5 ms·

I'm a home owner and YIMBY here who shows up at city council meetings in support of more housing. You would be shocked just how horribly selfish existing home o

I'm a home owner and YIMBY here who shows up at city council meetings in support of more housing. You would be shocked just how horribly selfish existing home owners are. Very common statements are that "I bought here because I liked the town and I don't want it to change", or "I have my house already, I don't want more people here", etc. It's awful. We're slowly losing everyone in Mountain View except dual tech income people who won the stock option lottery, houses are out of reach for most everyone. What does get built via ABAG (Association of Bay Area Governments) mandates is generally rental housing, and rents are astronomical. This kind of short sightedness is disgusting, and people don't seem to realize that nice, high density areas didn't just spring up in their dense form, they were allowed to evolve over time. CA also has a lot of red tape anyone can invoke on any construction project to drown it in bureaucracy for years. The only people willing to fight against the bureaucracy are giant developers who develop large lots into cookie cutter developments. It's a giant mess driven by greed and stupidity.

majormajor 9y ago
So on one hand you have people happy with the neighborhood they live in and not wanting change; on the other hand you have people not happy and wanting change. Why is one group more "horribly selfish" than the other? Especially if you think there's a bubble, you don't want to change the character of the place for a short-term problem. Why is "build more in one place" a more natural answer than "let tech companies geographically diversify themselves in response to pricing pressure"? Especially given an area that's kind of a natural disaster SPOF.
- epistasis 9y ago
  Because the same people that complain about new people were once new people. Also, they do not get the right to decide where people live. That's fundamentally entitled, selfish, and greedy attitude. And since they don't get to control where people move in the United States, they don't actually get to stop change. Change still happens whether they want it or not. Nobody has the right to stop others from interacting, or renting, or anything like that.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - biocomputation 9y ago
    >> Also, they do not get the right to decide where people live. That's fundamentally entitled, selfish, and greedy attitude. Oh but new people do that all the time.
    - epistasis 9y ago
      I think that sentence would have been a lot clearer if I had not omitted the word "other" "Also, they do not get the right to decide other where people live." Otherwise, everybody gets to choose on their own where they live, and that is a freedom that I am absolutely loathe to restrict.
      - rofrol 8y ago
        >everybody gets to choose on their own where they live Why only this? Let's allow people to do everything they want. /s Why can't some group of people, living in some area, set what are some rules that should be respected by all members? BTW. We have too many humans on Earth which causes a global warming.
  - TangoTrotFox 9y ago
    Your argument here might have some contradictions. It boils down to the fact that people don't get to force others to behave in a certain way, and I completely agree with you. But then you then use that to argue that therefore people should be able to force others to behave in a certain way. You know? As we don't live in an authoritarian state and we respect individuals' rights, we tend to rely on the market to provide the most fairness. The reason for this is that the market is effectively a democratization of pricing. I don't think it takes a huge degree of empathy to see how some group believe that an individual that believes they should be able to break this democratization of price to force others to enable them to reside wherever they want is what could be called entitled, selfish, and greedy.
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago
  > So on one hand you have people happy with the neighborhood they live in and not wanting change; on the other hand you have people not happy and wanting change I disagree with you, but I'm upvoting because (a) you politely expressed a reasonable thought and (b) I can't think of a succinct counter to your argument, and hope by elevating it someone else will. (If not, I have something deeper to think about.)
- oppositelock 9y ago
  You have to react to the state of the world today, not some unknown future state. The Bay Area is very successful financially with tech, biotech, and finance jobs. People from all over the country and world are coming here. We need housing for them. Basically, we can choose between two sets of problems, the problems of increased density, or the problems of gentrification. Yes, there is some amount of subjectivity here, and I clearly prefer the problems of higher density, but living here, I see a lot of very bad effects of gentrification. Service industry people have massive commutes from far away, yet we're dependent on their services, but we don't want to make housing affordable to make their lives better because we don't want change. We prioritize saving three big trees [1] over development, for example. What is really disheartening is people saying, as you do, that we should drive tech away in some capacity. I've lived in the rust belt, in areas of low housing cost due to industrial decline, I really would hate to see that here, it's horrible. [1] https://www.mv-voice.com/news/2017/12/22/downtown-residents-rally-to-save-neighborhood-redwoods https://www.mv-voice.com/news/2017/12/22/downtown-residents-...
  - oppositelock 9y ago
    Oh, and one more thing - I'm glad that SB 827 died, despite being pro-housing. This is fundamentally a local decisions, it's just that the locals are being unreasonable. Whenever the state imposes a one-size-fits-all policy, you end up with different problems. San Jose, for example, is building housing like crazy, and tech companies are already building campuses near the new housing, as even Google employees can't afford to buy in Mountain View today. Basic 3 bed / 2 bath houses on < 6,000 ft lots go for over $2.5M in Mountain View. Owner condos are non-existent, rents are on par with Manhattan, but we don't have public transit to move people out into the boroughs. It's not a good situation. I'm lucky because I've been here since the 90's, but today, I'd be forced to leave the bay area given my income level.
    - jcoffland 9y ago
      > San Jose, for example, is building housing like crazy And they have ruined what used to be beautiful farm land and orchards to create ugly urban sprawl punctuated by strip malls and plagued by violent crime. There's a very good reason San Jose, not San Francisco, was the site of the first major European settlement on the West Coast. Aside from having fantastic weather year round, San Jose was once beautiful. Few would argue that now. I know people need jobs and housing but unrestrained urban sprawl is a terrible solution to that problem.
- mozumder 9y ago
  This is a question I have as well. Does everyone deserve to live in a place like SF or mid-town Manhattan for cheap, by forcing infinite housing supply? Or is it ok to price people out of areas, creating different classes of people & forcing certain classes of people to migrate to places like Ohio (or Mexico)? Unfortunately, the people that are going to be ruined are the poor that currently live in the expensive places.
  - epistasis 9y ago
    >Does everyone deserve to live in a place like SF or mid-town Manhattan for cheap, by forcing infinite housing supply? This does not reflect anybody's position on the pro-housing side. Extreme exaggerations like "infinite" or "everyone deserving to live" do not facilitate conversations. Saying that more housing should be built is not saying infinite. The idea that all workers in an economy should be able to afford their housing is not saying everybody should get to live in the most expensive place. It may not be intentional but it seems like these statements were meant to take discussion off the rails.
    - mozumder 9y ago
      > The idea that all workers in an economy should be able to afford their housing is not saying everybody should get to live in the most expensive place. But this is exactly what's happening. Look at the discussion here, and you'll see people pushing for high-rises. Should high-rises be placed wherever there's demand? Or is it OK to say no and limit people?
      - epistasis 9y ago
        There's a huge difference between saying the limit should be changed and also that there should be no limits at all. I do know that the current limit is not working. We should change it somehow. Any move towards more housing will at least help. But this feels like a very false argument, like those who argue against a carbon tax or other Pigovian taxes that correct negative externalities. Sure, we may not know a priori what the best possible setting of the parameter is, but there's a huge range better settings out there, and it would be really hard to get it wrong if we take a single step in one direction. I don't see anybody arguing for high rises. I see some people mentioning Tokyo, but that's not all high rises. This bill was about low rises. And even building some high rises somewhere is not a terrible thing. Just because somebody mentions the possibility do we need to circle the wagons and stop all multi-unit buildings from going up?
- zkms 9y ago
  > Why is "build more in one place" a more natural answer than "let tech companies geographically diversify themselves in response to pricing pressure"? Because USian land use laws / zoning laws (that enshrine single-family houses while prohibiting/obstructing the construction of most everything else) aren't good at all, and there's no good reason to preserve them as they are, nor any reason to think that they're optimal for anything; except for increasing the value of single-family homes by rigorously prohibiting the construction of alternatives. Even "tradition" doesn't apply here, since the changes that prohibit high-rise/high-density/SROish housing are quite recent compared to the history of US cities. It's really not about "tech companies", it's more about the fact that US jurisdictions have systematically eliminated and prohibited entire categories of housing. > you don't want to change the character of the place for a short-term problem I do want to change the character of the place, and I think that objections (aesthetic or otherwise) to any kind of new structurally-sound housing are bunk and should not be entertained or given any sort of authority. Once you have people literally living and shitting in the street, I sorta feel that these NIMBYs should altogether lose the authority to obstruct/delay the construction of new housing.
  - rofrol 8y ago
    That is some socialist thinking. Take sth from one group to give another.
    - zkms 8y ago
      Nothing socialist about letting property-owners decide what kind of housing to build on their own land.
      - rofrol 8y ago
        So let's lift off visa requirements in USA and let everyone come if group of people leaving in some place cannot decide what should be the rules.
- sidlls 9y ago
  People who have want to prevent others from having. Even if one subscribes to the notion that all people are selfish it shouldn't be controversial to consider the former more selfish than the latter, and view the parent's comment in that light, charitably.
masonic 9y ago
how horribly selfish existing home owners are But they don't have any power. They don't have a vote on the planning commission or the city council. They don't have a vote in the Legislature. Sure, individuals can rant in meetings to the degree allowed, but that's it -- they can't implement policy. So if the vast majority are actually on the YIMBY side, then recalcitrant officeholders will be gone shortly... right?
- epistasis 9y ago
  This is the terrible outcome of having tons of votes for so many offices on huge ballots, most people can not possibly track the positions of all the people they are voting for. So that leaves a small number of highly motivated people to choose these commissions. And because it takes very few votes to change the commissions one way or the other every decision can now be swayed by whatever small number of people show up at random times during the day. Small numbers of highly motivated people control these commissions. They rally a large enough number of people at the right time, and they organize, and they do have complete control of these decisions. Meanwhile, those who are young and have to work, or those who have to work many jobs and have children to take care of, can't spend the hours per week it takes to give input. This form of direct democracy ends up enfranchising those with the most time and power to follow minutia that's unrelated to their day-to-day lives. And it attracts the sort of people that like to stick their noses into all sorts of other people's business.
  - DrScump 9y ago
    so many offices on huge ballots City Council and mayoral seats are usually voted on odd-year elections with short ballots. Those elections are generally low turnout as well, so the YIMBY types should find it easy to have an impact if the broad electorate is on their side.
  - rcpt 9y ago
    Hey, thanks. That's a great summary of the structural problems in our government that allow regressive rent seeking to overtake so many industries. For a (slightly) longer exposition I found chapters 6 and 7 of "The Captured Economy" by Lindsey and Teles quite informative.

majormajor 9y ago

So on one hand you have people happy with the neighborhood they live in and not wanting change; on the other hand you have people not happy and wanting change. Why is one group more "horribly selfish" than the other? Especially if you think there's a bubble, you don't want to change the character of the place for a short-term problem. Why is "build more in one place" a more natural answer than "let tech companies geographically diversify themselves in response to pricing pressure"? Especially given an area that's kind of a natural disaster SPOF.

epistasis 9y ago
Because the same people that complain about new people were once new people. Also, they do not get the right to decide where people live. That's fundamentally entitled, selfish, and greedy attitude. And since they don't get to control where people move in the United States, they don't actually get to stop change. Change still happens whether they want it or not. Nobody has the right to stop others from interacting, or renting, or anything like that.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- biocomputation 9y ago
  >> Also, they do not get the right to decide where people live. That's fundamentally entitled, selfish, and greedy attitude. Oh but new people do that all the time.
  - epistasis 9y ago
    I think that sentence would have been a lot clearer if I had not omitted the word "other" "Also, they do not get the right to decide other where people live." Otherwise, everybody gets to choose on their own where they live, and that is a freedom that I am absolutely loathe to restrict.
    - rofrol 8y ago
      >everybody gets to choose on their own where they live Why only this? Let's allow people to do everything they want. /s Why can't some group of people, living in some area, set what are some rules that should be respected by all members? BTW. We have too many humans on Earth which causes a global warming.
- TangoTrotFox 9y ago
  Your argument here might have some contradictions. It boils down to the fact that people don't get to force others to behave in a certain way, and I completely agree with you. But then you then use that to argue that therefore people should be able to force others to behave in a certain way. You know? As we don't live in an authoritarian state and we respect individuals' rights, we tend to rely on the market to provide the most fairness. The reason for this is that the market is effectively a democratization of pricing. I don't think it takes a huge degree of empathy to see how some group believe that an individual that believes they should be able to break this democratization of price to force others to enable them to reside wherever they want is what could be called entitled, selfish, and greedy.
JumpCrisscross 9y ago
> So on one hand you have people happy with the neighborhood they live in and not wanting change; on the other hand you have people not happy and wanting change I disagree with you, but I'm upvoting because (a) you politely expressed a reasonable thought and (b) I can't think of a succinct counter to your argument, and hope by elevating it someone else will. (If not, I have something deeper to think about.)
oppositelock 9y ago
You have to react to the state of the world today, not some unknown future state. The Bay Area is very successful financially with tech, biotech, and finance jobs. People from all over the country and world are coming here. We need housing for them. Basically, we can choose between two sets of problems, the problems of increased density, or the problems of gentrification. Yes, there is some amount of subjectivity here, and I clearly prefer the problems of higher density, but living here, I see a lot of very bad effects of gentrification. Service industry people have massive commutes from far away, yet we're dependent on their services, but we don't want to make housing affordable to make their lives better because we don't want change. We prioritize saving three big trees [1] over development, for example. What is really disheartening is people saying, as you do, that we should drive tech away in some capacity. I've lived in the rust belt, in areas of low housing cost due to industrial decline, I really would hate to see that here, it's horrible. [1] https://www.mv-voice.com/news/2017/12/22/downtown-residents-rally-to-save-neighborhood-redwoods https://www.mv-voice.com/news/2017/12/22/downtown-residents-...
- oppositelock 9y ago
  Oh, and one more thing - I'm glad that SB 827 died, despite being pro-housing. This is fundamentally a local decisions, it's just that the locals are being unreasonable. Whenever the state imposes a one-size-fits-all policy, you end up with different problems. San Jose, for example, is building housing like crazy, and tech companies are already building campuses near the new housing, as even Google employees can't afford to buy in Mountain View today. Basic 3 bed / 2 bath houses on < 6,000 ft lots go for over $2.5M in Mountain View. Owner condos are non-existent, rents are on par with Manhattan, but we don't have public transit to move people out into the boroughs. It's not a good situation. I'm lucky because I've been here since the 90's, but today, I'd be forced to leave the bay area given my income level.
  - jcoffland 9y ago
    > San Jose, for example, is building housing like crazy And they have ruined what used to be beautiful farm land and orchards to create ugly urban sprawl punctuated by strip malls and plagued by violent crime. There's a very good reason San Jose, not San Francisco, was the site of the first major European settlement on the West Coast. Aside from having fantastic weather year round, San Jose was once beautiful. Few would argue that now. I know people need jobs and housing but unrestrained urban sprawl is a terrible solution to that problem.
mozumder 9y ago
This is a question I have as well. Does everyone deserve to live in a place like SF or mid-town Manhattan for cheap, by forcing infinite housing supply? Or is it ok to price people out of areas, creating different classes of people & forcing certain classes of people to migrate to places like Ohio (or Mexico)? Unfortunately, the people that are going to be ruined are the poor that currently live in the expensive places.
- epistasis 9y ago
  >Does everyone deserve to live in a place like SF or mid-town Manhattan for cheap, by forcing infinite housing supply? This does not reflect anybody's position on the pro-housing side. Extreme exaggerations like "infinite" or "everyone deserving to live" do not facilitate conversations. Saying that more housing should be built is not saying infinite. The idea that all workers in an economy should be able to afford their housing is not saying everybody should get to live in the most expensive place. It may not be intentional but it seems like these statements were meant to take discussion off the rails.
  - mozumder 9y ago
    > The idea that all workers in an economy should be able to afford their housing is not saying everybody should get to live in the most expensive place. But this is exactly what's happening. Look at the discussion here, and you'll see people pushing for high-rises. Should high-rises be placed wherever there's demand? Or is it OK to say no and limit people?
    - epistasis 9y ago
      There's a huge difference between saying the limit should be changed and also that there should be no limits at all. I do know that the current limit is not working. We should change it somehow. Any move towards more housing will at least help. But this feels like a very false argument, like those who argue against a carbon tax or other Pigovian taxes that correct negative externalities. Sure, we may not know a priori what the best possible setting of the parameter is, but there's a huge range better settings out there, and it would be really hard to get it wrong if we take a single step in one direction. I don't see anybody arguing for high rises. I see some people mentioning Tokyo, but that's not all high rises. This bill was about low rises. And even building some high rises somewhere is not a terrible thing. Just because somebody mentions the possibility do we need to circle the wagons and stop all multi-unit buildings from going up?
zkms 9y ago
> Why is "build more in one place" a more natural answer than "let tech companies geographically diversify themselves in response to pricing pressure"? Because USian land use laws / zoning laws (that enshrine single-family houses while prohibiting/obstructing the construction of most everything else) aren't good at all, and there's no good reason to preserve them as they are, nor any reason to think that they're optimal for anything; except for increasing the value of single-family homes by rigorously prohibiting the construction of alternatives. Even "tradition" doesn't apply here, since the changes that prohibit high-rise/high-density/SROish housing are quite recent compared to the history of US cities. It's really not about "tech companies", it's more about the fact that US jurisdictions have systematically eliminated and prohibited entire categories of housing. > you don't want to change the character of the place for a short-term problem I do want to change the character of the place, and I think that objections (aesthetic or otherwise) to any kind of new structurally-sound housing are bunk and should not be entertained or given any sort of authority. Once you have people literally living and shitting in the street, I sorta feel that these NIMBYs should altogether lose the authority to obstruct/delay the construction of new housing.
- rofrol 8y ago
  That is some socialist thinking. Take sth from one group to give another.
  - zkms 8y ago
    Nothing socialist about letting property-owners decide what kind of housing to build on their own land.
    - rofrol 8y ago
      So let's lift off visa requirements in USA and let everyone come if group of people leaving in some place cannot decide what should be the rules.
sidlls 9y ago
People who have want to prevent others from having. Even if one subscribes to the notion that all people are selfish it shouldn't be controversial to consider the former more selfish than the latter, and view the parent's comment in that light, charitably.

masonic 9y ago

how horribly selfish existing home owners are But they don't have any power. They don't have a vote on the planning commission or the city council. They don't have a vote in the Legislature. Sure, individuals can rant in meetings to the degree allowed, but that's it -- they can't implement policy. So if the vast majority are actually on the YIMBY side, then recalcitrant officeholders will be gone shortly... right?

epistasis 9y ago
This is the terrible outcome of having tons of votes for so many offices on huge ballots, most people can not possibly track the positions of all the people they are voting for. So that leaves a small number of highly motivated people to choose these commissions. And because it takes very few votes to change the commissions one way or the other every decision can now be swayed by whatever small number of people show up at random times during the day. Small numbers of highly motivated people control these commissions. They rally a large enough number of people at the right time, and they organize, and they do have complete control of these decisions. Meanwhile, those who are young and have to work, or those who have to work many jobs and have children to take care of, can't spend the hours per week it takes to give input. This form of direct democracy ends up enfranchising those with the most time and power to follow minutia that's unrelated to their day-to-day lives. And it attracts the sort of people that like to stick their noses into all sorts of other people's business.
- DrScump 9y ago
  so many offices on huge ballots City Council and mayoral seats are usually voted on odd-year elections with short ballots. Those elections are generally low turnout as well, so the YIMBY types should find it easy to have an impact if the broad electorate is on their side.
- rcpt 9y ago
  Hey, thanks. That's a great summary of the structural problems in our government that allow regressive rent seeking to overtake so many industries. For a (slightly) longer exposition I found chapters 6 and 7 of "The Captured Economy" by Lindsey and Teles quite informative.