The real issue with NIMBYs is how restrictive zoning is. Sure, you can build anything you want if it conforms, but good luck getting it to conform. For example, single-family home neighborhoods are pretty much stuck that way. Want a nice, compact apartment building? Or maybe even a fourplex? Good luck. In my reasonably-sized college town, upzoning happens once PER DECADE.
This is the affordable housing crisis at its core, and it’s remarkably procedural and boring. People are unable to afford homes and apartments because of simple tedium that takes place in beige board rooms at 11:00 PM on a Monday (i.e. local politics).
Yeah, zoning in the US tends to be single use, which prevents most buildings from being built in most places. I recently read a fantastic blog post on how zoning works in Japan, where uses are instead ranked by how much of a "nuisance" they are, and zones have a maximum nuisance level. Anything at or below that level can be constructed in that zone.
http://devonzuegel.com/post/north-american-vs-japanese-zonin...
What is preventing companies from moving to less expensive cities? By the free market logic, it should decrease demand/rent in hot cities, and provide these companies more affordable workers.
At which point is the housing pressure strong enough so that jobs start moving elsewhere, and market effects between cities or state come into play (i.e. if a city "choose" to limit housing it will limit it's economic potential compared to others)?
Those cities also have the same restrictive zoning laws, preventing new office buildings and housing just like the expensive cities.
Many American cities are experiencing price increases out of line with prevailing wages to the point that the median income cannot afford the median house. And we're not talking NYC and SF;think Nashville.
Furthermore, talent is concentrated in a few areas. A software firm in Nome, Alaska will have a harder time hiring than one in New York. Infrastructure like airports keeps businesses in hubs. Ports make goods cheap to ship. Having large numbers of local customers helps too
In Silicon Valley the dynamic is different, because it’s mostly global headquarters full of upper management and highly paid engineers. Unlike low-wage employees in regional offices, those people are not considered disposable, and aren’t willing to relocate on a whim. So relocating headquarters to another city or state is extremely hard for large companies.
Source: I rent in one of these atrocities.
This free for all world sounds downright scary.
Seriously, wtf.
This coffee shop apparently meets all current zoning rules, though the employees may need to be somewhat less scantily-clad than the ones working at other locations. Regardless, this shows one way in which zoning rules don't always predict developments that neighbors might reasonably want to avoid.
1: https://abc7news.com/business/lingerie-bikini-clad-baristas-...
EDIT: Thanks for downvoting, but perhaps a response would be more productive?
a) Fix the zoning rules
b) Make everybody ask the city council and all their neighbors for permission for every little thing, every time
(a) is at least trying to make an even playing field for everyone. The rules are for everybody, and everybody has to follow them, regardless of political connections or money or lawyering, etc. At least in theory.
With (b), you start by trying to get an exception carved out for yourself, so in practice only those with the most patience, money, lawyers, political connections, etc. will be able to get what they want, and everybody else gets the Kafka treatment.
For background, I live in a neighborhood where the property sizes are much much smaller than the rest of the zoned area. So we have to get exceptions for many things because the rules were written for properties that are 10x to 50x the size. I wish that rules could be written to cover every possible eventuality, and I personally feel the pain because they cannot (I have to pay for every exception and variance in the approval process). So having seen how rules are blunt instruments, I have some sympathy for folks who are caught up in the process.
I should also note that this is somewhat closer to a strip club than a Hooters, since the attire is lingerie, not tight shirts. Basically, they're falling somewhere between two things that were known to exist (strip clubs and Hooters) when the rules were presumably made. In the future, I'm sure towns around here will make rules that are more restrictive, citing this as an example of what happens when you leave more room.
Emphasis mine.
In other words, you are free to build whatever you want on your own property, as long as its effects don't negatively impact the value of mine. (I personally will never block developments, but I think I would have a right to be pissed off as hell if something like that happened, still.)
That is nowhere near a good enough rule. What if I buy commercial retail property in a bustling district, but over a few years the bustling industry shifts half a mile away, leaving my district with less foot traffic and thus negatively impacting the value of my property? Have those developers harmed me in a way that should be illegal?
You may be tempted to say “well, no, obviously that’s different.” And indeed, it is obviously different. But the challenge is coming up with a rule that actually works without needing you or someone to decide on a case by case basis what is “obviously” an exception.
Second, it’s frustrating that people only think of themselves. “What about my view?” What about the hundreds or thousands of people who can’t live near their jobs or their kids’ schools because of your precious view? What about the people who will be forced to drive in and get stuck in traffic, people who probably can’t bike because they’re forced to live in another town only reachable by a long highway trip? What about the people who are forced to pay higher and higher rents because everyone blocks development everywhere in the city?
Screw your view, honestly.
However, think about how you'd feel if you bought a house and spent most of your life savings on it (like most are forced to), only to find that it drops in value dramatically putting you underwater on the payments. It's not just about their "view". They paid for amenities which (whether we like it or not) include the view and environment.
I don't even have a solution - but it's not so simple as "give up your view so more people can live near their jobs".
Also, I don’t think people’s home values drop all that dramatically when new housing is built. We’ve been putting this off for decades, but we’ve also been artificially inflating housing prices. Maybe your tiny bungalow ISN’T actually worth $500,000. Maybe decades of bad local policy have ballooned the price of your house at the expense of others.
And even so, even if building housing makes your house decrease in value, that’s still not a good reason to prevent development. I care much more they cities are healthy and plentiful housing than I do about some Boomers who got lucky with when they bought into the real estate market.
The solution is actually remarkably simple: build more housing. We did it before; plenty of other countries with more sensible zoning laws do it. There aren’t enough places for people to live. We can either start killing people, or we can put up some walls. Personally, I’m a fan of buildings.
Edit: typos (phone)
I also think it's really easy to say "sorry, you fucked up when you spent all your money on a house" if it's someone else. These aren't all "Boomers who got lucky" - they are also millennials buying their houses today at current rates.
I think we have to have more empathy for these people if we want to make progress.
Remember, this all rests on the assumption that building housing necessarily depresses property values, and that isn’t a guarantee. You can tell because it goes further than that. It’s hard to build any housing at all. My city had about 100,000 people in it. I know some smart urban planners and they estimate it would take about 20,000 to 30,000 new units to stabilize our rental market. Not drive prices down, just stabilize. But we can’t even build ONE apartment building, let alone tens of thousands of units. Even if more housing would drive property values down (which it doesn’t necessarily), it would take so much housing before it ever got to that point.
And once again, we can have empathy and we can build housing. I promise one or two apartment buildings isn’t going to ruin grandma and grandpa’s home value. I promise.
The types of people the parent is describing don't buy real estate as an investment. They buy it as an asset. And for most Americans, their house is their most valuable asset.
So can you not spare a shred of sympathy that they are hyper-conscious about what happens to the value of that asset?
Of course I can. My sympathy goes both ways.
>> (Also, building housing doesn’t just tank the value of your home, trust me.)
I'm not talking about simply increasing the supply of housing. The specific example we are discussing is a new skyscraper blocking the view from an existing one.
That means you'll pay less for your property, and you get to enjoy your view for as long as it lasts, and keep some money in your pocket.
If on the other hand you do have all sorts of rights to prevent anyone from building out your view then that same house will cost you a lot more - perhaps more than you'll be able to afford.
Either of these situations seems fair, because you know the rules in advance.
Crappy situations arise when the rules are not clear. In that case, you don't really know how much you should pay for that house, and you may suffer immense angst when your view disappears.
I have a right to what I pay for. This is simply inarguable.
In most highrises, the view tends to make up a significant portion of the value. This is why units become more expensive the higher up they are: the view is better from a higher altitude.
So essentially, when a developer comes and builds another highrise next door, they are destroying a big part of the value of the original highrise units.
So, if I have a right to what I pay for, and someone is doing something to negatively affect that, the NIMBY argument becomes rather straight-forward.
(Again, these aren't my actual views. I'm simply saying I can sympathize with NIMBYs, even though I despise them.)
Hence the stalemate I guess.
I was responding to (middle OP?) "Why shouldn't land owners be able to build whatever they want on their own property? It's not your backyard, it's your neighbors property" and "As long as they follow the noise and disturbance ordinances, then sure."
Those former seems to suggest getting rid of zoning altogether which would cause horrible negative externalities IMO. The latter assumes noise disturbances would somehow balance the market which I highly doubt.
It's more complicated than Sim City ever was.
jzymbaluk said "Why shouldn't land owners be able to build whatever they want on their own property? It's not your backyard, it's your neighbors property" which screams "No zoning" to me.
Then "saagarjha" said "As long as they follow the noise and disturbance ordinances, then sure." which screams "the market will naturally balance homeowner satisfaction with factories/businesses".
I responded with "Are you suggesting that nightclubs should be banned altogether? If not, then where do you suggest to put them since they are inherently noisy?" as without zoning, homeowners, businesses, and factories could be right next to each other.
Having laws about quiet times and public smells prevents the nightclub and abbattoir from locating there without blocking usages.
Chances are that a 50 story building isn't going next to a single family home without serious changes to the entire block. More likely, people want to build multi-families which are not going to ruin your sunlight. Additionally, changing all of this takes a lot of time, just because zoning may be relaxed doesn't mean overnight its going to turn in to Manhattan or Hong Kong as opposed to Paris which largely is ~6 stories and not particularly known for being a hellhole.
It is immoral to always in favor of the people lucky enough to have bought at the right time. Surely it is a difficult balance, but chances are your home has appreciated enough to give you a lot of options too.
Furthermore, when you buy a house, you are a taking a risk. You're making an investment. I don't see why the rest of the world should be bending over backwards and living in stasis to protect your investment. If you want absolute control over what happens on your block, buy your block.
You're treating all real estate as if it's the same, but the world is more complex than that. We're talking about dense metro areas, where development primarily happens to support growing populations and an influx of businesses. How many expensive homes in downtown SF have become worthless because of industrial ventures nearby? Far, far, far less than have become extremely valuable, if any. This isn't just some theory on paper.
In short there are a lot of reasons to want to regulate what people build.
And let’s not be flippant. Nobody wants the ability to build anything anywhere, but it’s eaually absurd to not build much of anything at all. You can have density and affordable housing and a good quality of life; lots of cities do it already!
You can't live in a happy, healthy community without giving up a little bit of control in favour of the common good.
And then so many people in Seattle want to complain about plunging affordability.
"Seattle homeowners have vigorously fought changes to zoning laws that would increase density on the grounds that it would alter the character of neighborhoods filled with picturesque (if small) craftsman-style bungalows."
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-08-30/how-big-t...
So you’re either arguing for zoning to remain static to maintain the property rights of surrounding owners, or someone’s getting screwed when zoning changes.
The equitable solution would be to compensate surrounding owners for their property losing value or them losing enjoyment when zoning changes (similar to eminent domain), but if that makes zoning changes prohibitively expensive (or owners turn down the offer entirely), we’re back to square one. Someone is losing something.
I would rather try to cure cancer than fix land use and housing in California.
So we should use public money to compensate private property owners for making a bad gamble, at the expense of people who need a place to live. I’m sorry, but why is owning property a guarantee of a return on your investment? Should we compensate people who hold stock in coal companies when we regulate the coal industry too?
Them the breaks of real estate law and it’s English origins, and while I won’t dissuade you from action, know that it will take decades before you see meaningful change. Plan accordingly.
They already get compensated in the form of lower taxes. Just like how if the neighbors build something that increases their property value, they need to pay more in taxes.
Big fan of FWD:Everyone by the way, great product.
And thanks! I've been writing regex ten hours a day for the last six weeks to fix thread parsing issues in weird corner cases, we'll have some improvements to the site that will be more visible in the next couple months though.