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> “We are excited by any resetting of Bay Area rents that bring them down from their artificially inflated high,” said Fred Sherburn-Zimmer, the executive direc

> “We are excited by any resetting of Bay Area rents that bring them down from their artificially inflated high,” said Fred Sherburn-Zimmer, the executive director of Housing Rights Committee, which fights against evictions. “Eventually all bubbles burst.” What a typical Bay Area NIMBY. Instead of fucking building more housing, he's just sitting there hoping for a bubble burst to reduce rents.

kelp 7y ago
Artificiality high because HRC and similar organizations stop new housing at every turn...
- j-c-hewitt 7y ago
  The United States is one of the largest nations in the world in terms of land mass and there are thousands of counties all over the country that would bend over so far backwards that their spines would snap to enable real estate development for any number of Bay Area companies. T\he United States has a world class network of interstate highways that enables rapid motorized transit at high volumes in every state of the nation. There is also a network of third world caliber airports that are nonetheless serviceable.
  - mikefivedeuce 7y ago
    Infrastructure is one thing. Human capital is the much more important factor for any of those companies.
  - goobynight 7y ago
    The interstates are great for truck delivery and one-off trips such as moving/vacation, but a job is a daily round trip. How far are software engineers really going to commute? If they don't commute, are they going to move to your 2nd/3rd tier town?
    - j-c-hewitt 7y ago
      Some would but most aren't, so we see the same molasses drip of deceleration as companies that say they intend to hyper-grow stay stuck in a region that wants to hyper-stagnate.
jartelt 7y ago
Saying you want rents to come down (or at least stop rising) does not automatically mean you are against building more housing... Many people arguing for more housing in the Bay Are are doing so because they want prices/rents to come down, and most NIMBYs want prices/rents to keep rising.
ilikehurdles 7y ago
I don't see how any of this quoted comment or the organization he works for is indicative of someone being a NIMBY. A NIMBY wants rents to stay high, at least according to the strawman caricature definition of the NIMBY label that young people on internet forums assign to their neighbors.
Domenic_S 7y ago
Since 2010 San Francisco building permits have been on a sharp rise, with 95%+ of them being multifamily projects. See stats here: http://www.vitalsigns.mtc.ca.gov/housing-growth http://www.vitalsigns.mtc.ca.gov/housing-growth I'm not a city planner so I don't know anything but what I see, and what I see is infrastructure at capacity -- gridlocked streets, BART completely full at commute times, etc
- timerol 7y ago
  Allowing people to live near where they work takes stress off of the infrastructure, not the other way around Edit: I made an incorrect comment on permitting for a minute because I was looking at the area, not just SF county.
- JumpCrisscross 7y ago
  > what I see is infrastructure at capacity This is a function of the infrastructure that's been built, not anything fundamental to San Francisco. Building more transit capacity, reducing incentives for city dwellers to own and take cars, et cetera would alleviate these problems the same way they have in much-denser cities around the world.
doublement 7y ago
I don't see any NIMBY-ism in that statement. His goal is reducing evictions, and if there's less money providing an incentive for landlords to evict their tenants, then that reduction is more likely to happen. Whether or not it's the result of a bubble bursting is a matter of opinion, but if the luxury dwelling builders are wondering where their tenants are, it's fair to say there's at least some air coming out.
floatingatoll 7y ago
The credits on the YIMBY protest photo in this article are given to Housing Rights Committee: https://shelterforce.org/2019/02/19/yimbys-friend-foe-or-chaos-agent/ https://shelterforce.org/2019/02/19/yimbys-friend-foe-or-cha... You may wish to do more research on their alignment before declaring them NIMBY.
- chimeracoder 7y ago
  > You may wish to do more research on their alignment before declaring them NIMBY. They're not exactly NIMBY, but also not exactly YIMBY. They opposed SB50, which was the most ambitious measure to allow new housing construction in San Francisco, and they're apparently known for objecting to other developments to build affordable housing (generally because any new development in a city means displacing or impacting at least a few people).
  - Scaevolus 7y ago
    The NIMBY trolley problem: better to do nothing and allow 5 people to become homeless than to approve a new development that displaces 1 person.
- dcolkitt 7y ago
  My understanding is that HRC broadly opposes the construction of any higher-end housing. Effectively that's a NIMBY position. In American history new housing construction has almost always been "high-end". The way housing becomes affordable is that high-end new construction displaces demand for yesteryear's construction turning it into mid-end housing. Which then in turn displaces demand for the previous mid-tier which now becomes low-tier affordable housing. In effect rich consumers subsidize poor consumers by insisting on continuously replenishing the housing supply with new modern housing conforming to the latest hip trends in architecture and design. The car market is a very good example of how this works absent arbitrary supply constraints. Arguably the used car market is the biggest single vector of wealth redistribution in America. The poor benefit from a massive oversupply of cheap but reliable used cars, because the rich insist on getting a new car every two years. HRC refuses to acknowledge this dynamic. So they may be "YIMBY" in the sense of having some sort of vision about new construction. But that vision, mass construction of new affordable housing, is completely unviable. That makes them YIMBY in principles, but NIMBY for all practical intents and purposes
KoftaBob 7y ago
You could argue that the "artificially inflated" comment refers to NIMBYs blocking supply from being built.

kelp 7y ago

Artificiality high because HRC and similar organizations stop new housing at every turn...

j-c-hewitt 7y ago
The United States is one of the largest nations in the world in terms of land mass and there are thousands of counties all over the country that would bend over so far backwards that their spines would snap to enable real estate development for any number of Bay Area companies. T\he United States has a world class network of interstate highways that enables rapid motorized transit at high volumes in every state of the nation. There is also a network of third world caliber airports that are nonetheless serviceable.
- mikefivedeuce 7y ago
  Infrastructure is one thing. Human capital is the much more important factor for any of those companies.
- goobynight 7y ago
  The interstates are great for truck delivery and one-off trips such as moving/vacation, but a job is a daily round trip. How far are software engineers really going to commute? If they don't commute, are they going to move to your 2nd/3rd tier town?
  - j-c-hewitt 7y ago
    Some would but most aren't, so we see the same molasses drip of deceleration as companies that say they intend to hyper-grow stay stuck in a region that wants to hyper-stagnate.

jartelt 7y ago

Saying you want rents to come down (or at least stop rising) does not automatically mean you are against building more housing... Many people arguing for more housing in the Bay Are are doing so because they want prices/rents to come down, and most NIMBYs want prices/rents to keep rising.

ilikehurdles 7y ago

I don't see how any of this quoted comment or the organization he works for is indicative of someone being a NIMBY. A NIMBY wants rents to stay high, at least according to the strawman caricature definition of the NIMBY label that young people on internet forums assign to their neighbors.

Domenic_S 7y ago

Since 2010 San Francisco building permits have been on a sharp rise, with 95%+ of them being multifamily projects. See stats here: http://www.vitalsigns.mtc.ca.gov/housing-growth http://www.vitalsigns.mtc.ca.gov/housing-growth I'm not a city planner so I don't know anything but what I see, and what I see is infrastructure at capacity -- gridlocked streets, BART completely full at commute times, etc

timerol 7y ago
Allowing people to live near where they work takes stress off of the infrastructure, not the other way around Edit: I made an incorrect comment on permitting for a minute because I was looking at the area, not just SF county.
JumpCrisscross 7y ago
> what I see is infrastructure at capacity This is a function of the infrastructure that's been built, not anything fundamental to San Francisco. Building more transit capacity, reducing incentives for city dwellers to own and take cars, et cetera would alleviate these problems the same way they have in much-denser cities around the world.

doublement 7y ago

I don't see any NIMBY-ism in that statement. His goal is reducing evictions, and if there's less money providing an incentive for landlords to evict their tenants, then that reduction is more likely to happen. Whether or not it's the result of a bubble bursting is a matter of opinion, but if the luxury dwelling builders are wondering where their tenants are, it's fair to say there's at least some air coming out.

floatingatoll 7y ago

The credits on the YIMBY protest photo in this article are given to Housing Rights Committee: https://shelterforce.org/2019/02/19/yimbys-friend-foe-or-chaos-agent/ https://shelterforce.org/2019/02/19/yimbys-friend-foe-or-cha... You may wish to do more research on their alignment before declaring them NIMBY.

chimeracoder 7y ago
> You may wish to do more research on their alignment before declaring them NIMBY. They're not exactly NIMBY, but also not exactly YIMBY. They opposed SB50, which was the most ambitious measure to allow new housing construction in San Francisco, and they're apparently known for objecting to other developments to build affordable housing (generally because any new development in a city means displacing or impacting at least a few people).
- Scaevolus 7y ago
  The NIMBY trolley problem: better to do nothing and allow 5 people to become homeless than to approve a new development that displaces 1 person.
dcolkitt 7y ago
My understanding is that HRC broadly opposes the construction of any higher-end housing. Effectively that's a NIMBY position. In American history new housing construction has almost always been "high-end". The way housing becomes affordable is that high-end new construction displaces demand for yesteryear's construction turning it into mid-end housing. Which then in turn displaces demand for the previous mid-tier which now becomes low-tier affordable housing. In effect rich consumers subsidize poor consumers by insisting on continuously replenishing the housing supply with new modern housing conforming to the latest hip trends in architecture and design. The car market is a very good example of how this works absent arbitrary supply constraints. Arguably the used car market is the biggest single vector of wealth redistribution in America. The poor benefit from a massive oversupply of cheap but reliable used cars, because the rich insist on getting a new car every two years. HRC refuses to acknowledge this dynamic. So they may be "YIMBY" in the sense of having some sort of vision about new construction. But that vision, mass construction of new affordable housing, is completely unviable. That makes them YIMBY in principles, but NIMBY for all practical intents and purposes

KoftaBob 7y ago

You could argue that the "artificially inflated" comment refers to NIMBYs blocking supply from being built.