school, no kids/dependents, making 150k and can't afford to put away 15-30k/year. People will bitch and bitch about high rents, student loan payments, high taxes, etc. but it's like, show some discipline and skip the $30/person brunch for _one weekend_.

46 points by readams 9y ago

Finally, someone gets it. People are finally starting to see the light. This is encouraging.

vorg 9y ago

This scheme is doomed to fail. 51% of the people will vote for rising house prices because that's their greatest asset. When highly geared property doubles in value, the owners can make 5 or 10 times their initial investment. They don't think about the other 49% of the people -- that's the result of governments chosen by democracy. And to make the prices go up, boost the demand and restrict the supply. So governments bring in long-term visitors to boost the demand: immigrants, international students whose parents buy apartments for them, and guest workers to rent the houses. But governments, especially local ones, also restrict the supply: many regulations to slow down new development, rules against long-term hotel stays, and crackdowns on campervan living in urban areas. The people fighting the yimbies have cash flows and retirement nest eggs to protect, and that's the main decider on which way they vote. The yimbies are fighting a losing battle.

santaclaus 9y ago
> But governments, especially local ones California just passed legislation -- with teeth -- to stymie the attempts of local municipalities to block development.
mturmon 9y ago
Hmm, your claim does not fit with what I've seen in LA. There has emerged a consensus among people who care about planning that density around transit corridors is part of a solution to the housing problem. This manifested, since the early 00s, in housing construction that was mainly due to the mayor and some council-members influencing the planning department behind the scenes. But then, the YIMBY argument (which is admittedly somewhat wonky) has within the last decade taken root broadly among the electorate, and there has been a lot of such large developments built - Hollywood has been transformed. It has also manifested in the resounding defeat of Measure S (went down 31/69 %, see https://la.curbed.com/2017/3/7/14850898/live-election-results-2017-measure-s-la https://la.curbed.com/2017/3/7/14850898/live-election-result...) in LA. Of course, it's not 100% YIMBY. There are plenty of cases where neighborhoods have been transformed too fast, especially by house flippers (who are not really creating new housing), and there has been strong resistance.
corpMaverick 9y ago
> This scheme is doomed to fail. 51% of the people will vote for rising house prices because that's their greatest asset. When highly geared property doubles in value, the owners can make 5 or 10 times their initial investment. You are correct that people think like that. But it is nearsighted because even if the price of your home goes up, you cannot sell it because you need a place to live. It is a lose/lose. It takes away a significant part of purchasing power. Money that could be spent on shopping, entertainment, etc is used to pay the mortgage. Younger people are even more screwed, it is a tax from the young to the old.
- toomuchtodo 9y ago
  > But it is nearsighted because even if the price of your home goes up, you cannot sell it because you need a place to live. It is a lose/lose. It takes away a significant part of purchasing power. Money that could be spent on shopping, entertainment, etc is used to pay the mortgage. It is forced savings for retirement. Most people downsize once their kids leave home, cashing out their equity (as long as you haven't cash out refi'd your home to buy cars and vacations).
  - _chris_ 9y ago
    > Most people downsize once their kids leave home Except you can't do that in California, because then you're walking away from your Prop 13 "rent-controlled" property taxes.
  - corpMaverick 9y ago
    Some people, those who bought low and sold high at the end of their lives may recover. I can argue that even these people lose because the high prices of housing increased overall living costs during their lives. (e.g. Local business have to pay more on rent, employees need more money,they have longer commutes, etc)
m0llusk 9y ago
Value is more complex than that. Many people would like to live among friends and family and have their kids raise grandkids nearby. Housing price bubbles disrupt communities at great cost to society.
DrScump 9y ago
51% of the people will vote for rising house prices Homeowners don't constitute 51% in the first place.

clairity 9y ago

i agree in principle to the yimby movement, but i don't agree with some of the antagonism described in the article against the mission's latino population. isn't there a compromise to be reached between the two groups? latinos want to stay in the neighborhood but can't afford $4K rents (who really can? or should? $48K in rent, yikes!). yimbys want more units. so give developers a sweetner so they can be profitable but also build more affordable units. i know it's harder than it sounds, but it's been done many times before, so it's achieveable. but when it starts becoming us-vs-them, that just makes it so much harder.

readams 9y ago
The fundamental disconnect is there's a (large) group of people that think building expensive housing is bad for the housing crisis. This is 180 degrees wrong: what's needed to solve the affordability crisis are more units. Below market rate units ("affordable" units) are by definition always in short supply.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
justmyself 9y ago
I want to live in Bel Air but I can't afford the crazy rents. Government, come save me!

joshuas 9y ago

Sounds more like YIYBYs to me. Doesn't have the same ring to it tho.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
geebee 9y ago
Fair point, I had that thought myself. If you'd permit me to add another couple letters, though, I might call them YIMAYBY (yes in my and your backyard).

NumberSix 9y ago

In Mountain View, home to Google, there are over 2000 luxury apartments and condos under construction. The situation is similar in several other Silicon Valley cities. This is a huge increase in apartment construction since 2010. It is a similar pattern to San Francisco and other big cities mentioned in the Guardian article. The new construction is aimed toward generally young, generally single, tech workers at Google, Apple, Facebook and other employers within easy commuting distance of Mountain View. Many existing apartments have remodeled and boosted rents, effectively evicting many people with lower paying jobs. There is minimal construction of apartments for lower paid folks. Google has the political clout in Mountain View to get more apartments for its tech employees despite the NIMBYs. Rental costs are a major negative for Google since the high cost means California tech salaries are actually among the lowest in USA adjusting for local cost of living. The disparity with the Plano Texas region (so-called Telecom Corridor) is astonishing. People with lower incomes who are disproportionately Hispanic in California don't have a powerful force like Google to stand up for them. There was a rent control measure (Measure V) passed in Mountain View about one year ago and remarkably actually enforced despite legal challenges. https://mvtenantscoalition.org https://mvtenantscoalition.org

readams 9y ago
More units, even luxury units, are good for everyone, even lower income people. The people trying to advocate for lower-income people by blocking housing are making it worse for the very people they're trying to help!
- NumberSix 9y ago
  That is not necessarily true. Under some circumstances it can be true. For example, if a community builds more luxury apartments entirely in addition to existing apartments, then yes some well paid people will probably move out of the existing apartments into the new luxury ones, making apartments available to the lower paid. However, if inexpensive apartments are either bulldozed or remodeled to become luxury apartments, eliminating inexpensive options for the lower paid. That has been happening in Mountain View and probably in San Francisco which the Guardian article directly discusses.

some-guy 9y ago

Slightly-off topic rant, but as a Bay Area millennial in the tech industry, I find it completely preposterous just how much even us with six-figure salaries are willing to spend for the opportunity to live above their favorite brunch spot in the Mission District. A lot of fresh grads in the industry think that spending 50-70% of their net income on rent is a completely reasonable thing to do. Though my observations are unscientific, plenty of my friends are living paycheck to paycheck, eating out all the time, constantly travelling, by choice because their friends are doing the same. They don't want to take the extra 15 minutes on a train to visit their friends by living in a more affordable area. When I lived in Oakland for instance, my friends in SF would almost never visit me because it was just a bit too far even though I'm walking distance from the Oakland City Center BART station. This insatiable desire for young techies to spend a stupid amount of their money to be part of this elite club is astounding.

sjg007 9y ago
I mean, first it was Noe Valley... SF is gentrifying. The Mission isn't necessarily immune to this. People will be pushed out East down the Bart lines. Also I'm surprised East Palo Alto hasn't gentrified completely.
- DrScump 9y ago
  Also I'm surprised East Palo Alto hasn't gentrified I don't think parents want to be in the Ravenswood school district, for one.
  - sjg007 9y ago
    You can do an inter district transfer, Zuckerberg and Chan have some initiatives going and I believe the high school kids go to me li-atherton.
eldavido 9y ago
As an older millennial (33), I couldn't agree more. We're living in boom times, and one layoff or closure will make people rethink their behavior. I don't care how expensive a place is, you're just an idiot, plain and simple, if you're a 25-year old straight out of school, no kids/dependents, making 150k and can't afford to put away 15-30k/year. People will bitch and bitch about high rents, student loan payments, high taxes, etc. but it's like, show some discipline and skip the $30/person brunch for _one weekend_.