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Everyone, notice the rhetorical sleight of hand operating here. An apartment, perhaps with 2 bedrooms, that costs significantly less than a "modest" or "quaint"

Everyone, notice the rhetorical sleight of hand operating here. An apartment, perhaps with 2 bedrooms, that costs significantly less than a "modest" or "quaint" single detached house in the same locale is labelled "luxury". That labelling scheme is chosen in order to persuade by way of demonization. But such labelling never gets applied to houses. Three bedroom houses that cost more than 99.9% of all apartments in existence, including the majority of apartments that are labelled as "luxury", never themselves carry the label "luxury". Instead they get endearing labels like "family home". These are the rhetorical tricks that NIMBYs use to push their political agenda to weaponize government in order to ban poor people and keep the price of their house high.

lotsofpulp 3y ago
The luxury label is used by the developers themselves to market their product, whether it be newly built apartments or houses. How can that be a trick by NIMBYs? Everyone knows that luxury means “new”, or at best, “shiny stainless steel appliances and quartz countertops”. The fact that it is new, and so has to comply with the most updated standards, is probably the most luxury aspect of all since materials and connections and whatnot have improved. This designation of new and old is more important in the apartment market than house markets because apartments tend to get neglected by landlords, whereas houses either get updated or can be updated by the owner. Also, in the case of houses, where a lot more money and due diligence is required, simply using luxury to describe them is insufficient, and not very useful to sell new housing developments.
- hackerlight 3y ago
  > How can that be a trick by NIMBYs? It's a rhetorical device that carries no substance, whether it happens to be NIMBYs using it as a political weapon to demonize, or developers using it to sell a product. However, I am going to focus criticism on NIMBYs when they are doing it, since they are the ones being dishonest and hypocritical when they only apply such labels to apartments. At least if a developer/agent was to try to sell a house, they'd try to find similar flowery language in order to market it, instead of only singling out apartments for that treatment in order to push their damaging political agenda.

lotsofpulp 3y ago

The luxury label is used by the developers themselves to market their product, whether it be newly built apartments or houses. How can that be a trick by NIMBYs? Everyone knows that luxury means “new”, or at best, “shiny stainless steel appliances and quartz countertops”. The fact that it is new, and so has to comply with the most updated standards, is probably the most luxury aspect of all since materials and connections and whatnot have improved. This designation of new and old is more important in the apartment market than house markets because apartments tend to get neglected by landlords, whereas houses either get updated or can be updated by the owner. Also, in the case of houses, where a lot more money and due diligence is required, simply using luxury to describe them is insufficient, and not very useful to sell new housing developments.

hackerlight 3y ago
> How can that be a trick by NIMBYs? It's a rhetorical device that carries no substance, whether it happens to be NIMBYs using it as a political weapon to demonize, or developers using it to sell a product. However, I am going to focus criticism on NIMBYs when they are doing it, since they are the ones being dishonest and hypocritical when they only apply such labels to apartments. At least if a developer/agent was to try to sell a house, they'd try to find similar flowery language in order to market it, instead of only singling out apartments for that treatment in order to push their damaging political agenda.