Hacker News Reader

Comment by chii | Hacker News Reader

> how to build despite of NIMBYism, not how to reason with it.

i think it's "easy" - pay the existing NIMBY people the equivalent in lost value when constructing objects in their "backyard".

View on HN

I wonder how it meshes with the idea of property rights.

The title that a NIMBY has is for their lot and their house. It's not on anything next to it, it's not on the view from their windows, not on the social strata living nearby, etc.

I don't see any right to limit the nearby construction from those who already live there, except when the new construction would be dangerous to their health or safety (so no oil refinery next to a housing block).

The mechanism of NIMBYism is noise in media and promises to vote against politicians approving of the construction. I wonder if that can be overcome by counter-noise ("we want to live somewhere!") and promises for vote for the politician form those who benefit from the new development. If the new development is higher density, simple arithmetic of voting would make it politically more profitable to build more units, given that the people who are going to live in them would vote based on that.

> The mechanism of NIMBYism is noise in media and promises to vote against politicians approving of the construction.

The main method of NIMBYism, and the secret to its success, is to put restrictive zoning laws and building codes in place.

Which is why Japan has zoning laws on the national levels -- and the zones are very different. http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html

> i think it's "easy" - pay the existing NIMBY people the equivalent in lost value when constructing objects in their "backyard".

Suppose the difference is actually large. Their currently million dollar house will be worth half a million dollars.

Who is paying this money? Low income people who need housing? They haven't got it, that was the original problem. Local taxpayers? That's just the original homeowners paying themselves.

The property developer who built the new construction.

Where does the property developer get that money? From the low-income people?

No, they get it from the rich, land owning NIMBYs through taxes.

So then what's the point of the taxes instead of just letting their housing prices come down?

If the government believes that it's in the public interest to have low income housing, then the government should pay for it. It's not exactly the same as the homeowners paying themselves, either. Structuring it this way ensures that the cost is allocated fairly across all of society. If we believe that it is in societies interest to have low income housing, then society as a whole should pay for it. The cost shouldn't just fall on a few unlucky homeowners. Making the cost widely and evenly shared makes it equitable.

Who's gonna pay for it? The government? How do they get money? Taxes? So we pay the government (they of course pay the federal employees and some pork barreling) to pay for affordable housing? In the end who will really pay for it aside from the people who will live in affordable housing?

My whole comment was an answer to that exact question. The government pays, because the government paying smooths out the hit. The cost is more equitably distributed over the whole population, as opposed to being concentrated in a few unlucky neighborhoods.

My point is the government never really pays, we pay the government after all, but I understand your point too.

The people who pay for affordable housing are those who caused the housing market to be unaffordable. That's only fair.

If candy bars are too expensive it's the buyers fault? That's fair?

Sorry I misread your comment!

If they wanted to ensure the buildings around then would not change, they should have bought them too; the idea that your house value is supposed to be protected by the state is ridiculous. Just like stock market choices, no one should be bailing out house owners who treat the house as an investment. If you're just living in it, value don't matter.

but if, as the OP article suggests, there is no lost value, then there is no incremental value to pay existing NIMBYs. Otherwise you're just paying people off based on some subjective measure, which does not seem eminently sustainable.

Obviously, there are plenty of potential issues, such as sampling bias that may confound the article's conclusions, but it's not something to outright ignore, either.

The problem then is you can avoid paying NIMBYs by manufacturing studies claiming they didn't lose any value... Which may be the motivation here. It's very easy to fudge a study, even direct analyses like this. I'm skeptical.

Only if you believe 1996-2006 is impartial information 14 years later and not cherry picked

There wouldn't be lost money at all, lots that can be turned from SFH to 8 unit condos are worth way more.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com