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This is also exactly what I'm talking about. YIMBY is in such denial about this, some choose to believe that low income housing activists must be some sort of p

This is also exactly what I'm talking about. YIMBY is in such denial about this, some choose to believe that low income housing activists must be some sort of plants under the control of rich, home-owning puppetmasters. There's just this tremendous cognitive dissonance, denial and resistance to listening to minority and low income communities. That's the white privilege problem. It probably hurt the bill.

wahern 8y ago
A family member of mine is, in fact, a low-income housing developer in SoCal.[1][2] She has built and maintains hundreds of units housing poor and working-class families and seniors. She has to put up with all the same crap--the community input circus, being slow-walked by the zoning board (no matter that they were literally begging her for the housing only months earlier), endless CEQA litigation, etc. Even though she's being given money by the state (as transferable tax credits) to build housing that is wholly, perpetually BMR and which municipalities are legally obligated to push through (because of the quota system), she's pretty much in the same position as any other developer. Even though she'll have all her ducks lined up and pretty much prepared to break ground the same day she submits her full proposal, it can still take years and ridiculous amounts of money (tax payer money!) before she can break ground. She has to swim up the same sh*t creek as for-profit developers because the situation is just... that... bad. You ever wonder why it takes an eternity for the City of San Francisco to complete a housing project by itself and with fully allocated funds? Even though the mayor, zoning board, and every other involved official sincerely wants the project to succeed and doesn't perceive any serious impediment or harm? It's because the consequence of streamlining the process for themselves would be some marginal streamlining of the process for market developers. Somehow anti-development sentiment has become so pathological that politicians and activists will literally spite themselves. Except not really, because they're not the ones getting screwed. But at least they can feel good about themselves for standing up for the guy they just kicked to the curb. [1] http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/communities/east-county/sd-se-elcajon-temecula-20180208-story.html http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/communities/east-county/... [2] http://www.thecoastnews.com/affordable-complex-gets-green-light-from-courts/ http://www.thecoastnews.com/affordable-complex-gets-green-li...
thwarted 8y ago
YIMBYs advocate for building and removing the impediments to building. They consider this to be compatible with just about any and all activist and low income community goals (and they aren't necessarily wrong). "We want housing to cost less". Start building and keep building. "We want housing near public transportation". Build near public transit. Their position is pretty straightforward: remove the barriers to building and build more. Input on the details isn't going to change their position. The sincere activists end up undermining their goals by being opposite, in any capacity, to the YIMBY position. The bad-actor activists get exactly what they want. To pin lack of seeing YIMBY progress solely on YIMBYs themselves is, IMO, a misrepresentation of the situation.
- abalone 8y ago
  And what about “We want less traffic. Build more roads.” Macroeconomics rarely have such simple solutions. I didn’t pin it on YIMBYs solely. I said they would do better to take seriously what minority and low income housing advocates are saying. You’ve articulated exactly the problem; YIMBYs have an over simplistic understanding of economics yet exhibit extreme confidence and authority. This leads them to be dismissive of and even paternalistic towards those who actually experience the direct effects of displacement and gentrification.
  - ewjordan 8y ago
    Well, "We want less traffic, build more roads" actually helps, in a way: all the additional people driving are doing so because it's more convenient than the next available option, so they're all getting real value out of the extra roads. They just don't reduce traffic as much as we'd expect. And sure, the plan results in more people driving, which is mostly a bad thing due to emissions, so it's not a great strategy, especially when alternatives like mass transit are available to invest in. Housing is not the same. Besides the fact that it doesn't share the qualities that make traffic highly susceptible to induced demand (you've gotta sleep somewhere, whereas you can choose not to drive, or at least choose when to drive), even if the end result of building more housing is that prices stay the same, it's still a better situation. The externalities of "people sleeping indoors" are not nearly as bad as "people driving cars", there would be more people living where they want to live, less of them would have to travel to get to work, environmental impact is lower per person when they live at higher density, economic output is greater at higher density, etc. I get that macroeconomics is not always simple, but that doesn't mean it's always counterintuitive. And let's be honest here: in the Bay Area we've been adding housing much slower than we've been adding jobs for many decades now, and the "over simplistic" econ 101 prediction that prices would go up as a result has been extremely accurate. One point for Occam's Razor. Activists are implicitly making the argument "yeah, our counterintuitive 'build less to reduce prices' policy hasn't worked in the past, but that's only because we haven't been allowed to implement it fully and prevent any market rate housing from being built!", which is the same kind of bullshit all-or-nothing argument that hardcore anti-government types make when we point out situations where deregulation fails to produce great results. Sometimes we just need to accept that maybe there's nothing subtle going on, apply F = ma, and see if the simple solution works. Especially when we've already been trying the crazy out-of-the-box solution and it's been failing miserably.

wahern 8y ago

A family member of mine is, in fact, a low-income housing developer in SoCal.[1][2] She has built and maintains hundreds of units housing poor and working-class families and seniors. She has to put up with all the same crap--the community input circus, being slow-walked by the zoning board (no matter that they were literally begging her for the housing only months earlier), endless CEQA litigation, etc. Even though she's being given money by the state (as transferable tax credits) to build housing that is wholly, perpetually BMR and which municipalities are legally obligated to push through (because of the quota system), she's pretty much in the same position as any other developer. Even though she'll have all her ducks lined up and pretty much prepared to break ground the same day she submits her full proposal, it can still take years and ridiculous amounts of money (tax payer money!) before she can break ground. She has to swim up the same sh*t creek as for-profit developers because the situation is just... that... bad. You ever wonder why it takes an eternity for the City of San Francisco to complete a housing project by itself and with fully allocated funds? Even though the mayor, zoning board, and every other involved official sincerely wants the project to succeed and doesn't perceive any serious impediment or harm? It's because the consequence of streamlining the process for themselves would be some marginal streamlining of the process for market developers. Somehow anti-development sentiment has become so pathological that politicians and activists will literally spite themselves. Except not really, because they're not the ones getting screwed. But at least they can feel good about themselves for standing up for the guy they just kicked to the curb. [1] http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/communities/east-county/sd-se-elcajon-temecula-20180208-story.html http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/communities/east-county/... [2] http://www.thecoastnews.com/affordable-complex-gets-green-light-from-courts/ http://www.thecoastnews.com/affordable-complex-gets-green-li...

thwarted 8y ago

YIMBYs advocate for building and removing the impediments to building. They consider this to be compatible with just about any and all activist and low income community goals (and they aren't necessarily wrong). "We want housing to cost less". Start building and keep building. "We want housing near public transportation". Build near public transit. Their position is pretty straightforward: remove the barriers to building and build more. Input on the details isn't going to change their position. The sincere activists end up undermining their goals by being opposite, in any capacity, to the YIMBY position. The bad-actor activists get exactly what they want. To pin lack of seeing YIMBY progress solely on YIMBYs themselves is, IMO, a misrepresentation of the situation.

abalone 8y ago
And what about “We want less traffic. Build more roads.” Macroeconomics rarely have such simple solutions. I didn’t pin it on YIMBYs solely. I said they would do better to take seriously what minority and low income housing advocates are saying. You’ve articulated exactly the problem; YIMBYs have an over simplistic understanding of economics yet exhibit extreme confidence and authority. This leads them to be dismissive of and even paternalistic towards those who actually experience the direct effects of displacement and gentrification.
- ewjordan 8y ago
  Well, "We want less traffic, build more roads" actually helps, in a way: all the additional people driving are doing so because it's more convenient than the next available option, so they're all getting real value out of the extra roads. They just don't reduce traffic as much as we'd expect. And sure, the plan results in more people driving, which is mostly a bad thing due to emissions, so it's not a great strategy, especially when alternatives like mass transit are available to invest in. Housing is not the same. Besides the fact that it doesn't share the qualities that make traffic highly susceptible to induced demand (you've gotta sleep somewhere, whereas you can choose not to drive, or at least choose when to drive), even if the end result of building more housing is that prices stay the same, it's still a better situation. The externalities of "people sleeping indoors" are not nearly as bad as "people driving cars", there would be more people living where they want to live, less of them would have to travel to get to work, environmental impact is lower per person when they live at higher density, economic output is greater at higher density, etc. I get that macroeconomics is not always simple, but that doesn't mean it's always counterintuitive. And let's be honest here: in the Bay Area we've been adding housing much slower than we've been adding jobs for many decades now, and the "over simplistic" econ 101 prediction that prices would go up as a result has been extremely accurate. One point for Occam's Razor. Activists are implicitly making the argument "yeah, our counterintuitive 'build less to reduce prices' policy hasn't worked in the past, but that's only because we haven't been allowed to implement it fully and prevent any market rate housing from being built!", which is the same kind of bullshit all-or-nothing argument that hardcore anti-government types make when we point out situations where deregulation fails to produce great results. Sometimes we just need to accept that maybe there's nothing subtle going on, apply F = ma, and see if the simple solution works. Especially when we've already been trying the crazy out-of-the-box solution and it's been failing miserably.