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Local governments, which have been granted near unchecked authority by state governments, are entirely captured by homeowners. I'm not fully clear on this stat

• CryptoPunk 5y ago
  In Tokyo, zoning is controlled by the national government.
  • mikem170 5y ago
    I like the way that Japan handles zoning. It's based on population densities. Localities can designate industrial and commercial areas, but can't deviate from federal guidelines to prevent growth. Instead of single family homes they allow triplexes where a percentage of space can be used for a low-impact business, like a barber shop or something. They have setbacks geared towards making sure that you don't build three stories on top of your neighbor's house. They have neighborhoods. They don't have a housing shortage. They don't have a system that doesn't empower developers who want to clear-cut cheap land on the outskirts of town and build sprawling anti-social subdivisions of oversized identical houses. Here's some more information: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfm2xCKOCNk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfm2xCKOCNk
    • nine_k 5y ago
      The interesting thing is that the value of a typical home in Tokyo decreases with time. This idea would be terrifying for most of the US homeowners.
      • mikem170 5y ago
        Agreed. It's crazy that we got into this spot where places people live are also expected to be an investment that forever out-paces inflation. It's not sustainable.
  • nine_k 5y ago
    Tokyo is considered an entire prefecture, not a mere city. Considering its population (23M), it makes sense.
• archhn 5y ago
  > if they don't care enough to vote that's their problem. The life of a renter is completely different from that of a homeowner. Most renters are of a lower class, living paycheck to paycheck. All they think about is staying afloat, not getting involved in local politics. You need a surplus of time and energy, and roots, to get involved. Comments like this ignore the conditions under which people live and how these conditions modify their behavior.
  • sieabahlpark 5y ago
    I don't believe this to be true. Maybe if your goal is to live where you can't afford.
    • throw123123123 5y ago
      As an immigrant that can't ever vote, has restrictions on buying property, and belonged to a 40% immigration population in SF, i beg to differ.
      • oogali 5y ago
        Are you currently in SF or in Vancouver?
        • throw123123123 5y ago
          Bay Area
    • archhn 5y ago
      It was true for my working class family.
  • causality0 5y ago
    Many places make voting difficult. I recognize this, and agree that it is terrible. Voting should be as easy and widespread as possible. There comes a point on the effort scale, however, below which not voting means you just don't give a damn. Voting in my city involves thirty seconds on a website to request a ballot and then dropping your envelope in the mail. If you don't care that much, or have managed to screw your life up to the point where that is just too much work, then I don't really care to have your input on how my city is run.
• chiefofgxbxl 5y ago
  > renters get the same one vote per person as everybody else It's not just directly voting for a city councilor, planning board member, etc. that counts. Showing up to public meetings to show support or disagreement with something can do much to pressure those elected officials. But renters are going to have a much more difficult time showing solidarity for pro-development action, not only because of the difference in socioeconomic status (e.g. living paycheck to paycheck vs. a homeowner who has a stable, white-collar job). 1. Homeowners can shoot down a proposed development by demonstrating a strong response against threats on just their street or block. As long as homeowners defend their turf locally, and it can be counted on them to do so across town, they win. Renters, on the other hand, have an asymmetrically difficult battle: pro-development individuals need to show up to all the proposed-development meetings, not just one for a particular street or block, if they want to expand housing. 2. Homeowners are probably much more strongly driven to show up because the focus is on what they lose. Character of neighborhood, traffic, safety, noise, etc. and the threat against the status quo seems more likely to trigger that visceral defense mechanism. Renters probably focus on what they gain: affordable housing, access to new communities, etc. My intuition is that the perception of losing something is a greater call to action than the possibility of gaining something. 3. Homeowners are well-defined and known individuals. They already exist, and their turf is already developed. Renters, on the other hand, are an abstract group of people who may or may not even move in, should something be built. I currently rent an apartment - but will I show up to a neighboring town's planning board meeting to voice my support for some proposed apartment complex that's still in the early stages, could flop at any point, and even if it succeeds I may not even move there? The renters of a future complex may not even know who they are yet, if they aren't adamant on moving in there should a place be built. 4. There's strong stigma against renters, to the point of being demeaning and tribal. A local council near me voiced their opposition to building more affordable developments, and the chairman said he was concerned about "derelicts" (exact word) moving in to the neighborhood and said if they built more affordable units, you'd see a rise in street drug vendors, threatening the local children. How can renters and low-income earners combat such ridiculous accusations when local leaders cast them as criminals, just because they can't afford to buy a median $400,000 house? Your comment ignores so much of the asymmetric power dynamic between owners and renters.
  • 5y ago
• jdminhbg 5y ago
  > Is it putting forth that local governments shouldn't be controlled by the people who are local It's obviously the case that local voters do not get "unchecked authority" over their local government. They can't vote to say that black people aren't allowed to live there, they can't vote to build an unregulated chemical factory, etc. The proposition that local voters should be allowed total control over zoning is defensible, but it's not a given.
  • bombcar 5y ago
    No, they have to do those things indirectly via HOAs and property values. The main real problem is FYIGM, which means that in a local area with all land used there's no incentive for those living there to vote to change how it is.
• wan23 5y ago
  If there is a place where there should be more homes if you were looking at it from a regional perspective, it is in the interest of the people who live there to block those new homes from being built to limit supply of the asset they own. The people who would vote in favor of the new homes don't actually get to vote, since they don't live there yet.
  • chii 5y ago
    > a place where there should be more homes if you were looking at it from a regional perspective aka, somebody else deciding that there should be more homes. I think that's the wrong perspective to take. I don't want an authority to decide this - the locals should make their own choices (right or wrong).
    • formerkrogemp 5y ago
      Wrong choices are still wrong. I'd like to move into a house with my wife, but at this rate we'll be saving for a decade to get there. With climate change we have no idea how the real estate market will be at 1.5 degrees warming.
      • bradknowles 5y ago
        NIMBYism is a thing. But the flip side of that coin is local authorities that have zoning laws that allow the big and powerful builders to build pretty much whatever they want, wherever they want. Which always turns out to be high-rise condos for multi-millionaires and billionaires, most of whom have them as investment properties and don't actually live there. You see that here in Austin, all along the river, especially downtown. I wish we had some NIMBYism that we could actually aim at those plans for high-rise condos.
        • zdragnar 5y ago
          Don't worry, you see the same thing in ultra liberal areas as well. All the plans for "improvement" turn into gentrification that pushes out the current residents, with a tiny allotment of subsidized units that current residents don't qualify for either.
• noelsusman 5y ago
  You may vote purely in your self interest, but not everyone does. That's a choice you make.
• Manuel_D 5y ago
  This attitude here is precisely why local zoning is ineffective. The people who are negatively impacted by anti-development policies are the ones that don't get the privilege of living in economically powerful population centers in the first place. Sure, the home-owners might grumble about an apartment blocking their view, more crowded restaurants, or "neighborhood character as a city grows. The people who are negatively impacted by anti-growth policy are people struggling to afford rent in increasingly subdivided units, and the people who can't even afford to move there in the first place.
  • teakettle42 5y ago
    > … and the people who can't even afford to move there in the first place. There’s no inalienable right to live in a popular place you cannot afford. Can you articulate an ethical argument for why it’s a problem that not everyone can afford to move to the most desirable cities?
    • AlotOfReading 5y ago
      Does this really need an argument? A primary mechanism for segregation and social inequity over the past century has been the exclusion of "undesirables" from spaces and the simultaneous, "coincidental" allocation of resources to those exclusionary spaces. It's impossible to have an informed discussion on this topic in the US without acknowledging that basic reality.
      • teakettle42 5y ago
        Do you believe everyone has a right to housing in any place they might desire to live?
        • AlotOfReading 5y ago
          No, of course not. The point is that there's a more nuanced discussion to be had here about what these limits and rights ought to be.
• loeg 5y ago
  > Is it putting forth that local governments shouldn't be controlled by the people who are local, or is it saying that homeowners hold more power than renters? It's that the NIMBY subset of homeowners has disproportionate power in local government over other residents. > If the former, that's just silly. If the latter, renters get the same one vote per person as everybody else. If they don't care enough to vote that's their problem. This is facile -- zoning decisions are essentially never put up to a democratic vote. The outsized NIMBY power doesn't come from voting; it's from activities like attending local government functions, filing complaints, advocating to their representatives, etc. These are not things everyone has time or know-how to do.
• jldugger 5y ago
  > If the latter, renters get the same one vote per person as everybody else. Well, that's not quite true -- there's many (highly paid) immigrants living in my building. None of them can vote on housing policy even though it directly affects their lives.
  • jjav 5y ago
    > > If the latter, renters get the same one vote per person as everybody else. > Well, that's not quite true -- there's many (highly paid) immigrants living in my building. But the variable there is immigration status, not homeownership status. Non-citizen immigrants who are homeowners don't get a vote either.
• jjav 5y ago
  > > Local governments [...] are entirely captured by homeowners. > I'm not fully clear on this statement. Me neither. It is a very often repeated sentiment and I've asked in various threads, but there has never been an explanation how homeowners supposedly have any kind of influence over local government, beyond the single vote everyone gets. For the record, as a homeowner, I've never had any access to any local (or non-local) government representative. They don't ask what I think, they certainly don't seem to care what I think. I get one vote in the elections, but so does everyone in the county.
• ScottBurson 5y ago
  Cities that are getting bigger are presumably doing so because their economies are expanding. While I can guess why you don't like growth, you may be overlooking that your own economic opportunities are also improving. Be that as it may, I think it's a problem with our system that homeowners are given such a strong incentive to keep housing scarce.
• Emma_Goldman 5y ago
  Democracy empowers a majority, or sometimes a plurality. It is not necessarily the case that whatever that bloc of voters wants respects the rights and interests of other citizens. Hence the possibility of a 'tyranny of the majority'. It may be, as in this case, that homeowners actively try to protect their asset by excluding non-homeowners from the market, perhaps by obstructing the construction of new houses, or by supporting the inflation of house prices. Is that a good situation just because it is sanctioned by a majority? In liberal societies, there are side-constraints on what a demos can sanction - it cannot, for example, curtail the free speech of individuals. There is no reason why that should not be the case with respect to certain basic means of life, like housing.
• sangnoir 5y ago
  People who live in a town (homeowners or renters) are not the whole stakeholders, though they are the only ones who can vote there. Workers who commute into the town, and out-of-town property owners (commercial or residential) don't usually get the ear of the local government the way homeowners do