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Tech workers have organized around this, largely through YIMBY groups, which are starting to have some limited success with this. Unfortunately, a lot of the m

Tech workers have organized around this, largely through YIMBY groups, which are starting to have some limited success with this. Unfortunately, a lot of the messaging from these groups are arrogant and troll-y rather than building an even broader constituency. They don’t have any patience, and they think their opponents are naive, often calling them “stupid”

zjaffee 9y ago
I agree, the YIMBY movement may have good intentions, but so many of the people pushing these policy positions are far less educated than the counterparts who recognize the benefits of certain types of zoning as a central aspect of modern life.
- Buge 9y ago
  Are you saying that the failure of YIMBY to understand counterpoints are what is making disagreements between tech workers and TOT? I think it's the opposite. When YIMBY ignore counterpoints, that's a core point of agreement with TOT. Because TOT ignore counterpoints even harder.
- rayiner 9y ago
  I disagree. Modern zoning is mostly unsupportable from an economic point of view. YIMBY types get that implicitly. NIMBIYs seem to lack any education in or understanding of economics. It’s all emotion and hand waving.
  - paultopia 9y ago
    Oh, they understand economics all right---it's just that the only bit they care about is the bit where they get to hoard all the land use to prop up the price of what they already own.
- closeparen 9y ago
  YIMBYs do acknowledge the central role of zoning in shaping the sprawled-out, car-dominated shape of modern American life. We disagree that it ought to be preserved. I’ve come to understand that economic-justice arguments on both sides are really ex post facto rationalizations for beliefs like “we should live in houses and drive” vs. “we should live in condos and take transit.” The houses-and-cars people have a point: an abundance of condos in the sky does nothing to help (and probably hurts) affordability for the type of housing they consider fit for human consumption. Unfortunately we talk about boxes in the sky as “luxury” with the subtext that having your own plot of land, some of which you don’t even build on isn’t.
  - pcwalton 9y ago
    > I’ve come to understand that economic-justice arguments on both sides are really ex post facto rationalizations for beliefs like “we should live in houses and drive” vs. “we should live in condos and take transit.” Yeah, unfortunately I think this is basically true. You can almost perfectly predict whether someone supports SB 827 based on whether they prefer single family homes or urban density.
    - davidw 9y ago
      The crazy thing is that you can prefer to live in a SFH yourself and still be in favor of letting the market add density. If you already have a SFH, no one will make you move.
      - pcwalton 9y ago
        Well, unless you're renting the home and your landlord evicts you to make room for a condo building. This would be an uncommon situation, but evicting low-income tenants of low-density apartments to make room for higher-end high-density condos is a related, and legitimate, concern. The bill should probably continue to be amended to make sure this doesn't happen. Note that this concern is basically irrelevant to all the Bay Area suburbs like Palo Alto that have virtually no low-income tenants to begin with, as well as San Francisco, which is essentially completely gentrified at this point.
        kspaans 9y ago
        Or if your land gets up-zoned and suddenly is worth 3x as much, and your property taxes go up accordingly (if you don't live in CA at least).
  - zjaffee 9y ago
    The number of times I've seen YIMBYs say things like "Abolish All Zoning" is rather high. Zoning is a far more complicated thing than just restricting density, it prevents industrial manufacturing from happening right next to an elementary school, and it allows cities to make sure that sidewalk space in front of buildings are publicly accessible.
- joeblubaugh 9y ago
  This statement is so vague as to be meaningless. Many YIMBY groups aren't willing to concede the benefits that exist, instead of making the better argument that the damages outweigh the benefits. "Certain types of zoning" could mean: - density regs,which I think are environmentally destructive garbage - commercial/residential segregation, which I think lead to shitty suburb-type cities that you neeed to drive around -PDR/residential ratio regs, which I think are reasonable (usually) - heavy-industrial/residential segregation. I'm personally in favor of those.
  - zjaffee 9y ago
    The concern I'm expressing is there are a large number of people saying the phrase "abolish all zoning". That last point you made is rather important, additionally things like mandated setbacks allow cities to require there to be things like sidewalks around buildings. Other zoning includes not allowing features that could easily fall on people when walking along those sidewalks. You could go through this list for a long time, and keep finding aspects of why zoning is a good thing. Yes using zoning as a tool to prevent diversity/mixed commercial use is a bad thing, but for essentially any other reason that zoning is used, it's usually a good thing.
    - closeparen 9y ago
      The overwhelming majority of zoning’s actual function in the cities in question is to reserve most land exclusively for single-family homes and parking spaces. This isn’t a minor abuse of a mostly-good concept. It is the concept. Still, I think it would be beneficial to reframe the YIMBY position as “upzoning” or “legalize apartment buildings” because the “deregulation” spin invokes a bunch of right-wing baggage unnecessarily. Relatively few of us want complete deregulation. We want different regulations.
      - joeblubaugh 9y ago
        Yeah, my city supervisor recently wrote me to say that SB87 is “supply-side, failed Ronald Reagan” economics. You have to make an argument that wins in CA and you do that by focusing on the benefits to middle class and working class people, which are numerous.
pcwalton 9y ago
> Unfortunately, a lot of the messaging from these groups are arrogant and troll-y rather than building an even broader constituency. They don’t have any patience, and they think their opponents are naive, often calling them “stupid” Nothing on the YIMBY side holds a candle to the NIMBY group Gay Shame's vandalism of city property, doxxing, harassment, threats of violence, and assault.
- joeblubaugh 9y ago
  I agree that Gay Shame behaves badly, but it doesn't really change my point. Even the most measured YIMBY spokespeople do a bad job communicating with people who aren't relatively well-off. YIMBY movements won't succeed until we convince poor renters that THEIR lives will also be better in a denser, more affordable city.
  - magduf 9y ago
    >YIMBY movements won't succeed until we convince poor renters that THEIR lives will also be better in a denser, more affordable city. If that simple truth isn't immediately obvious to poor renters, then it seems like they're beyond hope.
    - joeblubaugh 9y ago
      This is not how you get things done in a society - you can’t just say “they don’t agree with me already, they must be stupid”. You have to actually talk to them.
      - magduf 9y ago
        That works with some stuff, but the example given was so plainly obvious that if a significant number people disbelieve it, it's really a lot like the inhabitants of 1600s Salem believing in witchcraft: they're just so mired in stupid thinking that I don't think you're going to convince them. It's very simple: you can only fit so many people into a given space depending on the housing type (e.g., single-family houses vs. high-rise condos), and the laws of supply and demand apply: if more people want to live in a place, the prices are going to go up, so the only way to mitigate that is to build denser housing. If demand is increasing, there simply is no way to keep housing affordable if everyone demands to hang onto less-efficient types of housing. This isn't a difficult concept. I realize this isn't quite as simple as "water is wet", but still, it's pretty easy and if people don't accept it after a 2-minute explanation (which I assume they've heard, otherwise they wouldn't be expending so much energy trying to oppose new construction), then it seems hopeless they'll ever accept it.
JumpCrisscross 9y ago
> a lot of the messaging from these groups are arrogant and troll-y rather than building an even broader constituency I don’t consider YIMBY “organisation” for this reason. It’s an emotional outlet, seldom a political block. Technology workers are notoriously unwilling to put in the work political advocacy takes.
- closeparen 9y ago
  Scott Wiener did get elected. 827 is a major flashpoint rather than obviously DOA.
  - pcwalton 9y ago
    Not only that, SB 35 actually passed. Additionally, London Breed is the front runner for SF mayor.

zjaffee 9y ago

I agree, the YIMBY movement may have good intentions, but so many of the people pushing these policy positions are far less educated than the counterparts who recognize the benefits of certain types of zoning as a central aspect of modern life.

Buge 9y ago
Are you saying that the failure of YIMBY to understand counterpoints are what is making disagreements between tech workers and TOT? I think it's the opposite. When YIMBY ignore counterpoints, that's a core point of agreement with TOT. Because TOT ignore counterpoints even harder.
rayiner 9y ago
I disagree. Modern zoning is mostly unsupportable from an economic point of view. YIMBY types get that implicitly. NIMBIYs seem to lack any education in or understanding of economics. It’s all emotion and hand waving.
- paultopia 9y ago
  Oh, they understand economics all right---it's just that the only bit they care about is the bit where they get to hoard all the land use to prop up the price of what they already own.
closeparen 9y ago
YIMBYs do acknowledge the central role of zoning in shaping the sprawled-out, car-dominated shape of modern American life. We disagree that it ought to be preserved. I’ve come to understand that economic-justice arguments on both sides are really ex post facto rationalizations for beliefs like “we should live in houses and drive” vs. “we should live in condos and take transit.” The houses-and-cars people have a point: an abundance of condos in the sky does nothing to help (and probably hurts) affordability for the type of housing they consider fit for human consumption. Unfortunately we talk about boxes in the sky as “luxury” with the subtext that having your own plot of land, some of which you don’t even build on isn’t.
- pcwalton 9y ago
  > I’ve come to understand that economic-justice arguments on both sides are really ex post facto rationalizations for beliefs like “we should live in houses and drive” vs. “we should live in condos and take transit.” Yeah, unfortunately I think this is basically true. You can almost perfectly predict whether someone supports SB 827 based on whether they prefer single family homes or urban density.
  - davidw 9y ago
    The crazy thing is that you can prefer to live in a SFH yourself and still be in favor of letting the market add density. If you already have a SFH, no one will make you move.
    - pcwalton 9y ago
      Well, unless you're renting the home and your landlord evicts you to make room for a condo building. This would be an uncommon situation, but evicting low-income tenants of low-density apartments to make room for higher-end high-density condos is a related, and legitimate, concern. The bill should probably continue to be amended to make sure this doesn't happen. Note that this concern is basically irrelevant to all the Bay Area suburbs like Palo Alto that have virtually no low-income tenants to begin with, as well as San Francisco, which is essentially completely gentrified at this point.
      - kspaans 9y ago
        Or if your land gets up-zoned and suddenly is worth 3x as much, and your property taxes go up accordingly (if you don't live in CA at least).
- zjaffee 9y ago
  The number of times I've seen YIMBYs say things like "Abolish All Zoning" is rather high. Zoning is a far more complicated thing than just restricting density, it prevents industrial manufacturing from happening right next to an elementary school, and it allows cities to make sure that sidewalk space in front of buildings are publicly accessible.
joeblubaugh 9y ago
This statement is so vague as to be meaningless. Many YIMBY groups aren't willing to concede the benefits that exist, instead of making the better argument that the damages outweigh the benefits. "Certain types of zoning" could mean: - density regs,which I think are environmentally destructive garbage - commercial/residential segregation, which I think lead to shitty suburb-type cities that you neeed to drive around -PDR/residential ratio regs, which I think are reasonable (usually) - heavy-industrial/residential segregation. I'm personally in favor of those.
- zjaffee 9y ago
  The concern I'm expressing is there are a large number of people saying the phrase "abolish all zoning". That last point you made is rather important, additionally things like mandated setbacks allow cities to require there to be things like sidewalks around buildings. Other zoning includes not allowing features that could easily fall on people when walking along those sidewalks. You could go through this list for a long time, and keep finding aspects of why zoning is a good thing. Yes using zoning as a tool to prevent diversity/mixed commercial use is a bad thing, but for essentially any other reason that zoning is used, it's usually a good thing.
  - closeparen 9y ago
    The overwhelming majority of zoning’s actual function in the cities in question is to reserve most land exclusively for single-family homes and parking spaces. This isn’t a minor abuse of a mostly-good concept. It is the concept. Still, I think it would be beneficial to reframe the YIMBY position as “upzoning” or “legalize apartment buildings” because the “deregulation” spin invokes a bunch of right-wing baggage unnecessarily. Relatively few of us want complete deregulation. We want different regulations.
    - joeblubaugh 9y ago
      Yeah, my city supervisor recently wrote me to say that SB87 is “supply-side, failed Ronald Reagan” economics. You have to make an argument that wins in CA and you do that by focusing on the benefits to middle class and working class people, which are numerous.

pcwalton 9y ago

> Unfortunately, a lot of the messaging from these groups are arrogant and troll-y rather than building an even broader constituency. They don’t have any patience, and they think their opponents are naive, often calling them “stupid” Nothing on the YIMBY side holds a candle to the NIMBY group Gay Shame's vandalism of city property, doxxing, harassment, threats of violence, and assault.

joeblubaugh 9y ago
I agree that Gay Shame behaves badly, but it doesn't really change my point. Even the most measured YIMBY spokespeople do a bad job communicating with people who aren't relatively well-off. YIMBY movements won't succeed until we convince poor renters that THEIR lives will also be better in a denser, more affordable city.
- magduf 9y ago
  >YIMBY movements won't succeed until we convince poor renters that THEIR lives will also be better in a denser, more affordable city. If that simple truth isn't immediately obvious to poor renters, then it seems like they're beyond hope.
  - joeblubaugh 9y ago
    This is not how you get things done in a society - you can’t just say “they don’t agree with me already, they must be stupid”. You have to actually talk to them.
    - magduf 9y ago
      That works with some stuff, but the example given was so plainly obvious that if a significant number people disbelieve it, it's really a lot like the inhabitants of 1600s Salem believing in witchcraft: they're just so mired in stupid thinking that I don't think you're going to convince them. It's very simple: you can only fit so many people into a given space depending on the housing type (e.g., single-family houses vs. high-rise condos), and the laws of supply and demand apply: if more people want to live in a place, the prices are going to go up, so the only way to mitigate that is to build denser housing. If demand is increasing, there simply is no way to keep housing affordable if everyone demands to hang onto less-efficient types of housing. This isn't a difficult concept. I realize this isn't quite as simple as "water is wet", but still, it's pretty easy and if people don't accept it after a 2-minute explanation (which I assume they've heard, otherwise they wouldn't be expending so much energy trying to oppose new construction), then it seems hopeless they'll ever accept it.

JumpCrisscross 9y ago

> a lot of the messaging from these groups are arrogant and troll-y rather than building an even broader constituency I don’t consider YIMBY “organisation” for this reason. It’s an emotional outlet, seldom a political block. Technology workers are notoriously unwilling to put in the work political advocacy takes.

closeparen 9y ago
Scott Wiener did get elected. 827 is a major flashpoint rather than obviously DOA.
- pcwalton 9y ago
  Not only that, SB 35 actually passed. Additionally, London Breed is the front runner for SF mayor.