Battle lines being drawn: A map of YIMBY-NIMBY skirmishes in Bay Area
mercurynews.com
mercurynews.com
I suppose if you want that, you should live somewhere where renting is not allowed.
(I own a two-family house in Somerville MA, and we rent out the first floor unit and part of our unit as well.)
...But, you have s point. Some activists want to steamroll any and everyone. They want to go into residential neighborhoods and remake them into SoMa or Van Ness; they're often not saying, yes build in my SoMa, The Mission BkYd, no, they're saying, hey you over there with the yard, we wanna build over there! There are lots of areas prime for infill. You don’t have to go disturbing traditionally single-family-home neighborhoods and reshape them into your image.
Otherwise the state of California is the sovereign entity and all the citizens therein get a vote.
...but that’s also how our system of government works, so just own it already.
What the OP is pointing out is the doublespeak nature of “YIMBY” as a rallying cry. Just be honest about what you want: unless you truly only care about what you can do with your property, what you really want is for other people to stop fighting development in their backyard, too.
Trying to frame this as a drive for personal choice misses the point of the debate: the other side doesn’t care what you do in your backyard, but they sure as hell don’t want it affecting theirs.
(Nothing I’m saying here is advocating for a side in this argument. If you’re downvoting me reflexively because you think I’m being “NIMBY”, you’re blinded by ideology.)
How is it not my backyard? I think YIMBY is totally appropriate.
It’s fine to want density, but stop being dishonest about why other people might oppose what you want.
I own property in another city and it is bat shit to me that you can not build freely on your land. The people filing lawsuits about their view or forcing environmental impact studies (when it doesn't matter) need to get smacked back to their property lines. If they don't like it, they can buy the land they want to control. If they don't have enough money for that, tough.
The “YIMBY movement” starts with a terrible, condescending name that implicitly mocks the other side. It’s as if the GOP changed it’s name to the “anti-libtard party”.
Why should the people with the money and power listen to you when you position yourselves only as opposition to a cartoon version of what they believe?
Also: every city in the world restricts what you can do with property you own. You can’t build a radioactive waste site in your backyard, or a pork rendering plant in your garage. Get over it.
I am also a rich person and have heard some very dumb excuses as to why my colleagues' neighborhoods should stay zoned single family. From traffic to character. In the end, people are just preserving their home values at the expense of others and it is not a sustainable system. That motivation is misguided though, their million dollar plot of land is still going to be worth a million dollars with a duplex on it.
I don’t love how some members of the YC community (often independently wealthy tech types) seem to suggest that this latter group need to sacrifice themselves by supporting policies that would effectively undermine the only thing that is allowing them to stay in the Bay Area.
I realize that the YIMBY crowd fervently believe that eventually, at some point, their policies will benefit both groups, but in the meanwhile the house prices here are stagnating and predicted to fall next 12 months which is already causing anxiety. Simply dismissing this group as NIMBYs who don’t want to look at high rises so badly misses the point that I’m not surprised they are failing in their mission
If they already own a house in the bay area, why would falling housing prices affect their ability to stay here?
I can't see how a market price decrease of a house that one owns, or has a mortgage on, could bankrupt someone or cause them to be evicted. The worst thing that could happen is for they homeowner to go "underwater", but even then, as long as they continue to pay their monthly mortgage payments, they get to keep their house.
Maybe they have an ARM mortgage, and are planning to refinance just before the adjustable period begins, and are worried they won’t be able to get new financing if the home value is significantly lower than the remaining principle? That would be easily solved by refinancing now into a fixed mortgage, but maybe they can’t afford the increased monthly payment that would cause?
That’s the only scenario I can think of, and it seems unlikely to affect many Bay Area homeowners, given the incredible rise in prices recently.
If you understand how a market price decrease would cause a homeowner to be evicted, please explain it.
To think that this is a rosy story for everyone with no losers is a fairy tale.
I believe that the already squeezed, non-tech, middle class of the Bay Area will suffer at the expense of new, younger tech workforce (and incidentally play into the hand of the actually wealthy tech leaders who are some of the biggest proponents). If you choose not believe that, then please provide a historical example of where deflationary pressure on house prices have been a boon for the existing working/middle class that own houses anywhere.
I realize that this is not a popular opinion among the HN crowd, which obviously skews young and tech, but it certainly is the opinion/anxiety that I hear expressed on the ground in the Bay Area among non-tech families. Are they delusional and should simply welcome lower house prices? Are their wealth and security something that must be sacrificed for the greater good? Maybe.
But I am very suspicious of some of the tech leader pushing this. It’s obviously great for them if they can pay their employees less because rent is lower.
> To think that this is a rosy story for everyone with no losers is a fairy tale.
> I believe that the already squeezed, non-tech, middle class of the Bay Area will suffer at the expense of new, younger tech workforce (and incidentally play into the hand of the actually wealthy tech leaders who are some of the biggest proponents). If you choose not believe that, then please provide a historical example of where deflationary pressure on house prices have been a boon for the existing working/middle class that own houses anywhere.
I never said that a decrease in housing prices would be good for non-tech homeowners. I just contested your claim that it would lead to them being evicted.
There is some short term risk that if someone needs to sell their house for some reason, they will get less money for it. Home equity loans won't give you as much money at that time either. But neither of these factors should cause evictions.
We're not talking about repealing Prop 13 in this discussion (which is another law which many YIMBYs want repealed, but if areas were up-zoned at least there would be one path to relieve the pressure on housing availability).
Would you be in favor of bailing out those that lost their house when prices were falling in ‘08-‘10?