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So one thing I always have trouble with on this debate is that it feels totally one-sided. There's smart people on the YIMBY side making the case for building.

So one thing I always have trouble with on this debate is that it feels totally one-sided. There's smart people on the YIMBY side making the case for building. But then NIMBYs are always portrayed as a caricature of the self-interested rich guy. So I read this article and then I click through to http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-housing-bill-failure-equity-groups-20180502-story.html http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-housing-bill-failu... this article and I see lots of poor people opposed SB 827 as well. But even then there isn't really a strong op-ed or anything like that making the case against YIMBY. Where do I go to read that? If you're a YIMBY what's the toughest NIMBY article or argument you've come across?

ng12 8y ago
The arguments I've come across fall into three buckets: neighborhood character, traffic/infrastructure, and (my personal favorite) supply and demand doesn't apply to housing. I suspect the real root is a fear of change mixed with greed.
zasz 8y ago
The best I can find of the SB827 opponents is statements like this: http://www.dsa-la.org/statement_in_opposition_to_sb_827 http://www.dsa-la.org/statement_in_opposition_to_sb_827 The anti-development left is, for a variety of reasons, not terribly visible. Poor people of color lack visibility in the first place, and so do the more extreme leftists. So you multiply those together, and you're not going to get a movement that commands a lot of attention. The other issue with finding unified op-eds against YIMBYs is that these battles are literally fought building by building. If you really want a detailed look at the debates that showcases both sides, you'll have to start reading more local news. NIMBYs are generally quite happy to acknowledge that there's a statewide housing crisis, but they'll refuse to build anything in their own neighborhoods. NIMBYs don't need to be a unified force to get their way. Whereas, YIMBYs seeking to enact statewide change via bills like SB827 do.
- nerfhammer 8y ago
  Poor people of color don't oppose development, it's mostly upper middle class whites: "77% of Latinos, 69% of African Americans, and 64% of Asian Americans support building more housing in their local areas, compared with 53% of whites.” http://www.ppic.org/publication/californians-and-housing-affordability/ http://www.ppic.org/publication/californians-and-housing-aff...
  - zasz 8y ago
    And that's why YIMBYs like me like to call the leftists who oppose building more housing "fauxgressives."
  - DrScump 8y ago
    ...oppose development, it's mostly upper middle class whites Wait for it... 53% of whites (*support* building more housing) Your own quote literally belies your claim. A valid conclusion from that source is that "whites support more housing but at lower rates than (other ethnicities)", but that's not opposition.
    - raldi 8y ago
      Huh? The claim was that the people who oppose development are predominantly upper middle class whites, not that a majority of white people oppose development.
      - DrScump 8y ago
        But the chosen quote doesn't support that claim.
        raldi 8y ago
        You said it "literally belies it", not that it fails to support it.
      - masonic 8y ago
        "belie (trasitive verb) 1 a : to give a false impression of: "Her gentleness belies her strength." b : to present an appearance not in agreement with: "His manner and appearance belie his age." https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/belie https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/belie To say "it's mostly upper middle class whites" does give a false impression of what the study said. Do you have other sources that support that statement?
- eldavido 8y ago
  Oh believe me, they are HIGHLY visible everywhere it counts: local committee meetings, elections, city hall, etc. You just don't see them because "visible" to us here means posting on HN or Medium or Twitter. There's just a huge gulf between the local and global people that we need to transcend.
  - zasz 8y ago
    Of course I know anti-development people are the ones most likely to show up to public meetings. I've gone to plenty in Palo Alto, and I canvassed for a pro-growth slate. I'm not the kind of apathetic techie who only reads social networking sites, and I'm annoyed that you seem to have missed the part where I suggest interested parties read more local news. But NIMBYs generally don't have a real argument against development the way anti-development leftists do, and that's what I meant by visibility. You're not going to see a NIMBY write a coherent statement, and publicize it to as wide an audience as possible, the way a DSA chapter would.
tmh79 8y ago
IMO, When you account for political clout, the wealthy residents of Marin and Santa Monica have much more influence in the process than the tenants in Boyle Heights or East Oakland. The former uses the rhetoric and coopts the message of the latter to further their exclusive tendencies. When you look at the cross tab data, poorer people in California are much more likely to support more home building, and the people who skew "anti-building" are usually white home owners over 60 years old. The big issue that we seem to have in SF is that the neighborhoods that historically the poorest and most neglected (the mission and soma) are basically the only neighborhoods that are zoned for a reasonable density of new construction, while the wealthiest neighborhoods (pac heights, west portal) have been able to get ahead of the planning process and ensure that they will be able to remain low density. We should be building new housing in wealthy exclusionary neighborhoods like the west side of LA, and much of SF instead of allowing it in a few formerly industrial areas.
pchristensen 8y ago
* If you're a YIMBY what's the toughest NIMBY article or argument you've come across? "We have 100 years of law, cultural, and financial precedent for our NIMBY actions and decisions, supported at all levels of government and the financial sector." When you're packing that kind of heat, your don't need a strong argument.
Symmetry 8y ago
From my discussions with coworkers on the NIMBY side the real reason they were so interested in preventing new construction in their towns was to keep the children of poor people out of the schools their own kids were going to more than to raise the values of their houses. And some fears that the sort of people who would move into cheaper housing would cause higher crime rates.
jakelarkin 8y ago
NIMBYs deploy a range of shifting rhetorical arguments (concern trolling, strawman etc) but in my observation the principle motivation is fear of change and the negative externalities of increasing population ... traffic, parking, what if the new people are different from me, etc. Money is part of it but less than many assume because (1) home equity is paper wealth and many owners can't afford to move due to Prop13. and (2) the way to actually maximize land value is to upzone, so NIMBYism not exactly optimal in terms of economic self-interest.
- jahvo 8y ago
  >traffic, parking, what if the new people are different from me those all seem perfectly reasonable
  - jakelarkin 8y ago
    not at the cost of decent housing options for people across a broad range of lower/middle incomes and also not accommodating baseline population growth regionally.
  - zasz 8y ago
    Not really. Your right to an unchanging neighborhood absolutely does not eclipse the right of a long-term renter's ability to stay in their community, or the right of a newcomer's desire to move to a better job. Plus, climate change. Sprawl and traffic are bad for the planet. California will never be able to meet its CO2 reduction targets if it does not discourage more driving, which we can only do by shortening the distances between where people live and where they work, and compressing the areas people live in.
    - s73v3r_ 8y ago
      "Your right to an unchanging neighborhood absolutely does not eclipse the right of a long-term renter's ability to stay in their community, or the right of a newcomer's desire to move to a better job" Aren't the tech newcomers the ones that are threatening the long-term renters more?
maym86 8y ago
It depends on the type of housing being built. A lot of new housing being built is unaffordable two bed apartments aimed at higher earners. Along with the YIMBY campaign a percentage of the housing needs to be affordable to lower income people in a city. Also better public transportation would help so people can live further away and easily commute to city jobs.
TillE 8y ago
The DSA LA statement linked in a sibling is good, but the simplest argument against YIMBY-ism is that re-zoning is demonstrably not a panacea. America has weird laws, many other countries do not. Popular cities are still ultra-expensive around the world, in spite of development. If you want to actually solve housing problems, you need a much much broader approach than simply allowing private development which, in absence of other incentives, will be almost entirely luxury apartments.
- zasz 8y ago
  True dat. Supply is necessary but not sufficient. I don't think this is too popular amongst YIMBYs, but some of us do support limited rent-control for the sake of displacement protection.
- davidw 8y ago
  There are a lot of different ways of adding supply: http://www.sightline.org/2017/09/21/yes-you-can-build-your-way-to-affordable-housing/ http://www.sightline.org/2017/09/21/yes-you-can-build-your-w...
- zkms 8y ago
  > Popular cities are still ultra-expensive around the world, in spite of development. Not nearly as expensive than popular cities in the US. To be more precise, many non-US popular cities have a lot more supply of rental units at low cost than most US popular cities. The cheapest apartment available to let immediately in many non-US cities is far cheaper than the cheapest apartment available to let immediately in, say, Los Angeles area or SF. For instance, there's apartments you can let in Tokyo for $500 (or even less!) (https://resources.realestate.co.jp/rent/what-can-you-rent-for-500-in-tokyo/ https://resources.realestate.co.jp/rent/what-can-you-rent-fo...) but there's literally no equivalent in the US. Like at all (if you find a counterexample please let me know!). That is why allowing dense and tall development (free of NIMBY interference) matters.
  - ghaff 8y ago
    For one thing, those are single rooms--about $200 sq. ft. Also see Singapore and Hong Kong. (It's difficult to make these comparisons though because of different local wages and exchange rates.)
themagician 8y ago
That's because the "debate" is a disingenuous farce. There is no such thing as a YIMBY. There are people who want something that someone else has and people who have something and are trying to keep it for themselves. There is literally no one volunteering their own backyard—it's always someone else's. I've yet to see the YIMBY who rallies everyone in their building or on their block together and collectively agree to be voluntarily displaced so they can demo the building(s) they are in, build one that is taller, and move back in several years later. I've yet to see the YIMBY who comes to a planning meeting and votes to have lot directly next to them rezoned so they can deal with construction for the next two years. I've yet to see the YIMBY who just purchased a home at the height of the market with a view of the GG bridge and who then votes in favor of rezoning the lot across the street so that it's taller and higher density than their unit, which blocks their view, natural sunlight, and decrease their property value. All I see is people who live in Oakland trying to rally people to rezone areas of San Francisco. Or people who live in The Mission trying to rally people to rezone the areas around Golden Gate Park. We need more housing. There are areas that, from a planning perspective, should definitely be rezoned for higher density housing. But the people who already live there don't want that. And well, they live there. One of my favorite areas in the city is the Sea Cliff area. The one mile stretch of land that faces the water contains only about 30 homes. Half of them are vacant because they are investment properties. On any given there are probably like 20 or so people on those cliffs. That same amount of land in NYC would house thousands of people. But if you want to take the YIMBY movement to the extreme why don't go ahead and try to rezone that area. Displace a few dozen extremely rich people and we can house literally a thousand families.
- dougmccune 8y ago
  I live in Oakland, in an expensive neighborhood near BART full of single family homes, and very much support rezoning my neighborhood to allow for 4-6 story buildings, and would take those buildings on my own block. No, I am not willing to tear down my own house and inconvenience myself for years while building a 4 story multi unit building. But I would wholeheartedly support a neighbor doing so. I want more people in this area, I want the commercial activity that higher density brings, I want the added demand for public transit investment, more restaurants, more diversity, etc. That is in stark contrast to the typical NIMBY view. So you can call it something else if you want, but there are definitely differences between mentalities.
ryandrake 8y ago
Seems to be a lot of caricature and rhetoric on both sides. It comes with any emotionally charged political topic. There are probably smart NIMBYs and dummy YIMBYs too. For some there is not an easy side to pick. Do I want lower housing prices in the Bay Area? Sure. Do I want dense apartments and town houses to be 90% of my options? No way. I’m not sure which side to support or whether to support a side.
tialaramex 8y ago
The opposite of YIMBY isn't NIMBY per se. You'd need to look for BANANAs (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone) for the opposite view. Or don't, I think the acronym gives the game away.
tlb 8y ago
The underlying motivation for NIMBY is that people who own houses want their value to go up, and for their neighborhood to be too expensive for poor people so that their public schools will be well-funded and full of other upwardly mobile kids, and for their streets and parks not to be crowded. It's a perfectly rational set of motivations. It's the same reason people move to nicer neighborhoods in the first place. With limited development over period of time you get the benefits of living in a more expensive neighborhood, without having paid the premium for it. These arguments don't play well in public, especially in a socially progressive city like SF, so the rhetoric gets confusing. NIMBY groups sometimes float arguments such as: building more housing will make neighborhoods less affordable. Some well-meaning progressive people who don't understand supply and demand are fooled by such arguments, and support NIMBY policies too, so it's not just homeowners. In the end, most people don't know what to think, and gravitate to the status-quo (ie, limited development.)
- sushid 8y ago
  But if they want public infra to be well funded, then they have to pay their taxes. For the older houseowners, they're paying a fraction of the taxes they should be paying. They can't have their cake and eat it too!
- nradov 8y ago
  This is a pernicious stereotype and mostly wrong. Have you ever actually talked to a NIMBY? The most committed NIMBYs have lived in the same place for decades and have no plans to sell. They don't care much about property values. What they do care about are traffic, parking, noise, school overcrowding, and other quality of life issues. Some people simply don't like living in densely populated areas. If you want to win over the NIMBYs then you have to address their concerns rather than just demonizing them as greedy property owners.
  - dangjc 8y ago
    It's probably not possible to win over NIMBYs. Incoming population will always create more traffic. Taller buildings always overshadow something. They have almost no interest in letting in more people. The key is recognizing that it is an inherently selfish constituency, and you have to give voice to the people who don't yet live there or who are renters and less likely to vote or attend city council meetings. The homeownership rate in CA is already bordering just half (53.8%) and decreasing, so this is a growing constituency which just needs to be activated. That's why there's a need to remove local control on density limits, as the constituency probably exists at the state or regional level, but not so much at the individual neighborhood level.
abalone 8y ago
Great question. It only feels one-sided if you're getting most of your information from HN and the tech community. CA YIMBY wants you to believe that their opposition consists entirely of old, white NIMBYs opposed to development. That is a misrepresentation. In fact it is CA YIMBY that is mostly white. The main opposition to YIMBY here is not anti-development. It just prioritizes "affordable" low-income housing development and protection of existing low income housing. Whereas YIMBY, while claiming to know what's best for low income folks, prioritizes building market-rate housing to accommodate the explosive growth of the tech industry. They disagree on the effects of building market-rate housing in lower income neighborhoods. The best thing to read? That LA Times article is a good start. Others have noted the DSA's stance on this.[1] Here's an excerpt, where they lay out exactly what they'd like to see in a pro-development bill: --------------- SB 827 can be improved further with the following additions: Add measures to ensure that new development occurs in affluent single-family neighborhoods and not exclusively in low-income communities with a history of racialized divestment. Mandate that a high percentage of the new transit-oriented development be designated affordable at extremely low-income, very low-income, and low-income levels. Mandate that new units built from SB 827 accept housing vouchers. Include value capture provisions such that value created by public transit development is returned to the public in taxes. Impose a temporary rent freeze on buildings surrounding new development enabled by SB 827. Pass legislation to raise funds from short term rentals and to mitigate the impact of short-term rental services, like AirBnB, taking units off the market. Develop programs to ensure ownership opportunities of new housing in communities of color in order to combat the continued existence of redlining. Target funding from the upcoming $3B November housing bond to be allocated for land acquisition and the construction of 100% subsidized, deeply affordable housing in low-income neighborhoods and communities of color targeted by upzoning. Allow not-for-profit and public development proposals a first right of acquisition on upzoned parcels. Amend the companion bill, SB 828, to study and analyze the racialized impacts of high-end development. Factor race and class impacts into regional housing needs allocation (RHNA) goals. [1] http://www.dsa-la.org/statement_in_opposition_to_sb_827 http://www.dsa-la.org/statement_in_opposition_to_sb_827
loeg 8y ago
Turns out you don't have to be self-interested or rich to be a NIMBY. Plenty of poor people don't really have a good grasp on supply and demand.
- s73v3r_ 8y ago
  Or maybe they feel that a lot of the tech boom is what caused the increase in population, and they don't trust those people to have their interests in mind when trying to create new housing.
  - loeg 8y ago
    Color that under "poor understanding of supply and demand."
    - s73v3r_ 8y ago
      Why? Why would a natural distrust of a group of people who has never seemed interested in their problems or wellbeing before be a "poor understanding of supply and demand"?
      - loeg 8y ago
        Your implication is that it is reasonable for this group to believe that NIMBYism will somehow prevent rents from rising, "because we don't trust tech workers," which is counterfactual. In this case, low- and high-pay renters' interests are almost entirely aligned.
        s73v3r_ 8y ago
        My implication had nothing to do with NIMBYism. Just that they don't trust the tech workers to have their interests at heart. Its entirely reasonable and possible to believe that neither group will promote an outcome that will help those people.
    - wpietri 8y ago
allsunny 8y ago
In my city on the peninsula, the argument is that it will overwhelm the schools with all of the new residents' kids. There is also some concern that it will attract the "wrong crowd."
- Decade 8y ago
  In the meanwhile, schools all over the peninsula are shutting down because of falling enrollment. It’s only about the “wrong crowd.”
pessimizer 8y ago
Powerful local landowners support local YIMBYism, because it will make them far wealthier than they are already. Their financial clout allows them to dominate the media coverage, and their financing of YIMBY groups gives them an army of wealthy, educated, articulate young people to make supporting their right to build very large buildings look like a populist endeavor.
Decade 8y ago
I think the caricature of the self-interested rich guy is really the most rational caricature. Preserve the neighborhood in amber, maintain home values; this makes sense, this is the majority of the United States. The activists supposedly fighting for low-income communities are so bizarrely wrong that they’re beyond caricature. Fight oppression by seizing control of the apparatus of oppression instead of by abolishing oppression. A lot of the tenant orthodoxy in San Francisco is based on completely backwards economics. The idea is that building more market-rate housing will increase the demand for market-rate housing even more, so it’s futile to even attempt it. Only housing with guaranteed low prices should be allowed to be built. Completely ignore the hundreds of thousands of homes that used to be naturally affordable, but now are worth an average of over a million each. A major blog for this point of view is 48hills. https://48hills.org/2016/09/debunking-trickle-housing-fallacy/ https://48hills.org/2016/09/debunking-trickle-housing-fallac... The self-interested rich people do come through, still. Dillon mentions the rally, but he doesn’t mention the wealthy white landlords standing at the head of the rally. He quotes Shanti, who was active in the SF chapter of the DSA, but now works full-time as an activist because of funding from the wealthy white-ish Dean Preston. He mentions a black tenant activist, but he doesn’t mention the bald-faced lies, nor the funding from wealthy white-ish Michael Weinstein. The San Francisco “progressive” movement, if judged by its results, well, rich landlords are successfully keeping their home values, but low-income communities are still being evicted. The Filipina activist is interesting. I’ve clashed with her in other contexts, and the summary is that most non-English-speaking low-income people are for the ideas of SB 827, but the leadership of the organizations are against it. Some people from the Planning Department held an exercise where they asked whether we wanted more height and density along our transit corridors, and only the leaders said, “No, we are against developer giveaways.” The ordinary poor people want more affordable housing, and they recognized that affordable housing needs to be legal to be built. Loosening the height and density restrictions is how we legalize affordable housing. In my neighborhood, I think the toughest NIMBY argument is that we are not the organized people of color. I’ve always had a YIMBY point of view, even though I grew up with poor parents, because I want to eliminate the structural causes of poverty. Several others in my neighborhood had a similar experience, and similarly promote more housing. The way the Filipina activist sees it, that makes us “privileged people of color,” so our opinions are not valid. We need to activate the still-poor people to be a constituency for housing; but her organizations have the institutional connections, to legal counsel from SFTU (which also promotes backwards economics), and to other non-housing activities such as immigration and community gardening. I don’t know how to work through this problem.

ng12 8y ago

The arguments I've come across fall into three buckets: neighborhood character, traffic/infrastructure, and (my personal favorite) supply and demand doesn't apply to housing. I suspect the real root is a fear of change mixed with greed.

zasz 8y ago

The best I can find of the SB827 opponents is statements like this: http://www.dsa-la.org/statement_in_opposition_to_sb_827 http://www.dsa-la.org/statement_in_opposition_to_sb_827 The anti-development left is, for a variety of reasons, not terribly visible. Poor people of color lack visibility in the first place, and so do the more extreme leftists. So you multiply those together, and you're not going to get a movement that commands a lot of attention. The other issue with finding unified op-eds against YIMBYs is that these battles are literally fought building by building. If you really want a detailed look at the debates that showcases both sides, you'll have to start reading more local news. NIMBYs are generally quite happy to acknowledge that there's a statewide housing crisis, but they'll refuse to build anything in their own neighborhoods. NIMBYs don't need to be a unified force to get their way. Whereas, YIMBYs seeking to enact statewide change via bills like SB827 do.

nerfhammer 8y ago
Poor people of color don't oppose development, it's mostly upper middle class whites: "77% of Latinos, 69% of African Americans, and 64% of Asian Americans support building more housing in their local areas, compared with 53% of whites.” http://www.ppic.org/publication/californians-and-housing-affordability/ http://www.ppic.org/publication/californians-and-housing-aff...
- zasz 8y ago
  And that's why YIMBYs like me like to call the leftists who oppose building more housing "fauxgressives."
- DrScump 8y ago
  ...oppose development, it's mostly upper middle class whites Wait for it... 53% of whites (*support* building more housing) Your own quote literally belies your claim. A valid conclusion from that source is that "whites support more housing but at lower rates than (other ethnicities)", but that's not opposition.
  - raldi 8y ago
    Huh? The claim was that the people who oppose development are predominantly upper middle class whites, not that a majority of white people oppose development.
    - DrScump 8y ago
      But the chosen quote doesn't support that claim.
      - raldi 8y ago
        You said it "literally belies it", not that it fails to support it.
    - masonic 8y ago
      "belie (trasitive verb) 1 a : to give a false impression of: "Her gentleness belies her strength." b : to present an appearance not in agreement with: "His manner and appearance belie his age." https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/belie https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/belie To say "it's mostly upper middle class whites" does give a false impression of what the study said. Do you have other sources that support that statement?
eldavido 8y ago
Oh believe me, they are HIGHLY visible everywhere it counts: local committee meetings, elections, city hall, etc. You just don't see them because "visible" to us here means posting on HN or Medium or Twitter. There's just a huge gulf between the local and global people that we need to transcend.
- zasz 8y ago
  Of course I know anti-development people are the ones most likely to show up to public meetings. I've gone to plenty in Palo Alto, and I canvassed for a pro-growth slate. I'm not the kind of apathetic techie who only reads social networking sites, and I'm annoyed that you seem to have missed the part where I suggest interested parties read more local news. But NIMBYs generally don't have a real argument against development the way anti-development leftists do, and that's what I meant by visibility. You're not going to see a NIMBY write a coherent statement, and publicize it to as wide an audience as possible, the way a DSA chapter would.

tmh79 8y ago

IMO, When you account for political clout, the wealthy residents of Marin and Santa Monica have much more influence in the process than the tenants in Boyle Heights or East Oakland. The former uses the rhetoric and coopts the message of the latter to further their exclusive tendencies. When you look at the cross tab data, poorer people in California are much more likely to support more home building, and the people who skew "anti-building" are usually white home owners over 60 years old. The big issue that we seem to have in SF is that the neighborhoods that historically the poorest and most neglected (the mission and soma) are basically the only neighborhoods that are zoned for a reasonable density of new construction, while the wealthiest neighborhoods (pac heights, west portal) have been able to get ahead of the planning process and ensure that they will be able to remain low density. We should be building new housing in wealthy exclusionary neighborhoods like the west side of LA, and much of SF instead of allowing it in a few formerly industrial areas.

pchristensen 8y ago

* If you're a YIMBY what's the toughest NIMBY article or argument you've come across? "We have 100 years of law, cultural, and financial precedent for our NIMBY actions and decisions, supported at all levels of government and the financial sector." When you're packing that kind of heat, your don't need a strong argument.

Symmetry 8y ago

From my discussions with coworkers on the NIMBY side the real reason they were so interested in preventing new construction in their towns was to keep the children of poor people out of the schools their own kids were going to more than to raise the values of their houses. And some fears that the sort of people who would move into cheaper housing would cause higher crime rates.

jakelarkin 8y ago

NIMBYs deploy a range of shifting rhetorical arguments (concern trolling, strawman etc) but in my observation the principle motivation is fear of change and the negative externalities of increasing population ... traffic, parking, what if the new people are different from me, etc. Money is part of it but less than many assume because (1) home equity is paper wealth and many owners can't afford to move due to Prop13. and (2) the way to actually maximize land value is to upzone, so NIMBYism not exactly optimal in terms of economic self-interest.

jahvo 8y ago
>traffic, parking, what if the new people are different from me those all seem perfectly reasonable
- jakelarkin 8y ago
  not at the cost of decent housing options for people across a broad range of lower/middle incomes and also not accommodating baseline population growth regionally.
- zasz 8y ago
  Not really. Your right to an unchanging neighborhood absolutely does not eclipse the right of a long-term renter's ability to stay in their community, or the right of a newcomer's desire to move to a better job. Plus, climate change. Sprawl and traffic are bad for the planet. California will never be able to meet its CO2 reduction targets if it does not discourage more driving, which we can only do by shortening the distances between where people live and where they work, and compressing the areas people live in.
  - s73v3r_ 8y ago
    "Your right to an unchanging neighborhood absolutely does not eclipse the right of a long-term renter's ability to stay in their community, or the right of a newcomer's desire to move to a better job" Aren't the tech newcomers the ones that are threatening the long-term renters more?

maym86 8y ago

It depends on the type of housing being built. A lot of new housing being built is unaffordable two bed apartments aimed at higher earners. Along with the YIMBY campaign a percentage of the housing needs to be affordable to lower income people in a city. Also better public transportation would help so people can live further away and easily commute to city jobs.

TillE 8y ago

The DSA LA statement linked in a sibling is good, but the simplest argument against YIMBY-ism is that re-zoning is demonstrably not a panacea. America has weird laws, many other countries do not. Popular cities are still ultra-expensive around the world, in spite of development. If you want to actually solve housing problems, you need a much much broader approach than simply allowing private development which, in absence of other incentives, will be almost entirely luxury apartments.

zasz 8y ago
True dat. Supply is necessary but not sufficient. I don't think this is too popular amongst YIMBYs, but some of us do support limited rent-control for the sake of displacement protection.
davidw 8y ago
There are a lot of different ways of adding supply: http://www.sightline.org/2017/09/21/yes-you-can-build-your-way-to-affordable-housing/ http://www.sightline.org/2017/09/21/yes-you-can-build-your-w...
zkms 8y ago
> Popular cities are still ultra-expensive around the world, in spite of development. Not nearly as expensive than popular cities in the US. To be more precise, many non-US popular cities have a lot more supply of rental units at low cost than most US popular cities. The cheapest apartment available to let immediately in many non-US cities is far cheaper than the cheapest apartment available to let immediately in, say, Los Angeles area or SF. For instance, there's apartments you can let in Tokyo for $500 (or even less!) (https://resources.realestate.co.jp/rent/what-can-you-rent-for-500-in-tokyo/ https://resources.realestate.co.jp/rent/what-can-you-rent-fo...) but there's literally no equivalent in the US. Like at all (if you find a counterexample please let me know!). That is why allowing dense and tall development (free of NIMBY interference) matters.
- ghaff 8y ago
  For one thing, those are single rooms--about $200 sq. ft. Also see Singapore and Hong Kong. (It's difficult to make these comparisons though because of different local wages and exchange rates.)

themagician 8y ago

That's because the "debate" is a disingenuous farce. There is no such thing as a YIMBY. There are people who want something that someone else has and people who have something and are trying to keep it for themselves. There is literally no one volunteering their own backyard—it's always someone else's. I've yet to see the YIMBY who rallies everyone in their building or on their block together and collectively agree to be voluntarily displaced so they can demo the building(s) they are in, build one that is taller, and move back in several years later. I've yet to see the YIMBY who comes to a planning meeting and votes to have lot directly next to them rezoned so they can deal with construction for the next two years. I've yet to see the YIMBY who just purchased a home at the height of the market with a view of the GG bridge and who then votes in favor of rezoning the lot across the street so that it's taller and higher density than their unit, which blocks their view, natural sunlight, and decrease their property value. All I see is people who live in Oakland trying to rally people to rezone areas of San Francisco. Or people who live in The Mission trying to rally people to rezone the areas around Golden Gate Park. We need more housing. There are areas that, from a planning perspective, should definitely be rezoned for higher density housing. But the people who already live there don't want that. And well, they live there. One of my favorite areas in the city is the Sea Cliff area. The one mile stretch of land that faces the water contains only about 30 homes. Half of them are vacant because they are investment properties. On any given there are probably like 20 or so people on those cliffs. That same amount of land in NYC would house thousands of people. But if you want to take the YIMBY movement to the extreme why don't go ahead and try to rezone that area. Displace a few dozen extremely rich people and we can house literally a thousand families.

dougmccune 8y ago
I live in Oakland, in an expensive neighborhood near BART full of single family homes, and very much support rezoning my neighborhood to allow for 4-6 story buildings, and would take those buildings on my own block. No, I am not willing to tear down my own house and inconvenience myself for years while building a 4 story multi unit building. But I would wholeheartedly support a neighbor doing so. I want more people in this area, I want the commercial activity that higher density brings, I want the added demand for public transit investment, more restaurants, more diversity, etc. That is in stark contrast to the typical NIMBY view. So you can call it something else if you want, but there are definitely differences between mentalities.

ryandrake 8y ago

Seems to be a lot of caricature and rhetoric on both sides. It comes with any emotionally charged political topic. There are probably smart NIMBYs and dummy YIMBYs too. For some there is not an easy side to pick. Do I want lower housing prices in the Bay Area? Sure. Do I want dense apartments and town houses to be 90% of my options? No way. I’m not sure which side to support or whether to support a side.

tialaramex 8y ago

The opposite of YIMBY isn't NIMBY per se. You'd need to look for BANANAs (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone) for the opposite view. Or don't, I think the acronym gives the game away.

tlb 8y ago

The underlying motivation for NIMBY is that people who own houses want their value to go up, and for their neighborhood to be too expensive for poor people so that their public schools will be well-funded and full of other upwardly mobile kids, and for their streets and parks not to be crowded. It's a perfectly rational set of motivations. It's the same reason people move to nicer neighborhoods in the first place. With limited development over period of time you get the benefits of living in a more expensive neighborhood, without having paid the premium for it. These arguments don't play well in public, especially in a socially progressive city like SF, so the rhetoric gets confusing. NIMBY groups sometimes float arguments such as: building more housing will make neighborhoods less affordable. Some well-meaning progressive people who don't understand supply and demand are fooled by such arguments, and support NIMBY policies too, so it's not just homeowners. In the end, most people don't know what to think, and gravitate to the status-quo (ie, limited development.)

sushid 8y ago
But if they want public infra to be well funded, then they have to pay their taxes. For the older houseowners, they're paying a fraction of the taxes they should be paying. They can't have their cake and eat it too!
nradov 8y ago
This is a pernicious stereotype and mostly wrong. Have you ever actually talked to a NIMBY? The most committed NIMBYs have lived in the same place for decades and have no plans to sell. They don't care much about property values. What they do care about are traffic, parking, noise, school overcrowding, and other quality of life issues. Some people simply don't like living in densely populated areas. If you want to win over the NIMBYs then you have to address their concerns rather than just demonizing them as greedy property owners.
- dangjc 8y ago
  It's probably not possible to win over NIMBYs. Incoming population will always create more traffic. Taller buildings always overshadow something. They have almost no interest in letting in more people. The key is recognizing that it is an inherently selfish constituency, and you have to give voice to the people who don't yet live there or who are renters and less likely to vote or attend city council meetings. The homeownership rate in CA is already bordering just half (53.8%) and decreasing, so this is a growing constituency which just needs to be activated. That's why there's a need to remove local control on density limits, as the constituency probably exists at the state or regional level, but not so much at the individual neighborhood level.

abalone 8y ago

Great question. It only feels one-sided if you're getting most of your information from HN and the tech community. CA YIMBY wants you to believe that their opposition consists entirely of old, white NIMBYs opposed to development. That is a misrepresentation. In fact it is CA YIMBY that is mostly white. The main opposition to YIMBY here is not anti-development. It just prioritizes "affordable" low-income housing development and protection of existing low income housing. Whereas YIMBY, while claiming to know what's best for low income folks, prioritizes building market-rate housing to accommodate the explosive growth of the tech industry. They disagree on the effects of building market-rate housing in lower income neighborhoods. The best thing to read? That LA Times article is a good start. Others have noted the DSA's stance on this.[1] Here's an excerpt, where they lay out exactly what they'd like to see in a pro-development bill: --------------- SB 827 can be improved further with the following additions: Add measures to ensure that new development occurs in affluent single-family neighborhoods and not exclusively in low-income communities with a history of racialized divestment. Mandate that a high percentage of the new transit-oriented development be designated affordable at extremely low-income, very low-income, and low-income levels. Mandate that new units built from SB 827 accept housing vouchers. Include value capture provisions such that value created by public transit development is returned to the public in taxes. Impose a temporary rent freeze on buildings surrounding new development enabled by SB 827. Pass legislation to raise funds from short term rentals and to mitigate the impact of short-term rental services, like AirBnB, taking units off the market. Develop programs to ensure ownership opportunities of new housing in communities of color in order to combat the continued existence of redlining. Target funding from the upcoming $3B November housing bond to be allocated for land acquisition and the construction of 100% subsidized, deeply affordable housing in low-income neighborhoods and communities of color targeted by upzoning. Allow not-for-profit and public development proposals a first right of acquisition on upzoned parcels. Amend the companion bill, SB 828, to study and analyze the racialized impacts of high-end development. Factor race and class impacts into regional housing needs allocation (RHNA) goals. [1] http://www.dsa-la.org/statement_in_opposition_to_sb_827 http://www.dsa-la.org/statement_in_opposition_to_sb_827

loeg 8y ago

Turns out you don't have to be self-interested or rich to be a NIMBY. Plenty of poor people don't really have a good grasp on supply and demand.

s73v3r_ 8y ago
Or maybe they feel that a lot of the tech boom is what caused the increase in population, and they don't trust those people to have their interests in mind when trying to create new housing.
- loeg 8y ago
  Color that under "poor understanding of supply and demand."
  - s73v3r_ 8y ago
    Why? Why would a natural distrust of a group of people who has never seemed interested in their problems or wellbeing before be a "poor understanding of supply and demand"?
    - loeg 8y ago
      Your implication is that it is reasonable for this group to believe that NIMBYism will somehow prevent rents from rising, "because we don't trust tech workers," which is counterfactual. In this case, low- and high-pay renters' interests are almost entirely aligned.
      - s73v3r_ 8y ago
        My implication had nothing to do with NIMBYism. Just that they don't trust the tech workers to have their interests at heart. Its entirely reasonable and possible to believe that neither group will promote an outcome that will help those people.
  - wpietri 8y ago

allsunny 8y ago

In my city on the peninsula, the argument is that it will overwhelm the schools with all of the new residents' kids. There is also some concern that it will attract the "wrong crowd."

Decade 8y ago
In the meanwhile, schools all over the peninsula are shutting down because of falling enrollment. It’s only about the “wrong crowd.”

pessimizer 8y ago

Powerful local landowners support local YIMBYism, because it will make them far wealthier than they are already. Their financial clout allows them to dominate the media coverage, and their financing of YIMBY groups gives them an army of wealthy, educated, articulate young people to make supporting their right to build very large buildings look like a populist endeavor.

Decade 8y ago

I think the caricature of the self-interested rich guy is really the most rational caricature. Preserve the neighborhood in amber, maintain home values; this makes sense, this is the majority of the United States. The activists supposedly fighting for low-income communities are so bizarrely wrong that they’re beyond caricature. Fight oppression by seizing control of the apparatus of oppression instead of by abolishing oppression. A lot of the tenant orthodoxy in San Francisco is based on completely backwards economics. The idea is that building more market-rate housing will increase the demand for market-rate housing even more, so it’s futile to even attempt it. Only housing with guaranteed low prices should be allowed to be built. Completely ignore the hundreds of thousands of homes that used to be naturally affordable, but now are worth an average of over a million each. A major blog for this point of view is 48hills. https://48hills.org/2016/09/debunking-trickle-housing-fallacy/ https://48hills.org/2016/09/debunking-trickle-housing-fallac... The self-interested rich people do come through, still. Dillon mentions the rally, but he doesn’t mention the wealthy white landlords standing at the head of the rally. He quotes Shanti, who was active in the SF chapter of the DSA, but now works full-time as an activist because of funding from the wealthy white-ish Dean Preston. He mentions a black tenant activist, but he doesn’t mention the bald-faced lies, nor the funding from wealthy white-ish Michael Weinstein. The San Francisco “progressive” movement, if judged by its results, well, rich landlords are successfully keeping their home values, but low-income communities are still being evicted. The Filipina activist is interesting. I’ve clashed with her in other contexts, and the summary is that most non-English-speaking low-income people are for the ideas of SB 827, but the leadership of the organizations are against it. Some people from the Planning Department held an exercise where they asked whether we wanted more height and density along our transit corridors, and only the leaders said, “No, we are against developer giveaways.” The ordinary poor people want more affordable housing, and they recognized that affordable housing needs to be legal to be built. Loosening the height and density restrictions is how we legalize affordable housing. In my neighborhood, I think the toughest NIMBY argument is that we are not the organized people of color. I’ve always had a YIMBY point of view, even though I grew up with poor parents, because I want to eliminate the structural causes of poverty. Several others in my neighborhood had a similar experience, and similarly promote more housing. The way the Filipina activist sees it, that makes us “privileged people of color,” so our opinions are not valid. We need to activate the still-poor people to be a constituency for housing; but her organizations have the institutional connections, to legal counsel from SFTU (which also promotes backwards economics), and to other non-housing activities such as immigration and community gardening. I don’t know how to work through this problem.