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NIMBYs aren't just shutting down housing
- darkwater 9mo agoIt's this really YIMBY or actually YIYBY ? It's difficult to tell checking the whole website. Edit to be more explicit: are the people that sent/asked to send the 2 letters to the City Council residents of Rancho Palos Verdes?
- cbeach 9mo agoDefinitely YIYBY.
- epistasis 9mo agoIf you're going to invent the term YIYBY are you willing to acknowledge far more NIYBY than NIMBY behavior?
- darkwater 9mo agoI'm not saying I'm favor of NIMBY - it depends on what's actually going on - but I would expect that there might be a lobby of constructors, rather than citizens looking to lower house prices, behind such an effort.
- moron4hire 9mo agoI don't know, does new housing or municipal services get built in anyone's literal backyard? So it's not Your or My Backyard, really. NIMBYism has always been about nosy people obstructing progress.
- baggy_trough 9mo agoIt's actually about people not wanting the largest investment of their life to change in ways they don't like.
- only-one1701 9mo ago“I invested a lot of money in something and my ROI is literally more important than anything else.”
- baggy_trough 9mo agoI think the ROI criticism is generally off the mark. Most homeowners that resist rezoning, etc. are concerned about quality of life issues rather than home values (although those are aligned if significantly lower quality of life reduces home values). For example, the idea that I'd benefit if my area was upzoned because I could sell my home/land for much more doesn't appeal to me at all. I don't want to sell my home, and I don't want the neighborhood to change around me in a way that I would eventually want to.
- only-one1701 9mo agoCool
- volkercraig 9mo agoOk, and?
- yardie 9mo agoTrying to find the amendment in the bill of rights that guarantees your investment will go up. Can you point it out to me?
- volkercraig 9mo agoTrying to find the amendment where you aren't allowed to advocate for your own interests.
- iamnothere 9mo agoYou’re allowed to advocate for your own interests, but there are limits to what you’re actually allowed to accomplish with that advocacy. At least in the US. You can’t just pass laws to confiscate the wealth of your political opponents, for instance. You can advocate for it (free speech), you just can’t do it.
- nine_k 9mo agoCasting shadow on their backyard. Bringing noise to their street. Ultimately, lowering the value of their property. The key problem of US housing is that a house is seen as an investment vehicle, which should appreciate, or at least appreciate no slower than inflation. Keeping prices high and rising can't but go hand in hand with keeping supply scarce.
- triceratops 9mo agoIf there's enough demand to build denser housing near your house, and that's allowed, your land is automatically worth more.
- nine_k 9mo agoIs it always true? More than once I heard fears about undesirables moving in, crime rate growing, the neighborhood "losing its character" that commands the high prices, etc. The resistance is real at some places.
- bombcar 9mo agoThe land value argument is downstream of the real issues - some people don't want change and fight it. If it was purely a money question you could just get some billionaire to go around buying out entire neighborhoods, redeveloping them, and turning around and selling them off for a profit (because they'd be worth more, right?) - the fact that this is not being done either means there's a great new startup or there are other issues.
- triceratops 9mo agoIt depends on whether the neighborhood is highly valued for proximity to jobs and services, or for "character".
- estearum 9mo agoIt's actually land that appreciates, which is why we should have a high land value tax and eliminate this extremely awful incentive.
- triceratops 9mo agoIt should really be called NIYBY-ism. Literal NIMBY-ism, where the backyard is one's own property, is just straightforward property rights. They want to control other people's property and tell them what they can and can't do with it. That's basically communism.
- Izkata 9mo ago"in my/your backyard" is a very old and pretty common idiomatic phrase that refers to the general area you live in (neighborhood, town, city, etc).
- triceratops 9mo agoBarring eminent domain, YIYBY is impossible. It's always YIMBY.
- munk-a 9mo agoYIYBY is the concept of wanting it nearby to your residence but not having to suffer any of the direct consequences - imo it's a good thing to acknowledge but generally indistinguishable from NIMBYism. You want the benefits but aren't willing to pay the costs.
- triceratops 9mo ago> YIYBY is the concept of wanting it nearby to your residence but not having to suffer any of the direct consequences How does that work exactly?
- WarmWash 9mo agoThere is a large forest near your local community. You and others often walk in the forest and kids play there. Its calming and has been there forever. The state wants your community to turn it into apartments, but obviously the community is icey about it. Then activists from another city dozens of miles away, who have never cared for your town or really been to it, show up at Town Hall meetings and are scheduling meetings with town councilors to push for building the apartments. Those out of town people jumping into your community to dictate change are the YIYBY people. If the apartments are built, they'll put another feather in their cap while walking around the forest near their home.
- pixl97 9mo ago> large forest near your local community. Who owns the forest and why do you think you get to say if people build on it or not?
- mothballed 9mo ago
- bs7280 9mo agoMore housing in the next town over helps everyone looking for a house in the surrounding towns. We all share a backyard called earth.
- epistasis 9mo ago> they don’t even think we should be allowed to argue for more housing. They don’t think we are even entitled to a fair hearing. We should all recognize that silencing your political rivals is beyond the pale and that complaints like this one, even if they end up going nowhere, can have a chilling effect on activists and ordinary people who want to exercise their rights. Don't worry, there are sooo many free speech absolutists that will come out of the woodwork to protect this dastardly attempt to stifle speech through abuse of legal procedures. No? Where did all those absolutists go?
- slibhb 9mo agoHi I'm right here
- epistasis 9mo agoNice! Any thoughts on this matter, as in does it get you outraged as a free speech absolutist?
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- bpt3 9mo ago[flagged]
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- paulddraper 9mo agoI like free speech. I also oppose mandatory licensing. (In this case, to practice law) The latter is the accusation, it seems impossible it’s not thrown out.
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- bpt3 9mo agoThe author needs to rename their organization to YIYBY (yes in your backyard). The nationalization of every policy on earth needs to stop.
- postflopclarity 9mo agonot your back yard if you don't own the land.
- cucumber3732842 9mo agoI mean, also not in my back yard if the people who don't own the land vote for a bunch of micro managerial laws that make it illegal to do things without jumping through hoops that are so expensive as to be a non-starter. Nobody is gonna go through the "everything else" approval process that strip clubs and heavy industry have to go through just to expand their business parking or do $10k of environmental impact assessment to drop off a $1k garden shed. (literal examples from my town). These evil people can't make things illegal outright so they make the process so expensive almost nobody can do it and it takes decades for someone to come along with a lucrative enough development that's worth expensively challenging it inn court over.
- bpt3 9mo agoPeople who do own the land aren't able to collectively agree on how to manage it because of state law. That's the issue. The source of the "NIMBY pressure" mentioned in the article is local residents, who should have much more say over local zoning code than someone who lives hundreds of miles away.
- triceratops 9mo agoAre they appropriating other people's land and building in their backyard? That would be called eminent domain. They just want everyone to build what they want in their own backyard. NIMBYs might more accurately be called NIYBYs.
- bpt3 9mo ago
- will_pseudonym 9mo agoThey’re not just x. They’re y.
- ikesau 9mo ago> After finding out that the city council was considering a housing element that would have bowed to NIMBY pressure, we sent two letters to the city, reminding it of its legal obligations under state law to approve the upzoning — and that a failure to do so would open the city up to a lawsuit. This seems entirely reasonable to me, and I'm grateful that a group like this exists. But I'm a YIMBY, so of course. If lobbyists were influencing my municipality from afar on the basis of laws that I disagreed with, I can imagine feeling frustrated, conspiratorial, or disenfranchised. Maintaining a consistent commitment to liberal democracy, the legal system and due process is one of life's great challenges!
- jeffbee 9mo agoIf you live in California I can assure you beyond any doubt that people from some far-away place have had outrageous levels of influence on your local housing policy. Almost the entire body of CEQA jurisprudence has been developed by two lawyers and a handful of labor union executives. If your local building code requires an elevator that can accommodate a hospital stretcher, which is almost certainly does, that was jotted down in the building code by literally one guy from Glendale, Arizona, on the basis of a whim.
- mothballed 9mo agoMy county eliminated code compliance checks (and building plan review) 2 decades ago for owner-builders and it's made things so much cheaper and easier to build. It is the only way I was able to afford a house. We were warned by nay-sayers the county would burn down but that never came to fruition and meanwhile I've seen so many code-Nazi places in California burn down from wildfires. It's hilarious watching the systematic destruction of the counter points when people tell me about the horrors (1) "You wouldn't want to live in such a house, it would burn down." I already do, and have been. (2) Your neighborhood would catch fire. I live in such a neighborhood, it didn't. (3) Just wait long enough! It will happen eventually. Eventually you'll have bad luck! This has been going on for 20+ years.
- epistasis 9mo ago
- briandw 9mo agoThis “practicing without a license” tactic has been used before. This case where a city fined someone for making a mathematical model of traffic lights. [ij](https://ij.org/press-release/oregon-engineer-wins-traffic-light-timing-lawsuit/ https://ij.org/press-release/oregon-engineer-wins-traffic-li...) This will keep happening unless there are consequences for those in government that abuse their authority.
- dlcarrier 9mo agoIt's a common tactic to gain state enforcement of gate keeping and protectionism. It's extremely useful at both preventing individuals from acting for themselves but also limiting individuals from recourse against the misdeeds of those who are licensed. See also, The Licensing Racket by Rebecca Haw Allensworth: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/217564698-the-licensing-racket https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/217564698-the-licensing-...
- jollyllama 9mo agoThis is probably the one issue that has the biggest online/offline divide. Online, I hear nothing but YIMBY-ism. Is there any centralized online NIMBY advocacy?
- AlexandrB 9mo agoYes, there are plenty. They don't call themselves NIMBY though. Usually it's stuff like opposing gentrification, protecting the environment/green spaces, or protecting historical areas. The net effect is NIMBY. I totally get it. People don't like change - I certainly don't. Especially when it changes the neighborhood you're living in.
- notatoad 9mo agonobody thinks they're a nimby. every nimby ever will tell you they aren't against development, they just don't think this project is right for this neighbourhood. if there was any centralized advocacy, they'd have to confront the fact that they all want development to happen in each other's backyards and it would expose the lie.
- cogman10 9mo agoHere's where I come out and maybe others end up in the same scenario. I think it's definitely a good thing to build up more high density housing. I've got no complaints there. However, a major problem we are having locally is that while that local housing is being built like gangbusters, the infrastructure to support that housing, such as the roads and public transport, hasn't been upgraded in tandem. 10 years ago, I could drive to work in 20 minutes. Today during rush hour it's a 40 to 60 minute affair. It's start/stop traffic through the neighborhood because there's no buses, interstate, etc to service the area where all the growth is happening. It also doesn't help that promised projects, like new parks, have been stuck in limbo for the last 15 years with more than a few proposals to try and turn that land into new housing developments. What I'm saying is housing is important and nice, but we actually need public utilities to be upgraded and to grow with the housing increase. It's untenable to add 10,000 housing units into an area originally designed to service 1000.
- delichon 9mo agoI'm so NIMBY that I moved my backyard from a county with 4,000 to 1 people per square mile. A big attraction was the dark nights for amateur astronomy. Then the state decided that this was the perfect place to build 100 megawatts of 630 foot tall wind turbines with a blinking red beacon on top of each one. My best bet now may be to move to orbit like S.R. Hadden. But it'll have to be high orbit, away from the satellite constellations.
- WarmWash 9mo agoI'd say the blinking red lights are pretty mild compared to the non-stop LEO satellites you see zipping across the sky anywhere on earth nowadays.
- sejje 9mo agoHow do you measure? I can't really think of a way to measure it that would come out how you said.
- flumpcakes 9mo agoYou can point the telescope away from the wind turbines, you can't point your telescope away from the night sky?
- triceratops 9mo ago> 1 people per square mile... Then the state decided that this was the perfect place to build 100 MW of 630 foot wind turbines That is correct, for the reason you yourself gave. Since it bothers you so much personally, I'm very sorry about your bad luck. But it was objectively the right decision.
- ericmcer 9mo agoIt does feel sometimes like you can't escape. I got tired of the nonstop noise and loud cars of a big city and moved to a smaller suburb. Then I learned about Leaf Blowers. If every neighbor has gardeners come at ~7am once every two weeks, the odds are you will wake up to the soothing sound of a 2 stroke Leaf Blower almost every morning!
- ericmcer 9mo ago> one of them filed a complaint with the California State Bar, saying that I was practicing law without a license. They said because I’m not an attorney (which is true), I was offering “legal analysis,” which only licensed attorneys are allowed to do. Do lawyers still really believe they can just throw some legal jargon at laypeople and we will just get confused and back down? Like not only do we have every single law and legal precedent on a device in our pocket, we also have AI's that can instantly answer questions. I am sure shit like that might have worked before 2010 when you would have to scramble to figure out if what they were saying was true or not, but it just seems antiquated to attempt it nowadays.
- mothballed 9mo agoAlso hilarious to think you can't offer "legal analysis" without a license. As long as you don't do it for hire or while representing yourself as an attorney, the first amendment protects your right to offer your legal analysis of something. The exceptions are either are in regards to offering commercial services or representation without a license, not the underlying speech.
- Aurornis 9mo agoThere are a lot of old laws on the books about licensing that go beyond legal advice. In many places it’s illegal to call yourself an engineer unless you match certain criteria, such as being a licensed engineer or working for a company in the industry that can oversee your work in a specified capacity. There was a famous case where someone tried to get some attention about a traffic problem at an intersection in their city. They included a drawing of the intersection. The politicians involved didn’t like person so they tried to retaliate by going after the person for doing civil engineering work (aka making a drawing of a road) without an engineering license. The worst part is that they actually might have had a case under the licensing laws. The licensing laws are outdated and mostly unenforced, but they’re out there. If you call yourself a software engineer you might be breaking a law in your location.
- red-iron-pine 9mo ago> In many places it’s illegal to call yourself an engineer unless you match certain criteria, such as being a licensed engineer or working for a company in the industry that can oversee your work in a specified capacity. that is the case in most countries. the US is an outlier in the First World in that sense. only country where you could be called a Sandwich Engineer with a straight face and not get sued.
- joshuaheard 9mo agoRancho Palos Verdes is a small established hillside community with equestrian 1 - 5 acre lots. The absurdity of adding 650 homes to this area is astounding. Right next door is Hawthorne which has plenty of space for such housing. Activists like this person, lobbying a city they have no relation to, to enforce an overreaching state law, are part of what is making people and companies leave California.
- boplicity 9mo agoCan you clarify why it is absurd to add density to an area with huge 5 acre lots?
- joshuaheard 9mo agoA community of 5-acre equestrian lots is pastoral. Dumping a 650 housing project in the middle of that would destroy its character.
- hnav 9mo agoHorses aren't native, maybe they destroyed the character first.
- akramachamarei 9mo agoIf the neighbors of these lots care to maintain their vacancy, they ought to do so the more naturally legal way: by collectively buying and owning those lots.
- pavel_lishin 9mo agoOr why cities should be able to ignore state laws, for that matter.
- joshuaheard 9mo agoWhich is likely why they are doing it. The City of Huntington Beach had a similar problem: there was simply no room to build additional housing. They sued the state and lost. The law is overreaching, but it's the law.
- prewett 9mo agoGoing around to municipalities that you are not a resident of and saying "we will sue you into obeying state law" is basically being a tattletale. Nobody likes that. I'm sympathetic to more housing, and I think state laws should be followed, but I'm not sympathetic to the author. Also, I just dislike activism in general, which seems like it generally is trying to force people to do things they don't want to do through passing laws. I get that there is sometimes a need raise attention. But generally it seems like activists are very one-sided, agenda/ideologically driven. It also feels like they are trying to find meaning in activism (yeah, we forced other people to do what we think is Right), instead of healthier, more traditional forms of meaning.
- pixl97 9mo ago> "we will sue you into obeying state law" is basically being a tattletale. Is going into cities that are violating civil rights laws basically being a tattletale? >they don't want to do through passing laws. Yes, that is how the rule of law works.
- triceratops 9mo agoSo if I build an apartment building on some lots zoned for single-family and someone complains, they're a "tattletale" too? And nobody should like that either?
- s5300 9mo ago[dead]
- calvinmorrison 9mo agoIsn't there a first mover advantage? Whoever breaks the strike would be sitting on gold? Think if a low density city in California said "OK we are zoning up" and everyone there could sell out for $$$. It's only useful while the prices are high. Seems like a good idea anyway
- laweijfmvo 9mo agoNot all of California is as desirable as the Bay Area, LA, or other coastal cities. Actually most of it is quite undesirable comparatively.
- kova12 9mo ago> They want to shut down our right to be heard in the first place. there's no such right, never been. Just because one has a right to speak, doesn't make it an obligation for others to listen
- talkingtab 9mo agoYimby vs Nimby is yet another divisive jingoism - simply putting tags on things and then using them as if significant. The situation is more complex. The forces about housing right now are incredibly destructive. Rich people want to make more money by building expensive homes. In this case NIMBY is the correct solution. In other cases Rich People want to prevent affordable housing. In this case YIMBY is the correct solution. But blindly applying these terms provides a cover for a complicated situation. We have cults of personality, and now we have cults of Jargonism. Neither helps us. Being outraged because lawyers don't want you to speak is great. The issues legal and housing issues are far more complex and important.
- epistasis 9mo ago> Rich people want to make more money by building expensive homes. Rich people want to make more money by blocking homes from being built, thereby driving up their property values and making all housing in the area more expensive. You present a very simplistic view that does not begin to capture the complexity of what's actually happening in practice: > Rich people want to make more money by building expensive homes. In this case NIMBY is the correct solution. Why would NIMBYism ever be the answer here? What values does it represent? Allowing rich people to build housing for rich people means that the rich in need of housing don't take away more affordable housing. And when rich people are forced to pay for more affordable hosuing, what used to be affordable becomes unaffordable. Ensuring that rich people's money goes to new building that doesn't hurt less rich people is the correct solution, if one values keeping housing affordable. One should only block that rich housing if one wants the existing housing to become more expensive.
- zahlman 9mo agoAs far as I can tell, you responded to someone literally saying "The situation is more complex." and attempting a refutation of your absolutist view, by accusing that this is a "very simplistic view" — and then generalizing "rich people" as a group without considering strata of wealth at all nor considering more than one possible strategy for accumulating real estate wealth.
- notatoad 9mo ago>one of them filed a complaint with the California State Bar, saying that I was practicing law without a license. This sounds suspiciously similar to what happened to Chuck Marohn from StrongTowns.
- cosmic_cheese 9mo agoThe thing that gets me is how many people are seemingly in favor of preserving zoning that keeps out mom and pop corner grocers and cute coffee shops and the like. It’s just like… why?! I can’t wrap my head around it. There’s no downside to being able to top off on milk and eggs by taking a leisurely stroll on a sunny Saturday morning. That sounds downright idyllic. People would rather stay marooned in the middle of an endless desert of houses with essentials being a 30-45m drive away.
- jsbisviewtiful 9mo agoRecently moved to an area that has some very small local shopping centers every .4 mile or so and it's been amazing. I can walk to a local bodega, a hardware store, some coffee shops, restaurants and a local pharmacy within 15-20 minutes. Not sure how I ever lived without the options.
- isubkhankulov 9mo agoCurious where this might be - assuming NYC?
- t-writescode 9mo agoNYC, Seattle, Chicago, probably lots of places in CA, literally anywhere in Europe
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- wolvoleo 9mo agoYeah I love that about living in a European City. I don't even own a car and haven't driven one for 8 years now. I hope I'll never need one again. There's stores, restaurants, a laundromat all within 2 minutes walk. The subway is 5-10 minutes (3 different lines with different walking times) Additionally I spend so much less on transport and no longer waste time driving. When I'm riding public transport I can read stuff. I don't see any negatives.
- innagadadavida 9mo agoA key issue that often gets missed is that job growth and housing supply are tightly linked. When cities add office jobs without adding enough housing, the results are predictable: longer commutes, overcrowded housing, or both. In that sense, it makes little sense to approve large amounts of office space without considering the housing capacity needed to support it. If the jobs-to-housing ratio grows too high, the costs are pushed onto workers and surrounding areas rather than being addressed directly. This problem is compounded by limited public transit and inadequate road infrastructure. Framing the issue solely as NIMBY opposition misses the structural imbalance at the core of the problem. Instead of treating symptoms or assigning blame, governments should focus on correcting the underlying mismatch between employment growth and housing supply.
- supertrope 9mo agoLocal governments have a huge incentive to favor commercial construction over residential construction: schools. Adding an office building adds tax revenue without adding students. Adding housing means they have to enroll students.
- somethoughts 9mo agoI think this is the issue - if the NIMBYs want to protest things they should really start when the office space gets built. The filled office space full of white collar jobs paying $200K is what triggers the eye of the residential developers of high density housing as it provides a basis for the profit margin spreadsheet model.
- fortran77 9mo agoHe probably shouldn't call his group "Yimby Law". Just like if you're not a PE you can't (legally) call your company "Foobar Engineering" in most states. If he tries to incorprate as "Yimby Law" he may hit a roadblock in some areas. Secretaries of State regulate business entity names and often bar or scrutinize words that imply a regulated profession (e.g., “bank,” “trust,” sometimes “law”) if you are not licensed or not forming the appropriate kind of professional corporation. However he's free to send a letter, just not incorporate a business called "Yimby Law". He should change it to "Yimby Citizens Group" or "Yimby Institute" or something.
- kemitchell 9mo agoStates do have rules against business entity names that mislead about regulated professions. California, for example, prohibits names that suggest an entity is a "professional corporation", a particular type of entity limited to regulated professions, when it is not. But I would be very surprised to learn that "Law" alone has been relegated to lawyer practice in any state of the union. Presumably so would organizations like Bloomberg Law, Westlaw, FindLaw, Free Law Project, Groklaw, etc. Lawyers don't own law. The law belongs to the public. So says this active attorney member of the State Bar of California, and I'll stand on any law firm's conference table in my boots and say that.
- unyttigfjelltol 9mo ago> filed a complaint with the California State Bar, saying that I was practicing law without a license California gave birth to anti-SLAPP torts for a reason I guess.[1] Then you can have a mini-litigation about litigation, which would prove the NIMBY wrong for their “complaint” or the state bar wrong for failing to screen frivolous or malicious use of their processes. For some reason this article brought home to me that these NIMBYs are expressing hostility to neighbors, community and to the idea that people should have a place to live. I wonder if they realize or even consider the implications of their positions. [1] https://www.sfbar.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/anti-slapp.pdf https://www.sfbar.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/anti-slapp....
- ugh123 9mo ago> I’m leaving out the name of the person who filed the complaint Why? Should be outed
- bigstrat2003 9mo agoBecause starting online lynch mobs is harmful to the fabric of society, and that is what happens when you name and shame individuals online.
- ugh123 9mo agoBut it's concrete information (a letter) shared with the public. It's not hearsay. Especially for a purported lawyer should be able to stand by their demands in public.
- alsetmusic 9mo agoI sure hope the people who assaulted others in those stories faced charges. People in the USA are entirely too entitled.
- stackedinserter 9mo agoUnpopular opinion: there's nothing wrong with NIMBY. It's totally ok to not volunteer to have a dumpster at your house. Society may want it, but they lose nothing, gain everything, and you're left with a house with dumpster nearby. If society wants to put dumpster so badly, compensate to those who (practically) lose their house. Let everyone pay, that's fair. Picking "haha this will be the loser this time" is not. It's easy to be YIMBY when you don't own anything.
- danny_codes 9mo agoSuch a strange assumption that your neighborhood would get worse by increasing density. It seems there’s some strange bias in play where NIMBYs are somehow fearful of density. FWIW SFH economics isn’t sustainable in highly desirable areas. You have to redistribute wealth from workers to land owners (the CA model), or raise taxes commensurate to resource consumption. I suspect there’s a limit to how much feudalism the working class will allow, and if land owners had to pay for the resources they consume they’d have to densify anyway. Really the whole thing survives on handouts from workers to landowners
- zug_zug 9mo agoHypothetically, what about allowing new property only of higher quality than existing ones? That way to assure it’s a net improvement for everyone
- danny_codes 9mo agoQuality is subjective. You would need an arbiter. For example, I would enjoy having an art collective and a funky performance space nearby, but I’m sure many people would consider that a downgrade
- stackedinserter 9mo ago> strange assumption that your neighborhood would get worse by increasing density. I didn't make such assumption, I don't understand it either.
- vdupras 9mo agoNative americans were initially pretty YIMBY and that ended up very well for them. In any sane world, being open and welcoming is a pretty rad posture to have. But in a capitalist world? Naive and stupid.