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If you think, as I do, that this is absurd join other like-minded people in San Francisco's 2022 YIMBY Prom Party: https://yimbyaction.org/2021/events/yimby-pro

If you think, as I do, that this is absurd join other like-minded people in San Francisco's 2022 YIMBY Prom Party: https://yimbyaction.org/2021/events/yimby-prom-gala-bay-area-2022/ https://yimbyaction.org/2021/events/yimby-prom-gala-bay-area... There will be drinks and appetizers, as well as the bulk of the Yimby and Yimby-adjacent people in the Bay Area. The funds raised go exactly to fight the type of cronyism and insanity that makes SF so ossified and housing impossible to build. (if you do buy tickets, write huevosabio as referral and DM me to meet there :))

nopenopenopeno 4y ago
FYI: When someone uses the term “YIMBY” all I hear is “LANDLORD” and I don’t think I am alone.
- TulliusCicero 4y ago
  That makes no sense. Landlords tend to be opposed to YIMBY's, because allowing for more housing makes for a more competitive housing market, rather than one in which landowners dominate.
  - nopenopenopeno 4y ago
    Why would landlords in the market with the highest demand prioritize fending off competition? The answer is they wouldn’t. You’re full of it. Landlords want to maximize profit from their property and when demand is soaring above supply, adding units is the way to do that so they are organizing to overturn laws that prevent them from doing so. There is a reason the tickets to this event cost $100+. This isn’t a working class movement lol. You are either stupid yourself or you’ve got a lot of nerve to act like others are, which is to say you certainly act like a landlord.
    - prottog 4y ago
      > Landlords want to maximize profit from their property and when demand is soaring above supply, adding units is the way to do that You're saying that as supply catches up to the soaring demand, profits will go up instead of down? There's a lot of name-calling in your post and not a lot of sense.
      - bombcar 4y ago
        NIMBY in the streets and YIMBY in the sheets I guess. If I owned a block of single family houses in Frisco I’d want to be able to turn my block to a giant apartment complex at the same time I’d want to prevent anyone else doing a similar thing. Then my profit goes up and isn’t endangered.
        nopenopenopeno 4y ago
        Precisely.
      - deathanatos 4y ago
        > You're saying that as supply catches up to the soaring demand, profits will go up instead of down? I don't think you're wrong on the larger point that landlords are more likely to be on the side of NIMBYism / NIMBYs are going to be land owners. But, to an extent this is possible; the price would drop for the additional supply, but the total of (now_higher_supply * now_lower_price) can still be greater than (original_lower_supply * original_higher_price). Depends on how the market demand responds to the additional supply, and how much additional supply there is. (It can happen the other way, too, where the drop in price outweighs the new profit from the new supply, and total profit drops.) … so it kinda requires an idea of how the additional supply would cause the price to change, beyond what I suspect most landlords have. And a foresight/long-termism that I also don't think exists. And if you're a small time landlord not planning on building additional properties, then your supply is always 1, and if the price does down, obviously then too the product does. And I think in SF, the additional supply that is needed, from a more moral standpoint of "people need to live, commuting is bad for the environment and people's health", is crap tons of additional housing. The price to rent could halve and still be too high.
- justinc-md 4y ago
  Why would landlords want to drive down the price of housing?
  - nopenopenopeno 4y ago
    Landlords care about profit, not price.
- dannyobrien 4y ago
  I think you're in a relatively small demographic that has even heard of YIMBY, and mainly heard of it through a small contingent of leftist critiques (and also has a negative view of landlords). Even in SF, that's not really the group whose mind the movement is intending to change. That's the group whose dominant historical grip on the left they're determined to dislodge, because of its harmful effect on San Francisco's progressive program.
  - nopenopenopeno 4y ago
    So who are these people? The politicians are absolutely landlord-adjacent (i.e. NIMBY adjacent) if not landlords themselves, but who are the others? Just some desperate wage earners eager to dispose of their latest $100+ of income on this cheesy fundraiser? Give me a break!
    - dannyobrien 4y ago
      I'm a bit confused by you using NIMBY and YIMBY interchangeably here, but most of the YIMBY activists I know come from people who got into housing policy because they couldn't afford to live in SF. They're all renters, and most come from a lefty political background. Fundraising events are pretty common in this kind of environment: if it was landlord driven, i'd imagine the tickets would be more in the thousands, as that's common for traditional for party political fundraisers in US cities, where you are paying for access. I'd compare it to, say, the Harvey Milk Club Gayla, whose prices you can see here: https://www.milkclub.org/gayla https://www.milkclub.org/gayla
- api 4y ago
  If supply isn't increased but demand is increased, the price goes up. San Francisco is a popular city with a strong job market (demand) and won't build housing, so the price goes up. What part of that is hard for people to understand?
  - prottog 4y ago
    The part that's hard for people to understand is not the basic supply and demand issue, but rather why well-intentioned, good-sounding policies like environmental review processes, rent control, or mandatory affordable housing quotas don't accomplish what they say they would; to understand the latter requires an understanding of the higher-order repercussions of those policies.
ed25519FUUU 4y ago
Do the YIMBY groups support dropping environmental impact studies for new buildings?
- huevosabio 4y ago
  For the most part, archaic and ad-hoc requirements yes. For example, you'll often see us complain about CEQA. In an ideal YIMBY world, the government would just give a clear checklist of what can be built (based on safety and environmental requirements) and as long as your project follows that, no one should be able to delay or oppose your building. What we have instead is arbitrary impact studies that anyone can throw to a developer and snooze the project indefinitely.
  - wwweston 4y ago
    I'd imagine the tradeoff here is that impact studies allow for more variation, while generally clear checklists might need to include overgenerally strict items in order to prevent problems that might only be applicable in a few situations. I suppose the middle ground would be automatic green light for developers who can tick off every box on the overgeneral checklist + impact studies for people who want exceptions.
    - jjoonathan 4y ago
      How is that a middle ground? How does it address the "snooze forever" exploit?
      - wwweston 4y ago
        The overall endpoints for this discussion are "no oversight, laissez faire all the development!" and "no development, snooze forever." The endpoints suggested by the comment I responded to were "impact study" (with risks of indefinite timeline) and "greenlight checklist." I responded with this suggestion: greenlight checklist, with the option for impact study to justify exceptions to that checklist. Would-be builders get a choice between the two. The reasoning is that any greenlight checklist that's sufficient to do the job of custom impact studies will probably need to impose requirements that may not be practically necessary for every project. So, let people choose to check all the boxes (even some that might not be strictly necessary in order to avoid negative impacts) OR have a custom impact study done in order to receive specific exceptions. How is that not middle ground in between either set of endpoints?
klyrs 4y ago
> (if you do buy tickets, write huevosabio as referral and DM me to meet there :)) it is so weird when people do this on HN with no contact info in their profiles ;)
- pooper 4y ago
  > it is so weird when people do this on HN with no contact info in their profiles ;) I googled their username, clicked through to github, clicked through to repositories, clicked through to personal page (first repository on list), clicked through to cv folder, clicked through to cv pdf, and there they have a phone number and email address. All of this is publicly available but takes at least four clicks but most importantly, I am not sure whether it is the same person!
  - huevosabio 4y ago
    Lol! Reach out to me at ramon.d.iglesias@gmail.com
- actionfromafar 4y ago
  You are clearly not in their backyard. :-)
- huevosabio 4y ago
  Good point! email: ramon.d.iglesias@gmail.com
braingenious 4y ago
> The funds raised go exactly to fight the type of cronyism and insanity that makes SF so ossified and housing impossible to build. Is there a detailed breakdown of how these funds are allocated exactly? I see that the mayor is the star VIP guest, is this function for her re-election?
agalunar 4y ago
I read some time ago an interview with a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and an article about the YIMBY movement: • https://www.currentaffairs.org/2021/11/san-francisco-socialist-dean-preston-debunks-yimby-propaganda https://www.currentaffairs.org/2021/11/san-francisco-sociali... • https://www.currentaffairs.org/2021/01/the-only-thing-worse-than-a-nimby-is-a-yimby https://www.currentaffairs.org/2021/01/the-only-thing-worse-... I'd be very interested if anyone knows anything further about the topic or knows of any replies to the criticisms levied.
- myspy 4y ago
  I see it similarly in Germany. More social housing build by the government is needed to enable people with lower income living there. We did that less and less in Germany and now we pay the price. Higher rents and less room to live in.
- ZoomerCretin 4y ago
  Robinson: "It’s a gentrifying city..." """Gentrification""" being used unironically should be the only thing you need to know about how far Robinson's mental model of the housing market is from reality. Preston: "…is that they’re market fundamentalists. And they believe that simply creating more housing for rich people will ultimately trickle down to people who aren’t rich—maybe in a decade, maybe 50 years." YIMBYs are not libertarian market fundamentalists. We believe that the principal cause of the housing crisis is that there is a shortage of housing. Simply removing zoning restrictions would not fix the situation for poor people, but that's not what YIMBYs argue. They want a mix of zoning reform, expanded housing vouchers, and yes, public housing. Let's suppose that we only expand housing vouchers. We have rules forbidding increasing the supply of housing, and a policy that subsidizes demand. What happens to price? It goes up. How many more people do we house? No one, because you can't subsidize your way out of a shortage, and you can't redistribute your way out of a shortage. Let's suppose that we only build public housing. We still have rules forbidding increasing density. Unless "build public housing" means building public single family home lot sprawl, nothing will get built. _The same zoning restrictions that prevent new private housing also prevent new public housing._ Let's suppose that we only reform zoning. Now it's legal to build more housing, and people will spend money building taller buildings with far more units for more people to live in. Since apartment units are built for far less money per-unit than detached homes, this lowers the price floor that housing can be offered at, allowing housing to become cheaper if we build enough housing to put serious dents in the vacancy rate. We're still leaving out the poor, since housing does take time to filter. Zoning is not the end-all be-all of policy tools for fixing the housing crisis. YIMBYs agree. But it is the first step, and the single biggest tool in our policy toolbox. Everything starts with supply, and the biggest constraint on supply is zoning. After that, you can clean up the remaining market failures (i.e. homelessness, rent-burdened low-income people) with housing vouchers and much smaller public housing projects than you would need without zoning reform. Preston: "For all the talk in this city, even a city that’s more progressive on some issues, for all the talk when it comes down to who our economy caters to—not just in housing, but especially in housing—it caters to the wealthy." Preston literally blocked a 400+ unit housing development _on a valet parking lot_. _He is_ the wealthy person being catered to by the establishment. Preston: "I thought we could control the rents a bit and have some protections in place. Maybe this can work if we just make developers do a handful of affordable units when they build, and maybe we’ll get there somehow." Developers don't build out of the kindness of their hearts, they do it for money. If they're forced to subsidize too many "affordable units" with market rate units, the development won't be profitable, so they don't build. If the rent they can collect is capped early, they don't build. Remember, in California, because of Proposition 13, there are enough property owners paying 40-year old property tax valuations that renting is frequently 5-8x cheaper than buying. Literally some properties that rent for $4k/month (@ $600/month property tax) sell at prices of $15k/month mortgage + $3.5k/month property tax. In order for new build rental housing to be competitive with old rental housing, you need to build a shit ton of it to get the per-unit costs down since you're already paying far higher property taxes than landlords who have owned the same property for 30-50 years. San Francisco simply is not zoned for the density of housing that would make a lot more construction financially feasible. Add on rent control and making 30-50% of units "affordable", and you make it even harder for new housing to be built. Preston: "Well, I think the city and government has to be in the business of actually creating housing for people that is not for profit, right?" Public housing is good. However, the city and government will be building housing at per-unit prices that would be financially infeasible for private developers and renting them below cost. Even at-cost, these units would be far more expensive than they need to be. You still haven't fixed the underlying cause that you've put so many artificial constraints in front of building housing that you've made it far more expensive than it needs to be. Making the government pay $900k to build a unit and renting it for $800/month and just throwing the entire state budget into doing this _could_ solve the problem, yes, but I think we're better off making new units cost less than $900k to build than we are throwing money that could be better spent on this. Preston: "I think that’s certainly a factor here. We commissioned a report—and we’re expecting to announce it fairly soon—from the budget, legislative analysts looking at vacancies in San Francisco. And there are a ton of vacancies. A lot of newly constructed places like these luxury condos that sit particularly in the South of Market neighborhood in San Francisco just sit empty, and it’s exactly as you’re describing. You can see at night what’s lit up and what isn’t." People don't have their lights on at night, therefore their units are empty/vacant? Does he leave all of his indoor lights on when he goes out at night? I certainly don't. Preston's Board of Supervisors actually passed a vacancy tax on units. It excluded luxury properties (Single family homes) like his. Take that for what you will. Robinson: "If you have an apartment building with 50 units occupied by working-class tenants, and it’s demolished, and they build something that has 100 units, but it’s 100 people from Palo Alto who come and move in, you have the aggregate number of total units increased—you say we’ve got more housing—but you’ve actually managed to displace more working-class people from the city in the process." If they're rent-controlled, they can't force the tenants out. If it's not, those working-class tenants were forced out by rent increases or general cost of living costs long ago. More units are better, because the root of the housing crisis is the shortage. Preston: "Right. It’s always the loopholes around rent control that are used to attack rent control. There’s just such a disconnect between working-class folks and the pundits on rent control, right? You go to all these economics departments, and you can find lots of professors who are going to tell you how rent controls are bad and distort the market. A few of them will give you some support. But generally, you go and talk to people who are living in rent-controlled apartments, or live in San Francisco, where there would be virtually no working-class left in San Francisco, were it not for rent control." Rent control reduces supply and doesn't help newcomers. It is great for current tenants, though. Imagine you're a woman who's in an abusive relationship, but you share a rent-controlled unit with your abuser. If leaving means your share of rent goes from $800/month to $2,500/month, how likely are you to leave your abusive husband/boyfriend? Rent control does not help people who have only recently started renting. A rich software engineer who lives in a rent-controlled unit for 30 years is paying less than a student who just moved to the bay for school and has to fork over $2-3k/month for a room. Is that fair? Older, well-established dual income married couples in rent-controlled units who are in the later and highest-earning stage of their career pay far less than the 26 year old transplants who just want enough space for themselves and a kid. Is that fair? We are all better off when the market rate is lower for everyone. Rent control reduces supply and forces landlords to raise rents in other units, forcing poorer, younger, possibly abused newcomers to subsidize the older, richer, and more well-established residents of an area. That is not a solution to the housing crisis. Just build more fucking units. Preston: "Even the studies from the economics professors who attack rent control always have to acknowledge, in all those studies, how effective rent control is in stabilizing housing for seniors, disabled folks, and the most vulnerable folks, even as they attack it on theoretical grounds. They still acknowledge that it works to do what it’s supposed to do, which is to stabilize people in their homes." Rent control is America First, but for local cities. This is the principal flaw of democracy; politicians have no incentive to represent people outside their district. This "America First"-style politicking, more specifically, is politicians putting their constituents' interests before the interests of non-constituents _to the detriment of everyone_. Rent control may be great for the few is benefits, but it makes the problem worse for everyone else. Don't get me wrong; rent control is a great policy when enacted with some limitations. Rent should not be allowed to be hiked more than 10% per year; but it cannot be enacted without other measures to increase the supply of housing, else you create a two-tiered housing market: one for the rent-controlled, who are stuck in place but get fabulous rents, and one for newcomers who are stuck with the bill for all of your overly-generous rent control.
offsign_p 4y ago
Does YimbyAction.org support the 'inclusionary housing' permitting requirement cited in above article? (Based on the site, certainly seems so.) The article describes these mechanisms as the "800-pound gorilla" in what makes development in SF unaffordable (and therefore economically unviable), so having trouble aligning this advocacy with the root cause of the housing shortage. What am I missing?
- fmajid 4y ago
  It's not one 800lb gorilla but a whole troupe of them mentioned in the article: - a capricious and arbitrary permitting process - multiple opportunities for groups to cause mischief, with some like Calle 24 barely disguising that they are shakedown rackets - excessively restrictive zoning It essentially boils down to this: there are haves (people who own their own homes like many SF supervisors and like to see them appreciate, and Boomers benefitting from rent control and paying a pittance) who have political power and new entrants who have none. The solution will not come from within, but from the State preempting local control, like Scott Wiener's heroic efforts in Sacramento like SB35. If a housing project is 50% affordable, it can skip most of the rigmarole, as occurred in Potrero Hill: https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/How-one-S-F-housing-project-is-using-state-laws-16375684.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/How-one-S-F-housing-p...
- huevosabio 4y ago
  YA is against the inclusionary housing requirement _as implemented by SF_. It is often used as a type of extortion to outright dissuade new construction. More broadly, in my experience, Yimbys have mixed-to-negative opinion on inclusionary zoning since it is essentially a tax on new construction, though there are a non-trivial amount of Yimbys who think its a good way to produce subsidized housing. I personally think we should not be taxing new projects implicitly or explicitly at all, and instead we should use property taxes (especially land value taxes) to subsidize housing either via vouchers or via publicly built housing. The reality of the CA political system makes all of this very hard to achieve and we often find ourselves settling on taking small but achievable steps.
socalledyimby 4y ago
> The funds raised go exactly to fight the type of cronyism and insanity that makes SF so ossified and housing impossible to build. I am a San Francisco resident and living near the Mission laundromat in the article. I am skeptical your cringe thing will achieve much against problems from this article. The people on your website have been in power for a few years. They haven't dealt with some problems that take an afternoon to solve, that don't seem to exist everywhere. A poll is cheap, and I'm sure they've conducted some to determine a popular and re-electable course of action. Clearly the status quo is popular enough to win them office, so why the fuck should I give them money? That will achieve the opposite of what I want. It's completely bonkers dumb. An intellectually honest approach would find an opposition candidate to run. The real problem is votes. The right to do whatever the fuck you want with a piece of shit laundromat is, essentially, protecting the minority from a dumbfuck majority. It's crazy because it's the same energy that mobilizes San Franciscans on many issues, like the minority rights to an abortion, gay marriage, minority religions, etc. For some reason minority rights are organized by how strongly the emotions are felt, instead of like, an objective criteria. There are issues with strong emotions people can mobilize for. Let me give you a taste of what would motivate me: > Likewise, the board cited CEQA in denying Tillman’s project in 2018, saying it could cast shadows over a nearby playground. Alioto Park, which is not obscured by this site but is another playground of many in the Mission, is inhabited by literal heroin addicts, alcoholics and other bottle guys all day. Unusable by children. Dolores Park has people also drinking alcohol and doing drugs. And yet, the playground is eminently usable, clean and well maintained. What gives? Some people just fucking suck dude. Bottle guys really suck way harder than hipsters. It's so fucking ridiculous that some pieces of shit care about this abstract shadow problem, and in the same breath tolerate their shitty bottle guys in Alioto. They shit their obese chihuahuas on every street and don't pick up. Listen, some people just don't fucking ever litter. I don't ever litter. They do a shit job maintaining their million dollar, crumbling homes. Their schools suck. They voted for a repeal of the law that would let them send their kids to better schools, because they're dumb. They pile kids and old relatives into apartments to maximize buyout costs. They pay property taxes stuck in the 80s. They park in the middle of Valencia street for church, and put up a sign that says "Church Parking Only." On a public street dude. They block people's driveways, renters' driveways. The action I want is, "Everyone deserves a community, not the same community." Identify a politician brave enough to say these people suck, the people who tolerate them suck and should leave or let economic forces drive them out, and I'll come to your cringe thing. Until then, you'll keep shoveling over money to losers, putting pussyhats into dumpsters.

nopenopenopeno 4y ago

FYI: When someone uses the term “YIMBY” all I hear is “LANDLORD” and I don’t think I am alone.

TulliusCicero 4y ago
That makes no sense. Landlords tend to be opposed to YIMBY's, because allowing for more housing makes for a more competitive housing market, rather than one in which landowners dominate.
- nopenopenopeno 4y ago
  Why would landlords in the market with the highest demand prioritize fending off competition? The answer is they wouldn’t. You’re full of it. Landlords want to maximize profit from their property and when demand is soaring above supply, adding units is the way to do that so they are organizing to overturn laws that prevent them from doing so. There is a reason the tickets to this event cost $100+. This isn’t a working class movement lol. You are either stupid yourself or you’ve got a lot of nerve to act like others are, which is to say you certainly act like a landlord.
  - prottog 4y ago
    > Landlords want to maximize profit from their property and when demand is soaring above supply, adding units is the way to do that You're saying that as supply catches up to the soaring demand, profits will go up instead of down? There's a lot of name-calling in your post and not a lot of sense.
    - bombcar 4y ago
      NIMBY in the streets and YIMBY in the sheets I guess. If I owned a block of single family houses in Frisco I’d want to be able to turn my block to a giant apartment complex at the same time I’d want to prevent anyone else doing a similar thing. Then my profit goes up and isn’t endangered.
      - nopenopenopeno 4y ago
        Precisely.
    - deathanatos 4y ago
      > You're saying that as supply catches up to the soaring demand, profits will go up instead of down? I don't think you're wrong on the larger point that landlords are more likely to be on the side of NIMBYism / NIMBYs are going to be land owners. But, to an extent this is possible; the price would drop for the additional supply, but the total of (now_higher_supply * now_lower_price) can still be greater than (original_lower_supply * original_higher_price). Depends on how the market demand responds to the additional supply, and how much additional supply there is. (It can happen the other way, too, where the drop in price outweighs the new profit from the new supply, and total profit drops.) … so it kinda requires an idea of how the additional supply would cause the price to change, beyond what I suspect most landlords have. And a foresight/long-termism that I also don't think exists. And if you're a small time landlord not planning on building additional properties, then your supply is always 1, and if the price does down, obviously then too the product does. And I think in SF, the additional supply that is needed, from a more moral standpoint of "people need to live, commuting is bad for the environment and people's health", is crap tons of additional housing. The price to rent could halve and still be too high.
justinc-md 4y ago
Why would landlords want to drive down the price of housing?
- nopenopenopeno 4y ago
  Landlords care about profit, not price.
dannyobrien 4y ago
I think you're in a relatively small demographic that has even heard of YIMBY, and mainly heard of it through a small contingent of leftist critiques (and also has a negative view of landlords). Even in SF, that's not really the group whose mind the movement is intending to change. That's the group whose dominant historical grip on the left they're determined to dislodge, because of its harmful effect on San Francisco's progressive program.
- nopenopenopeno 4y ago
  So who are these people? The politicians are absolutely landlord-adjacent (i.e. NIMBY adjacent) if not landlords themselves, but who are the others? Just some desperate wage earners eager to dispose of their latest $100+ of income on this cheesy fundraiser? Give me a break!
  - dannyobrien 4y ago
    I'm a bit confused by you using NIMBY and YIMBY interchangeably here, but most of the YIMBY activists I know come from people who got into housing policy because they couldn't afford to live in SF. They're all renters, and most come from a lefty political background. Fundraising events are pretty common in this kind of environment: if it was landlord driven, i'd imagine the tickets would be more in the thousands, as that's common for traditional for party political fundraisers in US cities, where you are paying for access. I'd compare it to, say, the Harvey Milk Club Gayla, whose prices you can see here: https://www.milkclub.org/gayla https://www.milkclub.org/gayla
api 4y ago
If supply isn't increased but demand is increased, the price goes up. San Francisco is a popular city with a strong job market (demand) and won't build housing, so the price goes up. What part of that is hard for people to understand?
- prottog 4y ago
  The part that's hard for people to understand is not the basic supply and demand issue, but rather why well-intentioned, good-sounding policies like environmental review processes, rent control, or mandatory affordable housing quotas don't accomplish what they say they would; to understand the latter requires an understanding of the higher-order repercussions of those policies.

ed25519FUUU 4y ago

Do the YIMBY groups support dropping environmental impact studies for new buildings?

huevosabio 4y ago
For the most part, archaic and ad-hoc requirements yes. For example, you'll often see us complain about CEQA. In an ideal YIMBY world, the government would just give a clear checklist of what can be built (based on safety and environmental requirements) and as long as your project follows that, no one should be able to delay or oppose your building. What we have instead is arbitrary impact studies that anyone can throw to a developer and snooze the project indefinitely.
- wwweston 4y ago
  I'd imagine the tradeoff here is that impact studies allow for more variation, while generally clear checklists might need to include overgenerally strict items in order to prevent problems that might only be applicable in a few situations. I suppose the middle ground would be automatic green light for developers who can tick off every box on the overgeneral checklist + impact studies for people who want exceptions.
  - jjoonathan 4y ago
    How is that a middle ground? How does it address the "snooze forever" exploit?
    - wwweston 4y ago
      The overall endpoints for this discussion are "no oversight, laissez faire all the development!" and "no development, snooze forever." The endpoints suggested by the comment I responded to were "impact study" (with risks of indefinite timeline) and "greenlight checklist." I responded with this suggestion: greenlight checklist, with the option for impact study to justify exceptions to that checklist. Would-be builders get a choice between the two. The reasoning is that any greenlight checklist that's sufficient to do the job of custom impact studies will probably need to impose requirements that may not be practically necessary for every project. So, let people choose to check all the boxes (even some that might not be strictly necessary in order to avoid negative impacts) OR have a custom impact study done in order to receive specific exceptions. How is that not middle ground in between either set of endpoints?

klyrs 4y ago

> (if you do buy tickets, write huevosabio as referral and DM me to meet there :)) it is so weird when people do this on HN with no contact info in their profiles ;)

pooper 4y ago
> it is so weird when people do this on HN with no contact info in their profiles ;) I googled their username, clicked through to github, clicked through to repositories, clicked through to personal page (first repository on list), clicked through to cv folder, clicked through to cv pdf, and there they have a phone number and email address. All of this is publicly available but takes at least four clicks but most importantly, I am not sure whether it is the same person!
- huevosabio 4y ago
  Lol! Reach out to me at ramon.d.iglesias@gmail.com
actionfromafar 4y ago
You are clearly not in their backyard. :-)
huevosabio 4y ago
Good point! email: ramon.d.iglesias@gmail.com

braingenious 4y ago

> The funds raised go exactly to fight the type of cronyism and insanity that makes SF so ossified and housing impossible to build. Is there a detailed breakdown of how these funds are allocated exactly? I see that the mayor is the star VIP guest, is this function for her re-election?

agalunar 4y ago

I read some time ago an interview with a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and an article about the YIMBY movement: • https://www.currentaffairs.org/2021/11/san-francisco-socialist-dean-preston-debunks-yimby-propaganda https://www.currentaffairs.org/2021/11/san-francisco-sociali... • https://www.currentaffairs.org/2021/01/the-only-thing-worse-than-a-nimby-is-a-yimby https://www.currentaffairs.org/2021/01/the-only-thing-worse-... I'd be very interested if anyone knows anything further about the topic or knows of any replies to the criticisms levied.

myspy 4y ago
I see it similarly in Germany. More social housing build by the government is needed to enable people with lower income living there. We did that less and less in Germany and now we pay the price. Higher rents and less room to live in.
ZoomerCretin 4y ago
Robinson: "It’s a gentrifying city..." """Gentrification""" being used unironically should be the only thing you need to know about how far Robinson's mental model of the housing market is from reality. Preston: "…is that they’re market fundamentalists. And they believe that simply creating more housing for rich people will ultimately trickle down to people who aren’t rich—maybe in a decade, maybe 50 years." YIMBYs are not libertarian market fundamentalists. We believe that the principal cause of the housing crisis is that there is a shortage of housing. Simply removing zoning restrictions would not fix the situation for poor people, but that's not what YIMBYs argue. They want a mix of zoning reform, expanded housing vouchers, and yes, public housing. Let's suppose that we only expand housing vouchers. We have rules forbidding increasing the supply of housing, and a policy that subsidizes demand. What happens to price? It goes up. How many more people do we house? No one, because you can't subsidize your way out of a shortage, and you can't redistribute your way out of a shortage. Let's suppose that we only build public housing. We still have rules forbidding increasing density. Unless "build public housing" means building public single family home lot sprawl, nothing will get built. _The same zoning restrictions that prevent new private housing also prevent new public housing._ Let's suppose that we only reform zoning. Now it's legal to build more housing, and people will spend money building taller buildings with far more units for more people to live in. Since apartment units are built for far less money per-unit than detached homes, this lowers the price floor that housing can be offered at, allowing housing to become cheaper if we build enough housing to put serious dents in the vacancy rate. We're still leaving out the poor, since housing does take time to filter. Zoning is not the end-all be-all of policy tools for fixing the housing crisis. YIMBYs agree. But it is the first step, and the single biggest tool in our policy toolbox. Everything starts with supply, and the biggest constraint on supply is zoning. After that, you can clean up the remaining market failures (i.e. homelessness, rent-burdened low-income people) with housing vouchers and much smaller public housing projects than you would need without zoning reform. Preston: "For all the talk in this city, even a city that’s more progressive on some issues, for all the talk when it comes down to who our economy caters to—not just in housing, but especially in housing—it caters to the wealthy." Preston literally blocked a 400+ unit housing development _on a valet parking lot_. _He is_ the wealthy person being catered to by the establishment. Preston: "I thought we could control the rents a bit and have some protections in place. Maybe this can work if we just make developers do a handful of affordable units when they build, and maybe we’ll get there somehow." Developers don't build out of the kindness of their hearts, they do it for money. If they're forced to subsidize too many "affordable units" with market rate units, the development won't be profitable, so they don't build. If the rent they can collect is capped early, they don't build. Remember, in California, because of Proposition 13, there are enough property owners paying 40-year old property tax valuations that renting is frequently 5-8x cheaper than buying. Literally some properties that rent for $4k/month (@ $600/month property tax) sell at prices of $15k/month mortgage + $3.5k/month property tax. In order for new build rental housing to be competitive with old rental housing, you need to build a shit ton of it to get the per-unit costs down since you're already paying far higher property taxes than landlords who have owned the same property for 30-50 years. San Francisco simply is not zoned for the density of housing that would make a lot more construction financially feasible. Add on rent control and making 30-50% of units "affordable", and you make it even harder for new housing to be built. Preston: "Well, I think the city and government has to be in the business of actually creating housing for people that is not for profit, right?" Public housing is good. However, the city and government will be building housing at per-unit prices that would be financially infeasible for private developers and renting them below cost. Even at-cost, these units would be far more expensive than they need to be. You still haven't fixed the underlying cause that you've put so many artificial constraints in front of building housing that you've made it far more expensive than it needs to be. Making the government pay $900k to build a unit and renting it for $800/month and just throwing the entire state budget into doing this _could_ solve the problem, yes, but I think we're better off making new units cost less than $900k to build than we are throwing money that could be better spent on this. Preston: "I think that’s certainly a factor here. We commissioned a report—and we’re expecting to announce it fairly soon—from the budget, legislative analysts looking at vacancies in San Francisco. And there are a ton of vacancies. A lot of newly constructed places like these luxury condos that sit particularly in the South of Market neighborhood in San Francisco just sit empty, and it’s exactly as you’re describing. You can see at night what’s lit up and what isn’t." People don't have their lights on at night, therefore their units are empty/vacant? Does he leave all of his indoor lights on when he goes out at night? I certainly don't. Preston's Board of Supervisors actually passed a vacancy tax on units. It excluded luxury properties (Single family homes) like his. Take that for what you will. Robinson: "If you have an apartment building with 50 units occupied by working-class tenants, and it’s demolished, and they build something that has 100 units, but it’s 100 people from Palo Alto who come and move in, you have the aggregate number of total units increased—you say we’ve got more housing—but you’ve actually managed to displace more working-class people from the city in the process." If they're rent-controlled, they can't force the tenants out. If it's not, those working-class tenants were forced out by rent increases or general cost of living costs long ago. More units are better, because the root of the housing crisis is the shortage. Preston: "Right. It’s always the loopholes around rent control that are used to attack rent control. There’s just such a disconnect between working-class folks and the pundits on rent control, right? You go to all these economics departments, and you can find lots of professors who are going to tell you how rent controls are bad and distort the market. A few of them will give you some support. But generally, you go and talk to people who are living in rent-controlled apartments, or live in San Francisco, where there would be virtually no working-class left in San Francisco, were it not for rent control." Rent control reduces supply and doesn't help newcomers. It is great for current tenants, though. Imagine you're a woman who's in an abusive relationship, but you share a rent-controlled unit with your abuser. If leaving means your share of rent goes from $800/month to $2,500/month, how likely are you to leave your abusive husband/boyfriend? Rent control does not help people who have only recently started renting. A rich software engineer who lives in a rent-controlled unit for 30 years is paying less than a student who just moved to the bay for school and has to fork over $2-3k/month for a room. Is that fair? Older, well-established dual income married couples in rent-controlled units who are in the later and highest-earning stage of their career pay far less than the 26 year old transplants who just want enough space for themselves and a kid. Is that fair? We are all better off when the market rate is lower for everyone. Rent control reduces supply and forces landlords to raise rents in other units, forcing poorer, younger, possibly abused newcomers to subsidize the older, richer, and more well-established residents of an area. That is not a solution to the housing crisis. Just build more fucking units. Preston: "Even the studies from the economics professors who attack rent control always have to acknowledge, in all those studies, how effective rent control is in stabilizing housing for seniors, disabled folks, and the most vulnerable folks, even as they attack it on theoretical grounds. They still acknowledge that it works to do what it’s supposed to do, which is to stabilize people in their homes." Rent control is America First, but for local cities. This is the principal flaw of democracy; politicians have no incentive to represent people outside their district. This "America First"-style politicking, more specifically, is politicians putting their constituents' interests before the interests of non-constituents _to the detriment of everyone_. Rent control may be great for the few is benefits, but it makes the problem worse for everyone else. Don't get me wrong; rent control is a great policy when enacted with some limitations. Rent should not be allowed to be hiked more than 10% per year; but it cannot be enacted without other measures to increase the supply of housing, else you create a two-tiered housing market: one for the rent-controlled, who are stuck in place but get fabulous rents, and one for newcomers who are stuck with the bill for all of your overly-generous rent control.

offsign_p 4y ago

Does YimbyAction.org support the 'inclusionary housing' permitting requirement cited in above article? (Based on the site, certainly seems so.) The article describes these mechanisms as the "800-pound gorilla" in what makes development in SF unaffordable (and therefore economically unviable), so having trouble aligning this advocacy with the root cause of the housing shortage. What am I missing?

fmajid 4y ago
It's not one 800lb gorilla but a whole troupe of them mentioned in the article: - a capricious and arbitrary permitting process - multiple opportunities for groups to cause mischief, with some like Calle 24 barely disguising that they are shakedown rackets - excessively restrictive zoning It essentially boils down to this: there are haves (people who own their own homes like many SF supervisors and like to see them appreciate, and Boomers benefitting from rent control and paying a pittance) who have political power and new entrants who have none. The solution will not come from within, but from the State preempting local control, like Scott Wiener's heroic efforts in Sacramento like SB35. If a housing project is 50% affordable, it can skip most of the rigmarole, as occurred in Potrero Hill: https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/How-one-S-F-housing-project-is-using-state-laws-16375684.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/How-one-S-F-housing-p...
huevosabio 4y ago
YA is against the inclusionary housing requirement _as implemented by SF_. It is often used as a type of extortion to outright dissuade new construction. More broadly, in my experience, Yimbys have mixed-to-negative opinion on inclusionary zoning since it is essentially a tax on new construction, though there are a non-trivial amount of Yimbys who think its a good way to produce subsidized housing. I personally think we should not be taxing new projects implicitly or explicitly at all, and instead we should use property taxes (especially land value taxes) to subsidize housing either via vouchers or via publicly built housing. The reality of the CA political system makes all of this very hard to achieve and we often find ourselves settling on taking small but achievable steps.

socalledyimby 4y ago

> The funds raised go exactly to fight the type of cronyism and insanity that makes SF so ossified and housing impossible to build. I am a San Francisco resident and living near the Mission laundromat in the article. I am skeptical your cringe thing will achieve much against problems from this article. The people on your website have been in power for a few years. They haven't dealt with some problems that take an afternoon to solve, that don't seem to exist everywhere. A poll is cheap, and I'm sure they've conducted some to determine a popular and re-electable course of action. Clearly the status quo is popular enough to win them office, so why the fuck should I give them money? That will achieve the opposite of what I want. It's completely bonkers dumb. An intellectually honest approach would find an opposition candidate to run. The real problem is votes. The right to do whatever the fuck you want with a piece of shit laundromat is, essentially, protecting the minority from a dumbfuck majority. It's crazy because it's the same energy that mobilizes San Franciscans on many issues, like the minority rights to an abortion, gay marriage, minority religions, etc. For some reason minority rights are organized by how strongly the emotions are felt, instead of like, an objective criteria. There are issues with strong emotions people can mobilize for. Let me give you a taste of what would motivate me: > Likewise, the board cited CEQA in denying Tillman’s project in 2018, saying it could cast shadows over a nearby playground. Alioto Park, which is not obscured by this site but is another playground of many in the Mission, is inhabited by literal heroin addicts, alcoholics and other bottle guys all day. Unusable by children. Dolores Park has people also drinking alcohol and doing drugs. And yet, the playground is eminently usable, clean and well maintained. What gives? Some people just fucking suck dude. Bottle guys really suck way harder than hipsters. It's so fucking ridiculous that some pieces of shit care about this abstract shadow problem, and in the same breath tolerate their shitty bottle guys in Alioto. They shit their obese chihuahuas on every street and don't pick up. Listen, some people just don't fucking ever litter. I don't ever litter. They do a shit job maintaining their million dollar, crumbling homes. Their schools suck. They voted for a repeal of the law that would let them send their kids to better schools, because they're dumb. They pile kids and old relatives into apartments to maximize buyout costs. They pay property taxes stuck in the 80s. They park in the middle of Valencia street for church, and put up a sign that says "Church Parking Only." On a public street dude. They block people's driveways, renters' driveways. The action I want is, "Everyone deserves a community, not the same community." Identify a politician brave enough to say these people suck, the people who tolerate them suck and should leave or let economic forces drive them out, and I'll come to your cringe thing. Until then, you'll keep shoveling over money to losers, putting pussyhats into dumpsters.