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Comment by bradleyjg | Hacker News Reader

I rent my apartment. I know that I might have to move. The people that own the building might want to do something else with it and since they own it that's their choice.

Single family homeowners own their own homes. It can't get sold out from underneath them. But they don't own the plots next store or across the street. If their happiness with their living situation is dependent on those plots having the same buildings on them then they need to buy those plots too. Then they get to decide what happens to them.

A homeowner NIMBYite is exactly the same as a renter that agitates for imposing rent control.

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Sorta.

When we lived in the city I had to file a permit to fix my 3' high fence. Pay something like $100 just to have "permission" to start working on something that was rotting and falling over. I don't really consider that "owning".

Ditto zoning and a bunch of other things. When we had the chance we moved out to the country so we could use our land how we wanted without having to live in the covenants of what the city lays down(for instance one of the local towns doesn't allow beekeeping, regardless of plot size).

I totally understand that there's a place for high density living and that some people enjoy that life. However when you see rapid change in these tech centers understand that are some people didn't sign up for that when it came around.

[edit]

I should add that I really wish more companies would support remote work. It both solves the housing issue and lets people live in the areas that fit their lifestyle better.

On a side note: Can we talk about fence height restrictions? Ain't that some bullshit?

eh, a shitty neighbor can make for an easy case on fence restrictions. Its one thing if you have a legitimate reason to put a high fence up, but removing all restrictions would make it really easy for a neighbor to fuck someone over. Say your neighbor is on your south side and puts up a fence that blocks a lot of sunlight to your land, now your garden is useless or you have to spend more money on lighting. Another example, though not for height, would be putting a fence up along your shared driveway up to the street, now theyve made it more dangerous for you to just get out of your house onto the road

But...Freedom!

My dad solved that by buying the land in front of his house so that someone couldn't build and block his view.

I get that people want it all but for example. Friend bought 26th floor corner apartment in a 32 story buiding with amazing view. 2 years later someone built another 32 story building next door blocking 30% of his view. Did he have some kind of right to prevent that? Another friend bought a lot and had a house built on it in a downtown-ish area. All houses in the area have no yard, at most they have a backyard porch big enough for a couple of chairs. His house now blocks most of the sunlight into at least one of the houses around his lot. His neighbor complains. If she wanted not to be blocked she really needed to by the land.

I don't see any other reasonable solution to these types of problems. The fence seems like yet another where the owner of the land should be able to build the tall fence. I say that as well as my mom used to sunbath topless in our backyard as a kid. She mostly took advantage of the fact she didn't expect anyone to look over the fence but the fence was only about 7ft high and houses around us all 1 story tall.

In other words permit rules are bad when they stop you from doing improvements you like (fence repair), but good when they stop your neighbor from turning a single home into a duplex.

Isn't it a reasonable expectation for city and suburb dwellers that when you affect your neighbors, you might have to get permission? And when your interest is greater than their inconvenience, that you should be granted permission? And that authority should be an expert at it and impartial?

> but good when they stop your neighbor from turning a single home into a duplex.

I wasn't talking at all about what the neighboring plot does. The parent was making the claim that when you 'own' you can do whatever you want with your land which is far from the truth.

Look, I have no beef with people who want to live in high density spaces. That's totally cool(and more power to them) however in our case we had retired neighbors all up in our business(since they had nothing better to do) and city codes dictating exactly what we can do with our land.

Unless you research extensively before you buy(see beekeeping above) it's very easy for your neighbors to make your life a living hell after you buy your house(see also HoAs).

In my town, extremely rich people or banks never seem to have problems getting the necessary permits and even exceptions.

The cops will even close a major street for the food catering trucks for the private parties they throw on public lands and in public buildings.

You could argue that a community of people collectively own a given area.

Also, is there a substantive difference between being a "NIMBYite" and simply opposing market externalities?

People opposing market externalities would say an activity should be punished or aggressively taxed to minimize the amount of it that goes on. Tax and fine polluters to protect the air. Tax and take the parking away from drivers to protect bicyclists and pedestrians. Etc.

A NIMBY says it's fine to do something, just don't do it near me. Yes, freeways are necessary, just not too close to my house. Yes, we need a waste-water treatment plant, just don't put it in my neighborhood.

Unless you are a literal cartoon villain, you probably don't want public policy to minimize having a place to live. You just want people to have their places to live somewhere else.

> You could argue that a community of people collectively own a given area.

You could argue it but it would be wrong. They could collectively own a given area -- form a corporation and buy a neighborhood. Then they would collectively own a given area and the collective entity would be entirely within its rights to decide what does or doesn't get built on a piece of land it owns (subject to the corporate governance rules).

That's essentially how co-op apartment buildings work. But these homeowner NIMBYites don't want to do that. They want to exercise the incidents of ownership without making an investment.

Given how local governments are set up they have the raw power to do what they are doing. But the rest of us don't have to pretend it is okay. This isn't stopping a gold mine from polluting a river, it's not building public schools, it's not defending the country from invasion -- it's exercising naked political power to take property rights from people that bought them simply because they want to and they have the votes.

> They could collectively own a given area -- form a corporation and buy a neighborhood.

They do, it's called a municipal corporation, and it makes it decisions through voting.

Even better, you don't even need to be a homeowner to influence the decision of this corporation -- anyone living there is allowed to vote.

This cuts both ways -- people who 'didn't invest' also have a voice in property development, precisely through that same democratic process that you seem to consider so illegitimate.

> it's exercising naked political power to take property rights from people that bought them simply because they want to and they have the votes.

I mean -- if you really want to live in a free-market paradise, there are plenty of places that don't practice much zoning, like Houston. Anyone who buys real estate in the Bay Area ought to research exactly what the local laws in the area are first, and if they don't that's on them.

> precisely through that same democratic process that you seem to consider so illegitimate.

In ancient Athens a plebiscite could exile any citizen. Do you consider that a legitimate exercise of democratic power?

> I mean -- if you really want to live in a free-market paradise

Is it fun to beat up strawmen? Believing the public policy ought to be driven by appeals to public reason and not naked special pleading is more Rawls than Rand.

> In ancient Athens a plebiscite could exile any citizen. Do you consider that a legitimate exercise of democratic power?

Absolutely, it was part of the social contract and certainly understood by any citizen that their continued membership in the body public rests at the pleasure of the the public will.

Even today, it's the right of sovereign nations to claim or revoke citizenship as they please

> Believing the public policy ought to be driven by appeals to public reason

I agree that public policy ought to be driven by reason, but presuming that you have reason on your side, when 'reason' just so happens to also be nakedly self-serving, doesn't seem very honest.

Either it's ok to vote and agitate for your self-interest (including yourself), or it's not. You can't say 'it's evil for homeowners to want what's good for themselves', but then not apply that same standard to yourself.

> Given how local governments are set up they have the raw power to do what they are doing. But the rest of us don't have to pretend it is okay.

What's to pretend? Local governments have a responsibility to their residents. Granted, that doesn't give them free reign to hurt non-residents, but they can't simply ignore the concerns of those who fund them and elected them into office.

I say this as someone who has been negatively impacted by the restrictive zoning in the bay area. It would benefit me personally more if they allowed more dense housing.

> it's exercising naked political power to take property rights from people that bought them simply because they want to and they have the votes.

Who's property right's are being revoked, the real estate developers? Again, what's the difference between that and the gold mine? The gold mine is a good thing. It provides jobs, adds wealth to the economy, etc. And yet, a gold mine polluting a river increases health risks, mars the natural beauty, and decreases the property value for those living downstream. We expect the gold mine to help reduce or bear the cost to those they affect.

On the other hand, real estate developers who build lots of high-density living also increase health risks (traffic, pollution), mar the natural beauty (bulldozing trees, fields) and decrease the property value of those living nearby. You may argue that it's not to the same degree, and I would agree, but I think it's still the same kind of situation.

An industrial resource extraction operation is not in anywhere near the same moral category as more neighbors.

I'm confused, are you saying that industrial resource extraction is evil? I certainly don't think so. It's a necessary part of our economy and our quality of life. Think the applications for gold in medical devices, for example.

But the benefits of resource extraction to society don't justify ignoring the interests of people living nearby. Ditto for creating new housing near highly desirable urban zones.

If anything the gold mine has an advantage in that, while people can live other places (even if at a somewhat lesser quality of life) you can't can't really build the mine somewhere else.

"A homeowner NIMBYite is exactly the same as a renter that agitates for imposing rent control."

Perhaps.

But a democratic process that generates NIMBY policies is the same as a democratic process that generates rent control: neither outcome is off-limits in our Democracy and both should be respected.

I personally value democracy more than I value land-use policy in one particular place. I further find it disheartening to hear of disregarding democratic outcomes from the very same progressive left that should be championing that process.

Depends how you frame the democratic outcomes - if the 4 neighbors all vote on it then a new housing proposal will fail but I don’t see that as particularly democratic. If the entire state of California voted on it (because to a small proportional extent it affects everyone), it may pass. And that is hopefully the trajectory we are in, people are electing state representatives that are starting to pass by-right legislation, plus there will hopefully be related ballot measures in the next few years. It is democratic.

I think the conflict here is between democracy at different levels (street/neighborhood-level democracy vs. city-level vs, state-level). Not democracy vs. anarchy or authoritarianism.

The outcome of the democratic process is respected in the sense that it controls what happens. There’s no reason to respect in the larger sense of thinking the outcome is just simply because it is democratic. Majorities can act, and often do act, unjustly.

It is a fundamental principle of American democracy that the people ought to exercise thier power virtuously and it is entirely appropriate to chide them when they do not. Nothing in the “progressive left” philosophy is to the contrary as far as I’m aware.

The simplistic notion that whatever a bare majority of the people want is good went out of fashion more than 2000 years ago.

The people that own the building might want to do something else with it and since they own it that's their choice.

Well, that depends. One could argue that by allowing you to establish a home in their apartment building (in exchange for rent), they've taken on a responsibility towards you. Nobody can build up a decent life if they were under the constant fear to be evicted. That's why as a tenant, you are especially worth of protection from arbitrary actions would make you lose your home, no matter if the building you live in belongs to someone else. In other words, there must be a very good reason for the landlord to make you move out, such as e.g., they need it for themselves to live in.

At least that's one way of seeing it.

When you lease an apartment, you agree to a lease term that secured that apartment for a particular amount of time. That's the arrangement. 99 year leases are possible, if that's what you're looking for.

That depends on what legislation you live in. The model I described above conforms to the law in Germany.

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