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We have spent decades telling American families that homeownership is the safest investment. We then spent decades enacting policies to ensure this is true. D

by slg 4y ago

We have spent decades telling American families that homeownership is the safest investment. We then spent decades enacting policies to ensure this is true. Do we think investors were going to just sit that out and ignore a safe and government protected investment? Of course the more attractive we make home ownership as an investment, the more investors will flock to the market. We need policies specifically benefiting owner occupied homes or we need to stop treating the basic human need for shelter as an avenue for investment. Neither seems likely to happen because we have already waited so long that the moneyed interests now have too much to lose and won't allow what needs to be done to happen.

davidw 4y ago
This article, speaking to your point, is pretty convincing in terms of the data: https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/22524829/wall-street-housing-market-blackrock-bubble https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/22524829/wall-street-housin... > The role of institutional investors is still being studied, but the popularity of the narrative strikes at something dangerous: People want a convenient boogeyman and when they get it, they often ignore the structural problems that are harder to combat. Housing undersupply is the result of decades of locals opposing new home building. It’s not something that can be blamed on Wall Street greed and the nefarious tinkering of a private equity firm. And that’s a much harder truth to stomach. I'm involved with a local YIMBY group, and what I see over and over again is my neighbors stopping homes from being built. No wonder investors think it's a great place to put some money - other people do the dirty work for them!
- jaywalk 4y ago
  - davidw 4y ago
    There are reasons for that, but they are generally bad ones involving people not wanting to live near other people who look like the author of the article, even if they won't say that part out loud. Higher density housing is a massive component of building lower carbon footprint cities, as well as making our cities more financially resilient. It's also something that can increase equity a lot by giving people with lower incomes access to nicer areas and schools. https://www.brookings.edu/research/we-cant-beat-the-climate-crisis-without-rethinking-land-use/ https://www.brookings.edu/research/we-cant-beat-the-climate-...
    - eli_gottlieb 4y ago
      >There are reasons for that, but they are generally bad ones involving people not wanting to live near other people Could have just ended the sentence there.
      - davidw 4y ago
        That's not it though, really. People with a bit of cash - the kind who show up to planning commission hearings at 2 in the afternoon on weekdays - can very easily go buy some land in a remote place and do just that. They like city amenities though.
        A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
        Maybe? Some of us have significant others, who believe staying close to family and whatnot is of some importance. I don't, but I am biased since I left mine thousands of miles away and have not looked back much. If it was up to me, I would already have moved somewhere with lower taxes, but "kids, school and so on" currently takes priority over my selfish needs. <<They like city amenities though. Yes. I pay for them. I better like them. Otherwise, I will be the one complaining during next board meeting.
    - jaywalk 4y ago
      You're never going to win anyone over with the tired "if you disagree with me, you're a racist" BS. Low-income, high-density housing attracts problems. It has literally nothing to do with race. You could guarantee that the high-rise apartment building you want to construct down the street from me would be 100% filled with people who look like me, and I'd still oppose it. Keep your YIMBY nonsense IYBY.
      - davidw 4y ago
        It's a pretty well document fact that it has a lot of its roots in racism. https://www.epi.org/publication/the-color-of-law-a-forgotten-history-of-how-our-government-segregated-america/ https://www.epi.org/publication/the-color-of-law-a-forgotten... If that makes you feel uncomfortable, so be it. Americans spend zillions of dollars every year visiting Europe, which is full of high density housing. And come home raving about how much they love it. It does not 'cause problems'.
  - Fauntleroy 4y ago
    People gotta live somewhere
  - renewiltord 4y ago
    LOL that is total bullshit. In SF, they oppose high-density high-income housing too. It's total motte and bailey shit. Here's the real algorithm: if density == low: return "This won't solve the problem" if income == low: return "This ruins the neighbourhood character" if density == mid and income == high: return "This is gentrification and soulless coffee shops!" if density == high and income == high: return "This is for Arab/Chinese/local-xenophobe-target-du-jour investors only" return "This ruins the neighbourhood character" The absolute bullshittery around this nonsense is really something.
    - Dracophoenix 4y ago
      You have it. You can be a NIMBY, YIMBY, or any other XIMBY, but there's just no winning.
    - kitsunesoba 4y ago
      This pretty much nails it. The way I saw it put which feels fitting is, “Everybody who moves into San Francisco wants to be the last person to move into San Francisco”. Of course this isn’t a practical desire in any city, but that doesn’t stop people from trying to make it happen anyway.
      - TuringNYC 4y ago
        >> “Everybody who moves into San Francisco wants to be the last person to move into San Francisco”. Person moves to SF and puts down life savings as down-payment on 1:4 leveraged home...not a surprise they want to ensure they arent wiped out. A 20% decrease in value wipes out the life savings. The whole system is designed to perpetuate itsself.
  - rrrrrrrrrrrryan 4y ago
    > And there are good reasons for that. What are these reasons? What makes them "good"?
  - Aunche 4y ago
    Mid and high density housing for the high-income earners get opposed across the entire economic spectrum. On one hand, you have NIMBYs that place strict zoning restrictions and mandate bullshit environmental reviews to stall the development that does occur. On the other, you have affordable housing advocates opposing gentrification by blocking cement trucks and refusing to be leave their apartment that got bought out unless if they get paid $1 million. At the end of the day, developers can pull through by simply throwing enough money and time at the problem, but that's a cost that ends up being passed to the future renters.
  - currydove 4y ago
    This is definitely not the case. Example: a .1% increase in shadow over Dolores Park in SF almost stopped a new 19 unit development - https://twitter.com/sam_d_1995/status/1415839145386196993/photo/1 https://twitter.com/sam_d_1995/status/1415839145386196993/ph... It was approved years later after adjustments - https://sfyimby.com/2022/04/supervisors-approve-shortened-plans-for-3832-18th-street-mission-district-san-francisco.html https://sfyimby.com/2022/04/supervisors-approve-shortened-pl... Granted...this particular situation was unique as the development was market-rate units, not low-income, in a communal living layout. There were other concerns on part of neighbors (some real, some silly, and others just simply obstructive). This, along with CEQA in California have been constantly used by existing members of a town/city/neighborhood/etc to reduce additional development of any kind, not just low-income. This is at a point where NIMBY isn't even the only acronym anymore, BANANAs is the new one the kids use these days - Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything. Some more links - - https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/06/how-san-francisco-became-failed-city/661199/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/06/how-san-fr... - ugh i know, the Atlantic, but its good - https://missionlocal.org/2021/07/developments-in-development-a-six-story-group-housing-building-on-18th-updates-on-shotwell-and-shared-spaces/ https://missionlocal.org/2021/07/developments-in-development... - https://www.ocregister.com/2022/03/16/berkeley-case-proves-ceqa-needs-to-be-reformed/ https://www.ocregister.com/2022/03/16/berkeley-case-proves-c...
    - jeffbee 4y ago
      The funny thing is we would all love to have more shadows. All American cities need more shade.
    - jonnydubowsky 4y ago
      Thanks for introducing a new (to me) term, i.e BANANAS. Upon searching i discovered a few others: NIABY: Opposition to certain developments as inappropriate anywhere in the world is characterised by the acronym NIABY ("Not In Anyone's Backyard"). The building of nuclear power plants, for example, is often subject to NIABY concerns. NAMBI: ("Not Against My Business or Industry") is used as a label for any business concern that expresses umbrage with actions or policy that threaten that business, whereby they are believed to be complaining about the principle of the action or policy only for their interests alone and not for all similar business concerns who would equally suffer from the actions or policies. BANANA: is an acronym for "Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything" (or "Anyone").The term is most often used to criticize the ongoing opposition of certain advocacy groups to land development. The apparent opposition of some activists to every instance of proposed development suggests that they seek a complete absence of new growth. NOPE: (Not On Planet Earth)To leave an uncomfortable situation, usually quickly. LULU: Locally Unwanted/Undesirable Land Use planning. NOTE: Not Over There Either (meaning is same NIMBY)
  - idontpost 4y ago
    That's just a lie. People oppose new SFH subdivisions all the time.
  - Kharvok 4y ago
    People want to live near peers. Low income housing creates problem areas and people don't want to live near problem areas.
  - NoraCodes 4y ago
    > people generally oppose [...] high-density, low-income housing. And there are good reasons for that. Are there, other than "I don't want to live near the poors" and "I don't want to see people who have problems"? That's not a good reason.
    - jaywalk 4y ago
      - tsimionescu 4y ago
        What makes them good reasons? Plenty of things are real without being good. There is no ethical framework in which "I don't want to live next to the poors" is an ethical sentiment - even though it is understandable in some ways. Well, maybe in Objectivism, or "Fuck You, Got Mine". Though even an Objectivist would be hard pressed to argue against someone else's right to build whatever they want on their own property.
      - NoraCodes 4y ago
        > It's harsh, but it's reality. Right, it's harsh - pointlessly so. If your ethical system values the right of rich people to not interact with poor people over the right of everyone to have a roof over their head, that ethical system is evil.
    - _vdpp 4y ago
      There’s a difference between people who have problems and people who cause problems for themselves and others. A good neighbor who has fallen on hard times will have plenty of sympathy.
      - NoraCodes 4y ago
        What about a good person who was born poor, grew up poor, worked from the age of 16 supporting their family, and remains poor? There are many such people in the USA, and very few seem to support policies that would make housing more affordable to them.
  - atlasunshrugged 4y ago
    I disagree, I've seen plenty of people outraged about high-density high-income housing saying that it doesn't have enough low-income options (unsurprisingly, these people are not fans of the low-income housing either). In general, I think people just don't like change- there's likely a reason they moved to that neighborhood and don't want it to be disrupted.
  - themitigating 4y ago
    Too perfect how? Because you disagree with the viewpoint? What are the good reasons that people shouldn't want high density low-income housing?
  - lastofthemojito 4y ago
    Definitely not the case. In my middle- to upper-middle-class mill town there's a proposal to turn a disused historic mill building into luxury apartments and residents are fighting hard against it. The main stated reason is traffic, although it's unclear to me if having a bunch of apartments will generate noticeably more rush-hour traffic than when the mill was operational. I think some folks are also put off by the term "luxury apartment" too, as this area is becoming less affordable than it once was. So they counter-productively fight against increasing the housing supply, which would actually create downward pressure on rent, even for non-luxury places, as folks in more modest apartments might be tempted to move to these fancy new places, creating vacancies for others. I think a lot of people just don't like change, so they fight it - they want their town/neighborhood/whatever to be just the way it was in the "good ol' days", which just isn't realistic. The mill jobs aren't coming back, but we do have white collar workers willing to pay for attractive places to live. Why not re-use the damn mill building?
    - bombcar 4y ago
      > I think a lot of people just don't like change, so they fight it This is it, hilariously. Locally the railroad started building a rail yard, and everyone got up in arms and the city and county was howling and a meeting was called and the rail company politely explained that they're regulated federally and are building a nice berm around the rail yard, but there's nothing you can do to stop it. And everyone stopped complaining, the yard got built, and nobody cares. We need more of the straight bribery that used to happen around nuke plants - if the plant is approved, everyone gets $1k off their property taxes for X years or whatever.
    - davidw 4y ago
      Traffic from housing is generally fairly minimal. Traffic and parking are the big NIMBY fears and are generally unfounded. "Luxury" apartments are, 9 times out of 10, just brand new apartments that happen to be in an expensive location. It's kind of like cars - a brand new Toyota Corolla is not the cheapest car out there. A 20 year old used one is going to be a lot more affordable. But you don't get old ones unless you build and sell the new ones to people who have the money to buy new cars. If there are not enough new cars, those people will drive up the price of the used cars. Indeed, this is exactly what happened during the pandemic. As someone who lives in a former mill town myself, feel free to write if you're curious about organizing in favor of housing. It's a lot of fun!
- slg 4y ago
  Yes, the investors are the symptom and not the cause. They are going where the money leads them. However a big problem with institutional investors is that they also institutionalize NIMBYism. They won't just block housing in a select neighborhood, they will block housing everywhere and they put more pressure on the federal government to ensure that housing is protected as an investment class. Both will contribute to worsening the issue. Plus even at low levels NIMBYism is often about investment. Sure, many object to new housing for reasons like "it will change the character of the neighborhood". But many others object because they are worried about the value of their own home going down. They are treating their home primarily as an investment because that is what they have been told to do their whole life. If I could snap my fingers and magically realign our political goals to maintaining stable home values instead of having them ever-increasing, many NIMBY objections would fade away.
  - davidw 4y ago
    Investors do not at all have the votes or weight at a local city level in most cases, especially large ones from out of town. Go to a planning meeting about some housing that people are pissed off about because reasons ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32569768 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32569768 ) and you'll find a whole bunch of your neighbors. It's not institutional investors blocking this stuff, by and large. > they are worried about the value of their own home going down. They are treating their home primarily as an investment because that is what they have been told to do their whole lives Yes, that's much closer to what I've observed in person fighting these fights.
    - koolba 4y ago
      How would they vote at all? I’m not aware of any local council that grants votes based upon tax dollars paid or acreage. It’s one person one vote for actual residents. Now lobby dollars are another story. But renters can fix that by actually voting.
      - lostapathy 4y ago
        They can run/fund NIMBY groups that encourage people to vote their way. Local to me, we've had a few causes pop up with surprisingly well-run NIMBY efforts opposing them in recent years. The amount of money raised and the signs and slogans are way too good to be the product of the actual locals who speak out on behalf of these groups - somebody else is clearly funding them and doing some marketing.
- giantg2 4y ago
  So that's only one side of the equation. The other side is distribution. Perhaps we could have policies that create jobs in areas with shrinking populations or abundant cheap land and lax zoning. Nobody seems to talk about this.
  - bobthepanda 4y ago
    You can lead a horse to water but you can‘t make it drink. Job poor areas in the US have no shortage of incentives or policies designed to lure companies there, but have had little success over the past few decades.
    - giantg2 4y ago
      I'm wondering why that is. I would think that with the growing movement against NIMBYism that there would be enough people fed up with those sorts of policies to start moving out of the areas they don't agree with.
      - bobthepanda 4y ago
        * people find the stability of the known more compelling than the danger of the hypothetical. Employers want to be where their clients and employees will be, residents want to be in a place with decent shops and services. This kind of chicken/egg problem is usually the failure of most planned towns, and the only successful ones are usually a new capital or something because the government doesn‘t care as much. And even then that isn‘t guaranteed; Sejong is supposed to be the capital of South Korea but employees still hate it because even with cost of living issues and long commutes Seoul is more compelling. * cheap land is usually cheap for a reason. Land in the middle of the desert West probably doesn‘t have the required water rights to support habitation. Land in the middle of nowhere in general has few services and high logistics costs. Former industrial land requires environmental remediation. Foreclosed land may require paying outstanding tax bills. And those are the relatively straightforward problems, to say nothing of places with high crime, bad schools or other complex societal issues. * a lot of these places are going to turn NIMBY if a bunch of outsiders come, buy up housing and export their cost of living crisis to their community. It doesn‘t take that many people to tighten up the housing market in a town of 10,000.
- cudgy 4y ago
  The notion that housing prices are being driven up by restrictive zoning ordinances is true for expensive coastal cities like New York and San Francisco, which represent a huge minority of the housing in the United States. The above linked Vox article refers to another Vox article to back up its general claim that "Housing undersupply is the result of decades of locals opposing new home building." https://www.vox.com/22264268/covid-19-housing-insecurity-housing-prices-mortgage-rates-pandemic-zoning-supply-demand https://www.vox.com/22264268/covid-19-housing-insecurity-hou... Then, this referenced Vox article references the following study as if it applies to all housing in general: "In 2017, Yale Law professor David Schleicher wrote a paper called “Stuck! The Law and Economics of Residential Stagnation.” In it, he documents local restrictions on housing development, arguing they have become so overbearing that the increase in the cost of housing and rents has made moving to a better place impossible for millions of Americans. Local zoning regulations are strangling opportunity." https://www.yalelawjournal.org/article/stuck-the-law-and-economics-of-residential-stagnation https://www.yalelawjournal.org/article/stuck-the-law-and-eco... This study however is clear that the impact of restrictive zoning policies is localized particularly to coastal metro regions beginning in the 1970's: "Something dramatic happened to land-use regulation in the 1970s and 1980s: it became much, much stricter. Importantly, while this phenomenon affected all types of municipalities—from urban downtowns to inner-ring suburbs to exurbs—it only occurred in particular regions of the country. In particular, coastal metropolitan regions like San Francisco, New York, and Boston restricted construction in cities, suburbs, and exurbs. Because these popular regions restricted new housing, demand for living space outpaced supply. Housing prices soared, but population growth did not. In contrast to these coastal regions, Southern and Southwestern metropolitan areas like Houston, Phoenix, and Atlanta continued to impose minimal land-use restrictions. Though demand to live in these regions grew as well, this demand led to increased housing construction and population, rather than substantially higher housing prices." Most of the recent growth and migration in population has been occurring in these Southern belt areas, which have limited restrictions on building. Housing prices is a demand driven problem, not a supply problem throughout most of the United States.
- NikolaNovak 4y ago
  I've moved from Toronto downtown(ish) to a commuting/satellite community (for love - my wife and her family all live there:). It astonishes me how many people in that town are complaining how it used to be small and full of farm fields, and now there are all these new people and houses and neighbourhoods, and we need to stop the expansion. Every.Single.One. of them moved there within their lifetime. NONE of them were born there. THey did the exact same thing they are now complaining and trying to stop others. None of them, when asked, are even remotely willing to move to a high density downtown condo, if they are so committed and passionate to preserving the fields and small community. It absolutely astonishes me, the utter lack of self-awareness: why are you expecting others to be different than yourself? --- (it's like when you're stuck in traffic, and somebody in your car gets frustrated "Why are all these people here? Where are they going??". It's not like everybody else has conspired to harm us - we are in this traffic, going somewhere else, contributing to it and making everybody else slower. It is US, not "them" )
tshaddox 4y ago
> We have spent decades telling American families that homeownership is the safest investment. We then spent decades enacting policies to ensure this is true. Do we think investors were going to just sit that out and ignore a safe and government protected investment? So one group wants to maintain a financial investment that was sold to them as a sure-fire way to make money with little work and little risk, and another group wants...shelter. If it truly is the case that the desires of these two groups are butting up against each other and are mutually exclusive, is it really hard to decide which group should get what they want?
- davidw 4y ago
  Show up at any kind of planning commission or city council meeting and you will hear people absolutely UP IN ARMS that building some, say, apartments or townhomes or whatever will "destroy their property values". Even in markets when said property has like doubled in price over the last 10 years with no work from the owner-occupants.
  - jjoonathan 4y ago
    YIMBY organization is the answer, but we have a long way to go.
    - davidw 4y ago
      Doing some of this work locally is one of the more rewarding things I've ever done. "DC level politics" tend to be long, drawn out fights, but a few people can make a big difference locally. I've seen homes get built that I showed up to say 'yes!' to. These are both great groups: * https://yimbyaction.org/ https://yimbyaction.org/ * https://welcomingneighbors.us/ https://welcomingneighbors.us/
      - bombcar 4y ago
        This is entirely possible and worthwhile; few people who are happy with how things are going bother to show up at all, so the only people who do are the people with a gripe or a grudge. Even just a note to the city council saying "thanks" when you notice a new development is way more than most will ever do.
phkahler 4y ago
>> We have spent decades telling American families that homeownership is the safest investment. Home ownership is a key part of retirement, as reducing monthly bills is critical and rent is a big one. It has been a fairly profitable investment for 30 years of decreasing interest rates, but it is no longer so.
mytailorisrich 4y ago
There's a huge amount of capital available and borrowing is still cheap. I don't know in the US but in many European locations building of new housing has drastically slowed down over the past decades, which naturally puts am upward pressure on the market. There is no need to demonise investing in property, which not the root of the problem (and frankly is often an ideological stance). If anything, there should be more investment in new buildings to boost supply but very often the problem is planning restrictions.
survirtual 4y ago
I sold my houses in a booming market for a $70,000 loss intentionally. It has a nice effect of lowering the value of all my neighbors homes and housed a deserving family. Little did I know when I went to claim the loss on my taxes: I could not claim the loss at all. Since it was an owner occupied house and not a house owned by a corporation, it did not count as a loss I could deduct from my income nor from my capital gains. Houses are meant to trap and enslave common people. It decreases their mobility and roots them in areas they otherwise would want to leave. When you gain money from a house, there are all kinds of benefits. When you lose money as an owner, there are no protections for you. The system is a racket designed to continuously inflate home prices. Everyone participating in it should be ashamed for making their children serfs & homeless while they live in castles.
- bombcar 4y ago
  Was it a paper loss or an actual loss? I.e, did you buy for $200k and sell for $130, or had you bought for $200k and sold for $330 which was $70k under the current market value? The latter isn't a loss; and likely wouldn't be even for a corporation. You'd have to sell at full value and donate the $70k or something to get it to "work". Amusingly enough, if one of the 87k IRS agents hears about it, they could go after the deserving family for taxes on the $70k windfall they got (though this one is really hard to prove, they will do it on forgiven loans).
  - survirtual 4y ago
    Actual loss.
- BeetleB 4y ago
  > Little did I know when I went to claim the loss on my taxes: I could not claim the loss at all. Since it was an owner occupied house and not a house owned by a corporation, it did not count as a loss I could deduct from my income nor from my capital gains. It cuts both ways. Had you had a gain, you would not have had to pay taxes on the gains. If you had it as an investment, you would. > Houses are meant to trap and enslave common people. It decreases their mobility and roots them in areas they otherwise would want to leave. When you gain money from a house, there are all kinds of benefits. When you lose money as an owner, there are no protections for you. Hyperbole. For the majority of folks, home ownership outweighs the costs. Often significantly.
deleted 4y ago
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rolandog 4y ago
I would like to think that we are still able to take things back onto our own hands by making better choices and educating ourselves and shunning for-profit companies. I, for one, would find it better to not spend my final days at the most profitable nursing home. Answering your last paragraph: Worst case scenario, it'll probably take a couple of generations of literally living at our parent's house, waiting for the investor class to die out clenching the deeds to all houses and then finally being able to take back the world and start responsibly owning stuff. The cynic in me says that living at one's parents would be outlawed by political cronies.

by slg 4y ago

davidw 4y ago

This article, speaking to your point, is pretty convincing in terms of the data: https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/22524829/wall-street-housing-market-blackrock-bubble https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/22524829/wall-street-housin... > The role of institutional investors is still being studied, but the popularity of the narrative strikes at something dangerous: People want a convenient boogeyman and when they get it, they often ignore the structural problems that are harder to combat. Housing undersupply is the result of decades of locals opposing new home building. It’s not something that can be blamed on Wall Street greed and the nefarious tinkering of a private equity firm. And that’s a much harder truth to stomach. I'm involved with a local YIMBY group, and what I see over and over again is my neighbors stopping homes from being built. No wonder investors think it's a great place to put some money - other people do the dirty work for them!

jaywalk 4y ago
- davidw 4y ago
  There are reasons for that, but they are generally bad ones involving people not wanting to live near other people who look like the author of the article, even if they won't say that part out loud. Higher density housing is a massive component of building lower carbon footprint cities, as well as making our cities more financially resilient. It's also something that can increase equity a lot by giving people with lower incomes access to nicer areas and schools. https://www.brookings.edu/research/we-cant-beat-the-climate-crisis-without-rethinking-land-use/ https://www.brookings.edu/research/we-cant-beat-the-climate-...
  - eli_gottlieb 4y ago
    >There are reasons for that, but they are generally bad ones involving people not wanting to live near other people Could have just ended the sentence there.
    - davidw 4y ago
      That's not it though, really. People with a bit of cash - the kind who show up to planning commission hearings at 2 in the afternoon on weekdays - can very easily go buy some land in a remote place and do just that. They like city amenities though.
      - A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
        Maybe? Some of us have significant others, who believe staying close to family and whatnot is of some importance. I don't, but I am biased since I left mine thousands of miles away and have not looked back much. If it was up to me, I would already have moved somewhere with lower taxes, but "kids, school and so on" currently takes priority over my selfish needs. <<They like city amenities though. Yes. I pay for them. I better like them. Otherwise, I will be the one complaining during next board meeting.
  - jaywalk 4y ago
    You're never going to win anyone over with the tired "if you disagree with me, you're a racist" BS. Low-income, high-density housing attracts problems. It has literally nothing to do with race. You could guarantee that the high-rise apartment building you want to construct down the street from me would be 100% filled with people who look like me, and I'd still oppose it. Keep your YIMBY nonsense IYBY.
    - davidw 4y ago
      It's a pretty well document fact that it has a lot of its roots in racism. https://www.epi.org/publication/the-color-of-law-a-forgotten-history-of-how-our-government-segregated-america/ https://www.epi.org/publication/the-color-of-law-a-forgotten... If that makes you feel uncomfortable, so be it. Americans spend zillions of dollars every year visiting Europe, which is full of high density housing. And come home raving about how much they love it. It does not 'cause problems'.
- Fauntleroy 4y ago
  People gotta live somewhere
- renewiltord 4y ago
  LOL that is total bullshit. In SF, they oppose high-density high-income housing too. It's total motte and bailey shit. Here's the real algorithm: if density == low: return "This won't solve the problem" if income == low: return "This ruins the neighbourhood character" if density == mid and income == high: return "This is gentrification and soulless coffee shops!" if density == high and income == high: return "This is for Arab/Chinese/local-xenophobe-target-du-jour investors only" return "This ruins the neighbourhood character" The absolute bullshittery around this nonsense is really something.
  - Dracophoenix 4y ago
    You have it. You can be a NIMBY, YIMBY, or any other XIMBY, but there's just no winning.
  - kitsunesoba 4y ago
    This pretty much nails it. The way I saw it put which feels fitting is, “Everybody who moves into San Francisco wants to be the last person to move into San Francisco”. Of course this isn’t a practical desire in any city, but that doesn’t stop people from trying to make it happen anyway.
    - TuringNYC 4y ago
      >> “Everybody who moves into San Francisco wants to be the last person to move into San Francisco”. Person moves to SF and puts down life savings as down-payment on 1:4 leveraged home...not a surprise they want to ensure they arent wiped out. A 20% decrease in value wipes out the life savings. The whole system is designed to perpetuate itsself.
- rrrrrrrrrrrryan 4y ago
  > And there are good reasons for that. What are these reasons? What makes them "good"?
- Aunche 4y ago
  Mid and high density housing for the high-income earners get opposed across the entire economic spectrum. On one hand, you have NIMBYs that place strict zoning restrictions and mandate bullshit environmental reviews to stall the development that does occur. On the other, you have affordable housing advocates opposing gentrification by blocking cement trucks and refusing to be leave their apartment that got bought out unless if they get paid $1 million. At the end of the day, developers can pull through by simply throwing enough money and time at the problem, but that's a cost that ends up being passed to the future renters.
- currydove 4y ago
  This is definitely not the case. Example: a .1% increase in shadow over Dolores Park in SF almost stopped a new 19 unit development - https://twitter.com/sam_d_1995/status/1415839145386196993/photo/1 https://twitter.com/sam_d_1995/status/1415839145386196993/ph... It was approved years later after adjustments - https://sfyimby.com/2022/04/supervisors-approve-shortened-plans-for-3832-18th-street-mission-district-san-francisco.html https://sfyimby.com/2022/04/supervisors-approve-shortened-pl... Granted...this particular situation was unique as the development was market-rate units, not low-income, in a communal living layout. There were other concerns on part of neighbors (some real, some silly, and others just simply obstructive). This, along with CEQA in California have been constantly used by existing members of a town/city/neighborhood/etc to reduce additional development of any kind, not just low-income. This is at a point where NIMBY isn't even the only acronym anymore, BANANAs is the new one the kids use these days - Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything. Some more links - - https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/06/how-san-francisco-became-failed-city/661199/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/06/how-san-fr... - ugh i know, the Atlantic, but its good - https://missionlocal.org/2021/07/developments-in-development-a-six-story-group-housing-building-on-18th-updates-on-shotwell-and-shared-spaces/ https://missionlocal.org/2021/07/developments-in-development... - https://www.ocregister.com/2022/03/16/berkeley-case-proves-ceqa-needs-to-be-reformed/ https://www.ocregister.com/2022/03/16/berkeley-case-proves-c...
  - jeffbee 4y ago
    The funny thing is we would all love to have more shadows. All American cities need more shade.
  - jonnydubowsky 4y ago
    Thanks for introducing a new (to me) term, i.e BANANAS. Upon searching i discovered a few others: NIABY: Opposition to certain developments as inappropriate anywhere in the world is characterised by the acronym NIABY ("Not In Anyone's Backyard"). The building of nuclear power plants, for example, is often subject to NIABY concerns. NAMBI: ("Not Against My Business or Industry") is used as a label for any business concern that expresses umbrage with actions or policy that threaten that business, whereby they are believed to be complaining about the principle of the action or policy only for their interests alone and not for all similar business concerns who would equally suffer from the actions or policies. BANANA: is an acronym for "Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything" (or "Anyone").The term is most often used to criticize the ongoing opposition of certain advocacy groups to land development. The apparent opposition of some activists to every instance of proposed development suggests that they seek a complete absence of new growth. NOPE: (Not On Planet Earth)To leave an uncomfortable situation, usually quickly. LULU: Locally Unwanted/Undesirable Land Use planning. NOTE: Not Over There Either (meaning is same NIMBY)
- idontpost 4y ago
  That's just a lie. People oppose new SFH subdivisions all the time.
- Kharvok 4y ago
  People want to live near peers. Low income housing creates problem areas and people don't want to live near problem areas.
- NoraCodes 4y ago
  > people generally oppose [...] high-density, low-income housing. And there are good reasons for that. Are there, other than "I don't want to live near the poors" and "I don't want to see people who have problems"? That's not a good reason.
  - jaywalk 4y ago
    - tsimionescu 4y ago
      What makes them good reasons? Plenty of things are real without being good. There is no ethical framework in which "I don't want to live next to the poors" is an ethical sentiment - even though it is understandable in some ways. Well, maybe in Objectivism, or "Fuck You, Got Mine". Though even an Objectivist would be hard pressed to argue against someone else's right to build whatever they want on their own property.
    - NoraCodes 4y ago
      > It's harsh, but it's reality. Right, it's harsh - pointlessly so. If your ethical system values the right of rich people to not interact with poor people over the right of everyone to have a roof over their head, that ethical system is evil.
  - _vdpp 4y ago
    There’s a difference between people who have problems and people who cause problems for themselves and others. A good neighbor who has fallen on hard times will have plenty of sympathy.
    - NoraCodes 4y ago
      What about a good person who was born poor, grew up poor, worked from the age of 16 supporting their family, and remains poor? There are many such people in the USA, and very few seem to support policies that would make housing more affordable to them.
- atlasunshrugged 4y ago
  I disagree, I've seen plenty of people outraged about high-density high-income housing saying that it doesn't have enough low-income options (unsurprisingly, these people are not fans of the low-income housing either). In general, I think people just don't like change- there's likely a reason they moved to that neighborhood and don't want it to be disrupted.
- themitigating 4y ago
  Too perfect how? Because you disagree with the viewpoint? What are the good reasons that people shouldn't want high density low-income housing?
- lastofthemojito 4y ago
  Definitely not the case. In my middle- to upper-middle-class mill town there's a proposal to turn a disused historic mill building into luxury apartments and residents are fighting hard against it. The main stated reason is traffic, although it's unclear to me if having a bunch of apartments will generate noticeably more rush-hour traffic than when the mill was operational. I think some folks are also put off by the term "luxury apartment" too, as this area is becoming less affordable than it once was. So they counter-productively fight against increasing the housing supply, which would actually create downward pressure on rent, even for non-luxury places, as folks in more modest apartments might be tempted to move to these fancy new places, creating vacancies for others. I think a lot of people just don't like change, so they fight it - they want their town/neighborhood/whatever to be just the way it was in the "good ol' days", which just isn't realistic. The mill jobs aren't coming back, but we do have white collar workers willing to pay for attractive places to live. Why not re-use the damn mill building?
  - bombcar 4y ago
    > I think a lot of people just don't like change, so they fight it This is it, hilariously. Locally the railroad started building a rail yard, and everyone got up in arms and the city and county was howling and a meeting was called and the rail company politely explained that they're regulated federally and are building a nice berm around the rail yard, but there's nothing you can do to stop it. And everyone stopped complaining, the yard got built, and nobody cares. We need more of the straight bribery that used to happen around nuke plants - if the plant is approved, everyone gets $1k off their property taxes for X years or whatever.
  - davidw 4y ago
    Traffic from housing is generally fairly minimal. Traffic and parking are the big NIMBY fears and are generally unfounded. "Luxury" apartments are, 9 times out of 10, just brand new apartments that happen to be in an expensive location. It's kind of like cars - a brand new Toyota Corolla is not the cheapest car out there. A 20 year old used one is going to be a lot more affordable. But you don't get old ones unless you build and sell the new ones to people who have the money to buy new cars. If there are not enough new cars, those people will drive up the price of the used cars. Indeed, this is exactly what happened during the pandemic. As someone who lives in a former mill town myself, feel free to write if you're curious about organizing in favor of housing. It's a lot of fun!
slg 4y ago
Yes, the investors are the symptom and not the cause. They are going where the money leads them. However a big problem with institutional investors is that they also institutionalize NIMBYism. They won't just block housing in a select neighborhood, they will block housing everywhere and they put more pressure on the federal government to ensure that housing is protected as an investment class. Both will contribute to worsening the issue. Plus even at low levels NIMBYism is often about investment. Sure, many object to new housing for reasons like "it will change the character of the neighborhood". But many others object because they are worried about the value of their own home going down. They are treating their home primarily as an investment because that is what they have been told to do their whole life. If I could snap my fingers and magically realign our political goals to maintaining stable home values instead of having them ever-increasing, many NIMBY objections would fade away.
- davidw 4y ago
  Investors do not at all have the votes or weight at a local city level in most cases, especially large ones from out of town. Go to a planning meeting about some housing that people are pissed off about because reasons ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32569768 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32569768 ) and you'll find a whole bunch of your neighbors. It's not institutional investors blocking this stuff, by and large. > they are worried about the value of their own home going down. They are treating their home primarily as an investment because that is what they have been told to do their whole lives Yes, that's much closer to what I've observed in person fighting these fights.
  - koolba 4y ago
    How would they vote at all? I’m not aware of any local council that grants votes based upon tax dollars paid or acreage. It’s one person one vote for actual residents. Now lobby dollars are another story. But renters can fix that by actually voting.
    - lostapathy 4y ago
      They can run/fund NIMBY groups that encourage people to vote their way. Local to me, we've had a few causes pop up with surprisingly well-run NIMBY efforts opposing them in recent years. The amount of money raised and the signs and slogans are way too good to be the product of the actual locals who speak out on behalf of these groups - somebody else is clearly funding them and doing some marketing.
giantg2 4y ago
So that's only one side of the equation. The other side is distribution. Perhaps we could have policies that create jobs in areas with shrinking populations or abundant cheap land and lax zoning. Nobody seems to talk about this.
- bobthepanda 4y ago
  You can lead a horse to water but you can‘t make it drink. Job poor areas in the US have no shortage of incentives or policies designed to lure companies there, but have had little success over the past few decades.
  - giantg2 4y ago
    I'm wondering why that is. I would think that with the growing movement against NIMBYism that there would be enough people fed up with those sorts of policies to start moving out of the areas they don't agree with.
    - bobthepanda 4y ago
      * people find the stability of the known more compelling than the danger of the hypothetical. Employers want to be where their clients and employees will be, residents want to be in a place with decent shops and services. This kind of chicken/egg problem is usually the failure of most planned towns, and the only successful ones are usually a new capital or something because the government doesn‘t care as much. And even then that isn‘t guaranteed; Sejong is supposed to be the capital of South Korea but employees still hate it because even with cost of living issues and long commutes Seoul is more compelling. * cheap land is usually cheap for a reason. Land in the middle of the desert West probably doesn‘t have the required water rights to support habitation. Land in the middle of nowhere in general has few services and high logistics costs. Former industrial land requires environmental remediation. Foreclosed land may require paying outstanding tax bills. And those are the relatively straightforward problems, to say nothing of places with high crime, bad schools or other complex societal issues. * a lot of these places are going to turn NIMBY if a bunch of outsiders come, buy up housing and export their cost of living crisis to their community. It doesn‘t take that many people to tighten up the housing market in a town of 10,000.
cudgy 4y ago
The notion that housing prices are being driven up by restrictive zoning ordinances is true for expensive coastal cities like New York and San Francisco, which represent a huge minority of the housing in the United States. The above linked Vox article refers to another Vox article to back up its general claim that "Housing undersupply is the result of decades of locals opposing new home building." https://www.vox.com/22264268/covid-19-housing-insecurity-housing-prices-mortgage-rates-pandemic-zoning-supply-demand https://www.vox.com/22264268/covid-19-housing-insecurity-hou... Then, this referenced Vox article references the following study as if it applies to all housing in general: "In 2017, Yale Law professor David Schleicher wrote a paper called “Stuck! The Law and Economics of Residential Stagnation.” In it, he documents local restrictions on housing development, arguing they have become so overbearing that the increase in the cost of housing and rents has made moving to a better place impossible for millions of Americans. Local zoning regulations are strangling opportunity." https://www.yalelawjournal.org/article/stuck-the-law-and-economics-of-residential-stagnation https://www.yalelawjournal.org/article/stuck-the-law-and-eco... This study however is clear that the impact of restrictive zoning policies is localized particularly to coastal metro regions beginning in the 1970's: "Something dramatic happened to land-use regulation in the 1970s and 1980s: it became much, much stricter. Importantly, while this phenomenon affected all types of municipalities—from urban downtowns to inner-ring suburbs to exurbs—it only occurred in particular regions of the country. In particular, coastal metropolitan regions like San Francisco, New York, and Boston restricted construction in cities, suburbs, and exurbs. Because these popular regions restricted new housing, demand for living space outpaced supply. Housing prices soared, but population growth did not. In contrast to these coastal regions, Southern and Southwestern metropolitan areas like Houston, Phoenix, and Atlanta continued to impose minimal land-use restrictions. Though demand to live in these regions grew as well, this demand led to increased housing construction and population, rather than substantially higher housing prices." Most of the recent growth and migration in population has been occurring in these Southern belt areas, which have limited restrictions on building. Housing prices is a demand driven problem, not a supply problem throughout most of the United States.
NikolaNovak 4y ago
I've moved from Toronto downtown(ish) to a commuting/satellite community (for love - my wife and her family all live there:). It astonishes me how many people in that town are complaining how it used to be small and full of farm fields, and now there are all these new people and houses and neighbourhoods, and we need to stop the expansion. Every.Single.One. of them moved there within their lifetime. NONE of them were born there. THey did the exact same thing they are now complaining and trying to stop others. None of them, when asked, are even remotely willing to move to a high density downtown condo, if they are so committed and passionate to preserving the fields and small community. It absolutely astonishes me, the utter lack of self-awareness: why are you expecting others to be different than yourself? --- (it's like when you're stuck in traffic, and somebody in your car gets frustrated "Why are all these people here? Where are they going??". It's not like everybody else has conspired to harm us - we are in this traffic, going somewhere else, contributing to it and making everybody else slower. It is US, not "them" )

tshaddox 4y ago

> We have spent decades telling American families that homeownership is the safest investment. We then spent decades enacting policies to ensure this is true. Do we think investors were going to just sit that out and ignore a safe and government protected investment? So one group wants to maintain a financial investment that was sold to them as a sure-fire way to make money with little work and little risk, and another group wants...shelter. If it truly is the case that the desires of these two groups are butting up against each other and are mutually exclusive, is it really hard to decide which group should get what they want?

davidw 4y ago
Show up at any kind of planning commission or city council meeting and you will hear people absolutely UP IN ARMS that building some, say, apartments or townhomes or whatever will "destroy their property values". Even in markets when said property has like doubled in price over the last 10 years with no work from the owner-occupants.
- jjoonathan 4y ago
  YIMBY organization is the answer, but we have a long way to go.
  - davidw 4y ago
    Doing some of this work locally is one of the more rewarding things I've ever done. "DC level politics" tend to be long, drawn out fights, but a few people can make a big difference locally. I've seen homes get built that I showed up to say 'yes!' to. These are both great groups: * https://yimbyaction.org/ https://yimbyaction.org/ * https://welcomingneighbors.us/ https://welcomingneighbors.us/
    - bombcar 4y ago
      This is entirely possible and worthwhile; few people who are happy with how things are going bother to show up at all, so the only people who do are the people with a gripe or a grudge. Even just a note to the city council saying "thanks" when you notice a new development is way more than most will ever do.

phkahler 4y ago

>> We have spent decades telling American families that homeownership is the safest investment. Home ownership is a key part of retirement, as reducing monthly bills is critical and rent is a big one. It has been a fairly profitable investment for 30 years of decreasing interest rates, but it is no longer so.

mytailorisrich 4y ago

There's a huge amount of capital available and borrowing is still cheap. I don't know in the US but in many European locations building of new housing has drastically slowed down over the past decades, which naturally puts am upward pressure on the market. There is no need to demonise investing in property, which not the root of the problem (and frankly is often an ideological stance). If anything, there should be more investment in new buildings to boost supply but very often the problem is planning restrictions.

survirtual 4y ago

I sold my houses in a booming market for a $70,000 loss intentionally. It has a nice effect of lowering the value of all my neighbors homes and housed a deserving family. Little did I know when I went to claim the loss on my taxes: I could not claim the loss at all. Since it was an owner occupied house and not a house owned by a corporation, it did not count as a loss I could deduct from my income nor from my capital gains. Houses are meant to trap and enslave common people. It decreases their mobility and roots them in areas they otherwise would want to leave. When you gain money from a house, there are all kinds of benefits. When you lose money as an owner, there are no protections for you. The system is a racket designed to continuously inflate home prices. Everyone participating in it should be ashamed for making their children serfs & homeless while they live in castles.

bombcar 4y ago
Was it a paper loss or an actual loss? I.e, did you buy for $200k and sell for $130, or had you bought for $200k and sold for $330 which was $70k under the current market value? The latter isn't a loss; and likely wouldn't be even for a corporation. You'd have to sell at full value and donate the $70k or something to get it to "work". Amusingly enough, if one of the 87k IRS agents hears about it, they could go after the deserving family for taxes on the $70k windfall they got (though this one is really hard to prove, they will do it on forgiven loans).
- survirtual 4y ago
  Actual loss.
BeetleB 4y ago
> Little did I know when I went to claim the loss on my taxes: I could not claim the loss at all. Since it was an owner occupied house and not a house owned by a corporation, it did not count as a loss I could deduct from my income nor from my capital gains. It cuts both ways. Had you had a gain, you would not have had to pay taxes on the gains. If you had it as an investment, you would. > Houses are meant to trap and enslave common people. It decreases their mobility and roots them in areas they otherwise would want to leave. When you gain money from a house, there are all kinds of benefits. When you lose money as an owner, there are no protections for you. Hyperbole. For the majority of folks, home ownership outweighs the costs. Often significantly.

deleted 4y ago

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rolandog 4y ago

I would like to think that we are still able to take things back onto our own hands by making better choices and educating ourselves and shunning for-profit companies. I, for one, would find it better to not spend my final days at the most profitable nursing home. Answering your last paragraph: Worst case scenario, it'll probably take a couple of generations of literally living at our parent's house, waiting for the investor class to die out clenching the deeds to all houses and then finally being able to take back the world and start responsibly owning stuff. The cynic in me says that living at one's parents would be outlawed by political cronies.