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But of course destroying wetlands to build your house was entirely reasonable. > So, no this proposal is preposterous, aside from being a nonstarter. Young peo

But of course destroying wetlands to build your house was entirely reasonable. > So, no this proposal is preposterous, aside from being a nonstarter. Young people who might want it are great at making noisy protests and notoriously bad at bothering to vote - the one thing that matters, while older people, and especially those who own property, tend to reliably vote. In other words, "let them eat cake". The "anyone under 45 doesn't deserve to afford shelter" attitude strikes me as a "fuck around and find out" situation.

toss1 4y ago
>>But of course destroying wetlands to build your house was entirely reasonable. * No. I didn't build it, I bought it already built, and no wetlands were damaged, it's 100' away, and thev'e got strict measures in this town. And if you think that a single family home outside the buffer zone has the same impact as 300 units in five buildings built ON the wetlands has the same impact, that's ummm, some next-level ignorance. The strict conservation zoning measures apply to any work - just replacing a porch footing 20 inches inside a zone requires several permits. Planning, work & expense. Everyone here incurs those costs to maintain a standard of living. >>In other words, "let them eat cake" Not even close The point is that destroying value that exists, and value that people have worked significant parts of their lives to create, is a very bad idea. It is a nonstarter because the ppl that worked to create & maintain those standards vote in far greater numbers than the people complaining. Just a relevant fact. (And threating "f around and find out" is great performance but zero votes - in how many elections have you voted?) Accusing the people who own nice properties of being motivated by selfishness and greed is not only offensive to the people whose votes you need, it is also exactly 100% wrong. If they were actually selfish & greedy, they would not be putting in large extra work & expense to maintain standards, they'd be tearing down zoning to build as much as they could on every square foot of their lot to extract maximum value. They are not. I watched a town where I lived vote out zoning for just such considerations. It was driven by developers, but a lot of it was "why should I have to get permission to build a barn or an in-law apt?". The same town voted a few years later to restore even stronger zoning. The FACT of the matter is: while unrestrained development may initially create more units, it actually sucks, badly, for everyone but the fly-by-night developers. Which means that the article's argument is wrong. People are spending sweat and money to actively NOT get the maximum dollar value out of their homes, because building quality of life is more important. If you want to go after the real problems, it is not zoning, any more than it's young people having Netflix subscriptions. A good place to start is with the problem of rental units for "passive income", for running AirBnBs, and housing being purchased by hedge funds and the like. Heavily tax anything that isn't a primary residence, and you'll get a lot of units back on the market fast, and at good prices.
- ItsMonkk 4y ago
  It's really unfortunate that we had 140 years to get this into law but that we only ever care about it when it becomes an issue, and once it becomes an issue it's so entrenched we can't do anything about it. With that said, there are net-neutral transition strategies. One of them is for the government to simply give all land owners money equal to the value of their land, but that might create inflation. Another might be instead to give all land owners a tax credit equal to the value of the land that can be spent on their land tax. We can do this fast, we can do this slow. We can give aid, we can give tax credits, we can phase things in. If the LVT advocates, which includes many of the world's top economists, are right, then small transitions will quickly yield results that we can snowball into bigger transitions. The important aspect to me, is that eventually we reach a point where incentives align.
  - toss1 4y ago
    Good thoughts. >>government to simply give all land owners money equal to the value of their land That is already in place - it's called eminent domain, and a SCOTUS case decided that it CAN be used for private development and not only for public works like roads. So, yes, govt could literally do a forced purchase of entire neighborhoods, and they would be required to pay current values, and then rebuild it at whatever density they want. The other thing that could actually reduce complaints is to actually compensate the owners for loss of value. E.g., if single-family tracts have a value of $100 due to quality of living (wildlife, low traffic, open spaces, etc), and someone wants to put up massive apartment units in the middle, eliminating wildlife habitat, increasing traffic and consuming the open space, that will make the single-family unit's value decline to maybe $50 right next door, and $70 500 yards away, $90 1000 yds away, and $95 between the location and the major highway. Pay them the $50/$30/$10/$5 loss of their value, maybe in tranches when the project is approved, built, occupied. It can come out of some combination of the developer's or the town's budget. That sort of appropriate compensation would go a long way towards reducing opposition. What the tantrum-people ignore is that they want to live in the nice places, but giving them what they want is literally doing to destroy the very thing they want.
- InefficientRed 4y ago

toss1 4y ago

>>But of course destroying wetlands to build your house was entirely reasonable. * No. I didn't build it, I bought it already built, and no wetlands were damaged, it's 100' away, and thev'e got strict measures in this town. And if you think that a single family home outside the buffer zone has the same impact as 300 units in five buildings built ON the wetlands has the same impact, that's ummm, some next-level ignorance. The strict conservation zoning measures apply to any work - just replacing a porch footing 20 inches inside a zone requires several permits. Planning, work & expense. Everyone here incurs those costs to maintain a standard of living. >>In other words, "let them eat cake" Not even close The point is that destroying value that exists, and value that people have worked significant parts of their lives to create, is a very bad idea. It is a nonstarter because the ppl that worked to create & maintain those standards vote in far greater numbers than the people complaining. Just a relevant fact. (And threating "f around and find out" is great performance but zero votes - in how many elections have you voted?) Accusing the people who own nice properties of being motivated by selfishness and greed is not only offensive to the people whose votes you need, it is also exactly 100% wrong. If they were actually selfish & greedy, they would not be putting in large extra work & expense to maintain standards, they'd be tearing down zoning to build as much as they could on every square foot of their lot to extract maximum value. They are not. I watched a town where I lived vote out zoning for just such considerations. It was driven by developers, but a lot of it was "why should I have to get permission to build a barn or an in-law apt?". The same town voted a few years later to restore even stronger zoning. The FACT of the matter is: while unrestrained development may initially create more units, it actually sucks, badly, for everyone but the fly-by-night developers. Which means that the article's argument is wrong. People are spending sweat and money to actively NOT get the maximum dollar value out of their homes, because building quality of life is more important. If you want to go after the real problems, it is not zoning, any more than it's young people having Netflix subscriptions. A good place to start is with the problem of rental units for "passive income", for running AirBnBs, and housing being purchased by hedge funds and the like. Heavily tax anything that isn't a primary residence, and you'll get a lot of units back on the market fast, and at good prices.

ItsMonkk 4y ago
It's really unfortunate that we had 140 years to get this into law but that we only ever care about it when it becomes an issue, and once it becomes an issue it's so entrenched we can't do anything about it. With that said, there are net-neutral transition strategies. One of them is for the government to simply give all land owners money equal to the value of their land, but that might create inflation. Another might be instead to give all land owners a tax credit equal to the value of the land that can be spent on their land tax. We can do this fast, we can do this slow. We can give aid, we can give tax credits, we can phase things in. If the LVT advocates, which includes many of the world's top economists, are right, then small transitions will quickly yield results that we can snowball into bigger transitions. The important aspect to me, is that eventually we reach a point where incentives align.
- toss1 4y ago
  Good thoughts. >>government to simply give all land owners money equal to the value of their land That is already in place - it's called eminent domain, and a SCOTUS case decided that it CAN be used for private development and not only for public works like roads. So, yes, govt could literally do a forced purchase of entire neighborhoods, and they would be required to pay current values, and then rebuild it at whatever density they want. The other thing that could actually reduce complaints is to actually compensate the owners for loss of value. E.g., if single-family tracts have a value of $100 due to quality of living (wildlife, low traffic, open spaces, etc), and someone wants to put up massive apartment units in the middle, eliminating wildlife habitat, increasing traffic and consuming the open space, that will make the single-family unit's value decline to maybe $50 right next door, and $70 500 yards away, $90 1000 yds away, and $95 between the location and the major highway. Pay them the $50/$30/$10/$5 loss of their value, maybe in tranches when the project is approved, built, occupied. It can come out of some combination of the developer's or the town's budget. That sort of appropriate compensation would go a long way towards reducing opposition. What the tantrum-people ignore is that they want to live in the nice places, but giving them what they want is literally doing to destroy the very thing they want.
InefficientRed 4y ago