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> the people who complain about tech workers and gentrification in a place like San Francisco The people who are complaining about this are not the same people

> the people who complain about tech workers and gentrification in a place like San Francisco The people who are complaining about this are not the same people who are restricting housing access. A similar dynamic happens in Boston, where people are resentful of gentrifiers, and I can't blame them. They're not the ones voting to block housing, it's the already rich people in the area who do that.

xxpor 4y ago
No, it's both. There's an unholy alliance between the two.
- fnimick 4y ago
  Why would renters want property values (and therefore rents) to go up due to a lack of supply?
  - raincom 4y ago
    People who live in rent-controlled apartments seem to be against gentrification, as they end up losing their rent-controlled apartments for new construction.
  - jonas21 4y ago
    They don't. But getting people to understand supply and demand is hard. Getting them to blame visible changes in the neighborhood (e.g. fancy new apartment buildings going up) is easy.
zozbot234 4y ago
Yes, they are. What do you think "anti-gentrification activism" boils down to, in practice? Build more and drive prices down? Of course not, the activists will conveniently tell you that this makes gentrification worse! Which totally defies economic logic: there's only so much demand in the world for places like Manhattan!
- majormajor 4y ago
  > Which totally defies economic logic: there's only so much demand in the world for places like Manhattan! How much demand "in the world" to live in Manhattan do you think there is? The more the price drops, of course, the demand will go up. So how much "in the world" at both current prices and also if, say, prices went down by 5%? 10%? 50%? 75%? I think there's enough currently-unmet demand to keep the prices from falling far even if you add supply. (You can also increase demand by building. This is the goal of every property developer ever, after all. To make it worth more than it was when they found it.)
  - tick_tock_tick 4y ago
    > How much demand "in the world" to live in Manhattan do you think there is? Probably somewhere between 4-5 billion people I'd guess.
  - zozbot234 4y ago
    The effective demand for places like Manhattan comes from the highly productive economic activity that can be pursued in such places. So if the demand for places like Manhattan (or Tokyo, Seoul, Shanghai etc.) really was that boundless, that would be plenty of reason to build as many of them as possible and speed towards that post-scarcity techno-utopia. (But the ghost cities of China actually show how this can go wrong. So, as it turns out, you can only YIMBY so much.)
    - majormajor 4y ago
      I don't think the demand is literally boundless, but I think the idea that we could easily outpace demand with construction to dramatically increase affordability is wildly optimistic. I'd rather build new Dallases, or denser Dallases, than try to double the density of Manhattan, because it will both be easier to find/acquire un-utilized land to use, and because the amount of work required to double the density of Manhattan is much more intense, construction-wise.
      - 4y ago
Aunche 4y ago
> The people who are complaining about this are not the same people who are restricting housing access. The majority of them think that YIMBY is useless or counterproductive because only luxury apartments are being built. There have even been protests against this [1]. The main problem is that most housing advocacy is focused on taxing tech workers and using that to subsidize rents, which of course does nothing for housing costs, but does help landlords. [1] https://sf.curbed.com/2019/8/7/20759029/excelsior-protest-65-ocean-market-rate https://sf.curbed.com/2019/8/7/20759029/excelsior-protest-65...
- zozbot234 4y ago
  When building is made a luxury, only luxuries will be built. Quelle surprise! And this is supposed to be an argument against YIMBY?
mc32 4y ago
People are of two minds: on the one hand they complain of "middle class flight" decimating the tax base. on the other hand they complain when the middle class "gentrify" a neighborhood. The Mission is probably a decent example. It used to be more or less like Noe Valley many decades back. Then people moved out and was settled by people looking for affordability --then decades later, as housing in Noe Valley etc., was exhausted the Mission was "gentrified" in a slow cycle and people again complain.

xxpor 4y ago

No, it's both. There's an unholy alliance between the two.

fnimick 4y ago
Why would renters want property values (and therefore rents) to go up due to a lack of supply?
- raincom 4y ago
  People who live in rent-controlled apartments seem to be against gentrification, as they end up losing their rent-controlled apartments for new construction.
- jonas21 4y ago
  They don't. But getting people to understand supply and demand is hard. Getting them to blame visible changes in the neighborhood (e.g. fancy new apartment buildings going up) is easy.

zozbot234 4y ago

Yes, they are. What do you think "anti-gentrification activism" boils down to, in practice? Build more and drive prices down? Of course not, the activists will conveniently tell you that this makes gentrification worse! Which totally defies economic logic: there's only so much demand in the world for places like Manhattan!

majormajor 4y ago
> Which totally defies economic logic: there's only so much demand in the world for places like Manhattan! How much demand "in the world" to live in Manhattan do you think there is? The more the price drops, of course, the demand will go up. So how much "in the world" at both current prices and also if, say, prices went down by 5%? 10%? 50%? 75%? I think there's enough currently-unmet demand to keep the prices from falling far even if you add supply. (You can also increase demand by building. This is the goal of every property developer ever, after all. To make it worth more than it was when they found it.)
- tick_tock_tick 4y ago
  > How much demand "in the world" to live in Manhattan do you think there is? Probably somewhere between 4-5 billion people I'd guess.
- zozbot234 4y ago
  The effective demand for places like Manhattan comes from the highly productive economic activity that can be pursued in such places. So if the demand for places like Manhattan (or Tokyo, Seoul, Shanghai etc.) really was that boundless, that would be plenty of reason to build as many of them as possible and speed towards that post-scarcity techno-utopia. (But the ghost cities of China actually show how this can go wrong. So, as it turns out, you can only YIMBY so much.)
  - majormajor 4y ago
    I don't think the demand is literally boundless, but I think the idea that we could easily outpace demand with construction to dramatically increase affordability is wildly optimistic. I'd rather build new Dallases, or denser Dallases, than try to double the density of Manhattan, because it will both be easier to find/acquire un-utilized land to use, and because the amount of work required to double the density of Manhattan is much more intense, construction-wise.
    - 4y ago

Aunche 4y ago

> The people who are complaining about this are not the same people who are restricting housing access. The majority of them think that YIMBY is useless or counterproductive because only luxury apartments are being built. There have even been protests against this [1]. The main problem is that most housing advocacy is focused on taxing tech workers and using that to subsidize rents, which of course does nothing for housing costs, but does help landlords. [1] https://sf.curbed.com/2019/8/7/20759029/excelsior-protest-65-ocean-market-rate https://sf.curbed.com/2019/8/7/20759029/excelsior-protest-65...

zozbot234 4y ago
When building is made a luxury, only luxuries will be built. Quelle surprise! And this is supposed to be an argument against YIMBY?

mc32 4y ago

People are of two minds: on the one hand they complain of "middle class flight" decimating the tax base. on the other hand they complain when the middle class "gentrify" a neighborhood. The Mission is probably a decent example. It used to be more or less like Noe Valley many decades back. Then people moved out and was settled by people looking for affordability --then decades later, as housing in Noe Valley etc., was exhausted the Mission was "gentrified" in a slow cycle and people again complain.