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Local governments, which have been granted near unchecked authority by state governments, are entirely captured by homeowners.

I'm not fully clear on this statement. Is it putting forth that local governments shouldn't be controlled by the people who are local, or is it saying that homeowners hold more power than renters? If the former, that's just silly. If the latter, renters get the same one vote per person as everybody else. If they don't care enough to vote that's their problem.

Homeowners, like everybody else, vote in their own best interest. If you want higher-density housing figure out a way that it makes a place better for its inhabitants, not worse. Personally I've never lived in a city that got better as it got bigger and I vote accordingly.

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This attitude here is precisely why local zoning is ineffective. The people who are negatively impacted by anti-development policies are the ones that don't get the privilege of living in economically powerful population centers in the first place. Sure, the home-owners might grumble about an apartment blocking their view, more crowded restaurants, or "neighborhood character as a city grows. The people who are negatively impacted by anti-growth policy are people struggling to afford rent in increasingly subdivided units, and the people who can't even afford to move there in the first place.

> … and the people who can't even afford to move there in the first place.

There’s no inalienable right to live in a popular place you cannot afford.

Can you articulate an ethical argument for why it’s a problem that not everyone can afford to move to the most desirable cities?

Does this really need an argument? A primary mechanism for segregation and social inequity over the past century has been the exclusion of "undesirables" from spaces and the simultaneous, "coincidental" allocation of resources to those exclusionary spaces.

It's impossible to have an informed discussion on this topic in the US without acknowledging that basic reality.

Do you believe everyone has a right to housing in any place they might desire to live?

No, of course not. The point is that there's a more nuanced discussion to be had here about what these limits and rights ought to be.

Doesn’t that answer my question, then?

There’s nothing inherently wrong if not everyone can afford to live in desirable cities.

I think the one you’re responding to seems to be in favour of a more nuanced view, rather where I read your argument as absolutes (everyone everywhere). So to some extend you both seem in agreement though the difference is the nuance.

    Doesn’t that answer my question, then?
    
    There’s nothing inherently wrong if not everyone can afford to live in desirable cities.

This comes off as a bad faith counter-argument. AlotOfReading has explicitly stated he believes there exist nuances of substance to this discussion. This response completely ignores his statements in favor of what may be a false dichotomy.

teakettle42: How could one address AlotOfReading's concerns about exclusionary policy making and resource allocation?

I'm of the thinking that it is fine to say one subscribes to the belief that one can't simply live where one chooses for a variety of reasons, but it's another thing to condone, implicitly or otherwise, that only certain classes of people may live in desirable areas. I feel doing so is antithetical to a society that values social mobility.

What I _do_ feel is an under discussed thread of this topic are policies and practices that could be put in place to allow for a greater number of people to have an _opportunity_ to live in such areas. Low income housing, zoning changes, and tax incentives geared towards improving the socioeconomic diversity of an area are some approaches.

Unfortunately, none of these things are possible without local political support or overarching legislation/policy requiring it--bringing us full circle to Manuel_D's original comment.

> Low income housing

This is just a subsidy for employers; they can pay a less-than-living wage, keep the profits, and rely on tax-payer-subsidized housing programs to close the gap.

> zoning changes

This is a give-away to developers.

Increases the entry costs for development beyond what anyone but huge real-estate investment firms can afford. They build out rental units, grow the permanent rental class, and extract rent from the population in perpetuity.

> tax incentives geared towards improving the socioeconomic diversity of an area

Why is socioeconomic diversity in coveted cities a desirable outcome, and specifically, why is it something the government should attempt to engineer using our tax dollars?

There's no inalienable right to not be cripplingly impoverished. But any ethical countries would try to ameliorate that condition.

Is it ethical for a select few to grow enormously wealthy by driving up the cost of living for the many by deliberately causing a shortage of a basic need?

People need jobs to live. They also need a roof over their heads. The jobs are becoming increasingly concentrated in a few metro areas, but the home-owning class constrains the supply of housing and drives up the price of their own assets. Disincentivizing this sort of rent seeking behavior is precisely the kind of thing property taxes accomplish.

> deliberately causing a shortage of a basic need

There’s no housing shortage.

There’s a limited supply in highly desirable locations because they’re highly desirable.

People can and do live elsewhere, working local jobs or commuting.

> The jobs are becoming increasingly concentrated in a few metro areas

That’s just one of many problems of scale; the solution is not to keep scaling up.

> … the home-owning class constrains the supply of housing and drives up the price of their own assets.

Nobody is obligated to destroy their own community to accommodate the interests of rent-seeking land developers and people who don’t live there.

Just to address this from a non US standpoint. While I'm sympathetic toward both the desire to preserve the character and community of a neighbourhood and your antipathy towards rentiers - there absolutely is a housing crisis across Europe (and presumably in the US).

Part of the reason is the lack of social housing provision, with most EU governments reducing or all together abandoning their post war commitments to low cost housing.

Another reason is that, even in this era of remote work, the enormous majority of high paying jobs do require living in a large population centre.

Perhaps the largest reason is the financialisation of housing as an asset class by hedge and other vulture funds. Italy alone seems to have kept the housing crisis / shortage localised to wealthy cities - and it is the only wealthy EU country to have done so. Germany, Ireland, France etc, all have rents and housing costs far higher than their median citizens capacity to comfortably pay, even in very remote and economically depressed areas.

Italy by contrast charges high taxes on 2nd and 3rd properties, effectively blocking the aggregation of empty / underused housing stock. Which has resulted in rural areas and less populous cities being reasonably priced to live in. This is not the case anywhere else in Western Europe.

According to this website [0], the US has the 3rd lowest income/house price ratio in the entire world.

Outside the west coast and parts of the northeast which are geographically limited in building new houses, we basically have infinite land to build housing which is why inflation adjusted price per square foot hasn't really changed in decades [1].

[0]: https://www.numbeo.com/property-investment/rankings_by_count...

[1]: https://www.supermoney.com/inflation-adjusted-home-prices/

Italy by contrast charges high taxes on 2nd and 3rd properties, effectively blocking the aggregation of empty / underused housing stock.

This is a great policy. Owning land you don't live on is perversity on the scale of deciding a patch of ocean is yours and shooting at any boat that crosses it.

>>Perhaps the largest reason is the financialisation of housing as an asset class by hedge and other vulture funds.

Financialization of housing has had no negative impact on housing affordability in regions of the US, mostly in the South, that allow housing supply to grow, instead of constricting it with zoning restrictions. On the contrary, basic economic theory would dictate that more advanced financial markets that facilitate greater volumes of investment into housing would be good for housing affordability, by expanding housing supply, and by doing so, increase the number of units available for rent relative to people looking to rent.

Consider which city has the highest rental rates in the world: San Francisco. It has the most stringent restrictions on housing development, and housing use by owners, of any city in North America.

Inhibiting the market is what creates shortages, and housing is no exception.

We want housing to be commodified, and mass-produced by collections of profit-motivated individuals. Consider: construction has kept rent in Chongqing, China to $75 a month.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/11/world/asia/chongqing-chin...

Yes, the solution is to keep scaling up.

_No_ economy can _sustain_ American style suburban growth.

Read about 'the growth ponzi scheme' [1] or watch a video

https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme

https://youtu.be/y_SXXTBypIg

The limited supply is due mostly to regulations and bureaucratic hurdles. Many cities have introduced lengthy approval processes for new developments, laws setting aside large areas for open space, and restrictive zoning policies. All of these kinds of rules prevent and delay new development.

Cities and states have no obligation to set urban policy in a way that is favorable to home owners -- a minority in most urban centers -- while frustrating the major economic benefit of cities. Growth and scale is what makes those places cool and what drives many of the benefits -- variety of restaurants, quality of goods, and so on -- that make them worth visiting and make them attractive to those who live in them. It is what makes them of value to the state and country. The idea that urban homeowners should be able to put brakes on the process is nuts; people who chose to own homes in significant or up-and-coming urban centers knew what they were getting into. It is just people trying to pull the ladder up after themselves, and this is not in the interest of most urban residents, of most people in any state, or of most people in the country. One does not have a "property right" to "the community just as it was when I got here".

> There’s a limited supply in highly desirable locations because they’re highly desirable.

That's literally what a shortage is. This is like saying, "there's no shortage of chips, people just need to buy less electronics."

> Nobody is obligated to destroy their own community to accommodate the interests of rent-seeking land developers and people who don’t live there.

The real rent-seeking behavior is curbing the supply of housing to drive up one's property values. "Rent-seeking behavior" is not very aptly named. A developer that builds a high rise apartment that rents to dozens of households is improving the use of land and expanding housing availability. A homeowner that keeps shooting down development proposals is not improving housing availability. The latter is the real rent-seeking behavior.

> That's literally what a shortage is. This is like saying, "there's no shortage of chips, people just need to buy less electronics."

Not being able to buy a $100k car doesn’t mean there’s a car shortage, and not being able to buy a home in Boulder doesn’t mean there’s a housing shortage.

There’s plenty of housing.

Folks aren’t homeless for lack of affordable housing.

> The latter is the real rent-seeking behavior.

The propaganda coup of real-estate investors is astounding.

They have people like you advocating for their ability to extract rent in perpetuity as if it was a moral imperative.

Meanwhile, you think the individuals that own a home and enjoy being a part of their community are the bad actors.

It’s truly amazing what they’ve managed to convince people like you of.

You can do whatever you want with your own home. But when you start criminalizing the victimless act of building a bigger house, that is where a line is crossed.

> Not being able to buy a $100k car doesn’t mean there’s a car shortage, and not being able to buy a home in Boulder doesn’t mean there’s a housing shortage.

It means there's a housing shortage in Boulder. The car analogy is not effective because a Camry does the exact same thing as a BMW. But a house in Oklahoma doesn't help you if your job is in Boulder.

>There’s no housing shortage. There’s a limited supply in highly desirable locations because they’re highly desirable.

Actually, it is very easy to have enough housing for everyone and yet make it impossible for everyone who could live in that area to actually live there.

https://youtu.be/724ZR1Za9BU

> The jobs are becoming increasingly concentrated in a few metro areas, but the home-owning class constrains the supply of housing and drives up the price of their own assets. Disincentivizing this sort of rent seeking behavior is precisely the kind of thing property taxes accomplish.

There are two solutions to that problem. Governments could either make it easier to rent in the increasingly concentrated metro areas, or reverse the trend of increasingly concentrated metro areas.

During Covid there were quite a few government created incentives for remote work. If government started to use tax law to further incentivize remote home, maybe we can start to cut out all those officer workers from needing to live in metro areas, only keeping people tied to cities who need to physically be in the city.

Concentrated metro areas are better for the environment that sprawl. I'm not even talking about suburbia, but even rural living.

I'm not saying people should stop living there, but stopping densification will not help curb climate change and sustainable environment.

Also, not everyone wants to live in non-dense places.

The difference of domestic emissions caused by city vs non-city residence is quite minor, about 10% per person looking at UK numbers. In comparison, a single flight by plane can double a person emission.

It also not clear if using existing numbers of rural living makes sense since most people do not work from home. If the norm is to travel to work, the further people live away from said employment the bigger the footprint will be. Existing numbers reflect that culture.

Looking at CO2 per capita, does the very high density cities of japan have better numbers than say India? No. Japan has 10 times higher than India. Of course we all likely know that that wealth influence emissions, which mean it not that simple to just say that concentrated metro areas are better for the environment than sprawl. Emission rates depend on multiple factors.

I think we are both saying the same thing. And 10% difference is not negligible. My point is that we should do everything we can to keep densification naturally happening, as it is better. This densification is not a permit to allow ourselves to pollute, consume more.

Concentrated metros are more economically productive, not to mention environmentally friendly and better for quality of life. Government discentivizing them leads to a less efficient economy that provides for less of people's needs.

Reversing the trend of jobs concentrating in metro areas is not exactly feasible. How would this be done?

Prohibiting companies from hiring more than X employees? What keeps them from just setting up another company and hiring them as consultants?

Or is there going to be a fixed cap on the number of people who are permitted to be employed? If someone moves to the city, and it's already at it's max number of workers they're just prohibited from working?

Jobs becoming concentrated in certain hubs is natural emergent phenomenon. You're not going to legislate your way out of it, at least not without resorting to oppressive systems like hokou.

> Reversing the trend of jobs concentrating in metro areas is not exactly feasible. How would this be done?

Strange question to ask, given we've been seein the decentralization of jobs happening pretty strong for two years now. Jobs are remote now, wheneve possible, and people are moving to areas they want to live instead of being chained to the commute to an office.

There are ways this could be done.

One option is building for remote work. Up the definition of "broadband" to include something people can actually use for work, and mandate that employees are allowed to work remotely, with full pay, unless employers can demonstrate the job cannot be done remotely. Workers who have to be local should either get the same tax break, or the company should have to pay those taxes instead. It might also require simplifying (or at least simplifying the administration of) state/local taxes. There are a lot of people, myself included, that live in dense areas for work rather than by choice. My hangup is that I want to live in a nice house, but don't want the risk of buying/building a nice house that I have to sell at a loss because I have to move for work.

Another option is to add population density as a factor on taxes. Raise taxes and then offer a discount for people in low population density areas. Or you could tie the discount to the median income.

Anecdata, but a lot of the people I know don't really want to live in urban areas so much as that they have to because of jobs. We either need to decouple workers from physical proximity, or force companies to disperse. The first option decouples workers, and the second incentivizes companies to disperse.

The first step a government could do is to encourage remote work. Good Internet infrastructure is an essential first building block, one which is slowly start to be a reality even in rural areas.

My government currently have tax reduction programs in place to enable people to commute to work. The same program could be applied to work from home, giving people tax reduction if they do not travel to work and thus lighten wear on the road system and reduces the pressure on mass transport systems.

In the transportation sector there could be government programs to further incentives technologies that enable direct-to-customer delivery. During the pandemic we saw how reducing crowded stores had some very positive effect on reduced transmission rates, how viruses other than covid also saw a strong reduction. It is possible also that by improving direct-to-customer delivery we end up with less waste, fewer middle men, and possible less impulsive purchases.

We don't need to impose quotas. Make it easier, cheaper and convenient to live outside of large cities and a lot of people will jump for the chance to do so.

>There are two solutions to that problem. Governments could either make it easier to rent in the increasingly concentrated metro areas, or reverse the trend of increasingly concentrated metro areas.

That would require both negative interest rates and a land value tax because both are intended to neutralize liquidity preference. Negative interest rates prevent the build up of financial capital by overproducing "elites" which means people in rural areas will have those earning opportunities instead.

Yeah this is exactly right. In my hometown, we have a beautiful view, but people are always pushing for taller more dense housing, because they say it’s unaffordable. However if they win they will destroy what makes this place great in the first place.

There is nothing wrong with wanting to keep a town smaller and more simple. If the residents were there first and exerted their way into the community they have that right.

I don’t really understand any other argument. There are lots of up and coming cities nowadays, you are free to live there, you are also free to be creative and make more money.

The counter argument is simple. The right to property is inalienable and absolute. If your neighbours can dictate what you can and cannot build on your own land can you even say that you really own it? The idea that a small cartel of homeowners can just artificially lower supply is anti freedom and anti free market.

It's not absolute at all, it depends entirely on the consent of your neighbors.

That's true both in a world of laws and in a world of power.

Then such "neighbours" are welcome to vacate their houses and move to a communist country of their liking, which has no respect for private property. I am sure they will find a lot of commonality in values. Let everyone else enjoy freedom

> There’s no inalienable right

There are zero inalienable rights

America’s housing supply will grow. A policy that it grows only by sprawl is a policy of cruelty to everyone today and in the future who thrives best in an urban environment and isn’t super-rich.

Urban environments can’t be stamped onto cornfields; they only occur when sparser environments become expensive. I don’t think there’s a right to live in any arbitrary expensive town. I do think there’s a right to have the expensive-town-to-city pipeline running somewhere at more than a trickle, so that urbanism is not impossible to access.

> so that urbanism is not impossible to access.

Urbanism in a desirable location is expensive, everywhere in the world.

It’s an inescapable problem of scale.

You’re free to live like a sardine in a dense city, but it will be expensive. You cannot avoid that.

Most of the world is not rich enough to live as sparsely as we do. The suburbs are a miracle of prosperity and technology - a car for every adult, the energy to run it, the infrastructure to drive it on. Most human settlements in the world are walkable because they have to be.

Actually it is because car centric design was associated with wealth and status that the “backwards” old ways became prohibited. This inversion now, where walkable environments seem to be luxurious, is a legacy of that prohibition more than anything else.

> There’s no inalienable right to live in a popular place you cannot afford.

There's no right to anything that people don't stand together to say they have a right to.

> Can you articulate an ethical argument for why it’s a problem that not everyone can afford to move to the most desirable cities?

People shouldn't have to commute for hours so other people can live there because that impacts their health and opportunities for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. If this is where the jobs are, there should be homes here as well.

> There's no right to anything that people don't stand together to say they have a right to.

This is ignoring the point: positive rights should not exist. They require taking rights from others, through violence, to enforce.

> People shouldn't have to commute for hours so other people can live there because that impacts their health and opportunities for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness

Ok. Then don't.

Okay then just die?

I mean, it's an option, but a just society could easily do better.

The majority are screwed over by an ultra-rich minority, personally I think that deserves addressing.

Positive rights for all do not require violence provided those who benefit from others not having simple rights will give up their excess for the greater good. The demos may need to use violence, but that's only because those who, by no greater virtue, have acquired wealth refuse to act justly and recognise the equal dignity of man.

> Okay then just die?

Or work near where you can afford to live? If there aren't jobs that support living there, live somewhere else? You're presenting an absurd dichotomy.

> The majority are screwed over by an ultra-rich minority, personally I think that deserves addressing.

No, they aren't. Wealth inequality is not a real problem. It's politicized jealousy. Wealth is not zero-sum, and someone having more than someone else is irrelevant.

> Positive rights for all do not require violence provided those who benefit from others not having simple rights will give up their excess for the greater good.

"Right" means it must be enforced. "provided .. will give up" means taking by that same force if they choose to not turn over what they own.

Taking to support a right absolutely requires violence.

> but that's only because those who, by no greater virtue, have acquired wealth refuse to act justly and recognise the equal dignity of man.

Why should they? What is their obligation? You have undoubtedly acquired more wealth than a subsistence farmer in rural India: why do you refuse to act justly and recognize their equal dignity?

Or work near where you can afford to live?

That assumes that's possible. I think the point being made is that it's often very much not possible.

There are serious problems with our built environment and this is one of them.

It is possible, and people are fine with it. Otherwise, either a) the housing would not exist, or b) there would be more local job opportunities.

If there is demand for jobs locally and an economy to support it, they can start their own company.

If there is no economy to support it, then the community isn’t viable.

This is straightforward to understand, and not a problem to be solved. And certainly not one to be solved through stage violence.

> Or work near where you can afford to live? If there aren't jobs that support living there, live somewhere else? You're presenting an absurd dichotomy.

And what happens when there's no jos where you live, and the only places where jobs exist have extreme housing shortages? You can spend hours commuting each day, but then you're probably burning just as much money through gas - not to mention destroying the environment.

> And what happens when there's no jos where you live

Then you start a small business, employing others and building up your community. How do you think the ‘places where jobs exist’ started?

> the only places where jobs exist have extreme housing shortages?

If it’s intolerable to enough people, they won’t be able to hire. They’ll have to move, or pay more to overcome the housing shortage.

The fact that it isn’t, and they aren’t, shows this isn’t actually a problem.

> Then you start a small business, employing others and building up your community.

The idea that anyone can just start a business is seriously indicative of how our of touch this forum can be.

What if there's no goods or services that are in demand in your immediate community? What if your community is impoverished and dying? What if you have no capital to start a business?

> How do you think the ‘places where jobs exist’ started?

Often it was because of natural resources, or geographic factors that made it conductive to establishing a population center (like river or harbour access).

> If it’s intolerable to enough people, they won’t be able to hire. They’ll have to move, or pay more to overcome the housing shortage.

The latter is what's happening: prices of housing are skyrocketing and locking people into poverty.

> This is ignoring the point: positive rights should not exist

I’m confused by this statement. You don’t have an inalienable right to keep the area around your home exactly how you want it either. That’s a positive right and requires taking the rights of others, for example by enforcement of zoning laws that affect land owned by other people.

Positive right: somebody has to do something for me.

Negative right: nobody must do something to me.

The right of self-governance is a negative right. I can see how it can be confusing since you can re-phrase anything as either positive or a negative action e.g. "you must stop stealing my stuff so property is a positive right" and "you should not deny my need for healthcare ergo it's a negative right" so here is a trick you can use to distinguish one from another: a negative right will remain even in the absence of all other people while a positive right will disappear in such a case.

So, for this case, the right of self-governance will remain if everyone else disappears since you can still make laws, obey them and enforce them on yourself thus it's a negative right.

Calling changing the feeling of your neighbourhood, or indirectly reducing the market value of your land, 'doing something to you' in this context seems kind of stretching it.

"I have the right to build apartments on the land I own."

"I have the right to tell you what you can and can't build in my neighborhood."

Which one is positive and which is negative?

Neither is positive, both are negative. Also the former does not exist in reality, in fact you often don't have a right to build anything in a township thus you have to get a permission from the local government for almost any construction (with some things implicitly permitted).

A "right" to stop other people from freely developing their property is absolutely a "positive right", or the whole dichotomy is incoherent.

I guess I don't understand the distinction or how the second one isn't a positive right. By your own rule of thumb, if you take away other people then the right to tell others what they can/can't build disappears.

> Also the former does not exist in reality

Irrelevant, we're discussing how things should work not how they are.

Who prevents you from telling anything if others don't exist? But I did not think you mean it literally, to be honest, I thought you meant allowing/disallowing construction in one's neighborhood. If other people did not exist you could just as easily allow and disallow construction, could not you?

No? If other people didn't exist then there is nothing to disallow. We are talking about how people will go to meetings to try to veto building proposals.

I am not sure I understand. In your view, if I live in the middle of nowhere, with no people around me, then I don't have the right to disallow people into my home because nobody is coming? How is it different from me living in the center of NYC and not allowing people into my home, the result is the same - people are not coming into my home, are they?

In your middle of nowhere example, you didn't disallow anyone anything.

This is really such a silly and pointless thread.

1) Property is a positive right. It requires that the state enforce your property claim. This does not come free; it requires taxes, a police force, etc.

2) Property is delimited in scope. You own your parcel. You do not own the neighborhood, even partially. If someone else wants to put up dense housing on their parcels, their property, there is no negative-right violation against you. You are, at that point, just a rent-seeking highway robber.

All rights, positive and negative require the state to enforce them so if we were to accept your definition, the negative rights would not exist and the whole positive/negative qualification became moot. You are free to not recognize the existence of negative rights but then how can you argue over the distinction between positive and negative in a good faith?

> If someone else wants to put up dense housing on their parcels, their property, there is no negative-right violation against you.

That's another POV you are entitled to but the courts found otherwise in the Village of Euclid v. Ambler Realty Co.

>You are free to not recognize the existence of negative rights but then how can you argue over the distinction between positive and negative in a good faith?

My "faith" doesn't matter. The logic of the argument matters. And frankly, you don't seem to be putting forward very logical arguments.

>> If someone else wants to put up dense housing on their parcels, their property, there is no negative-right violation against you.

> That's another POV you are entitled to but the courts found otherwise in the Village of Euclid v. Ambler Realty Co.

That's not what the court found in that case. In that case, the court found that zoning was a valid extension of the authority of local governments. Local governments do not create negative-rights claims. Indeed, the zoning ordinance in question didn't even purport to do so.

Now, I've never been arguing that local governments lack the authority to pass zoning restrictions, even if I think some zoning is bad substantively. I've been arguing that you, as a private individual, do not have a negative right to make up your own personal zoning code and enforce it on others, without the democratic authority of the local government.

My argument here is entirely consistent with Euclid vs Amber, and frankly, your reference to the ruling is a non-sequitur.

My logic is quite simple: positive right is a right to compel, negative right is a right to deny. It also makes the naming consistent. A right to compel disappears when there are no people to compel, the right to deny becomes absolute when there are no people to try the denied actions.

What is your logic and do you have an example of a negative right, that doesn't require enforcement?

And I agree that as a private individual I don't have a right to deny construction wholly. Same as I don't have a right to elect anyone. The community has the entire right, I only have a right to vote.

> Property is a positive right. It requires that the state enforce your property claim.

No it isn’t. We allow the state to enforce it on our behalf. In most reasonable states, you can defend against the commission of a felony on your property with deadly force.

Also, owning property is not a right. That’s the entire point.

> You don’t have an inalienable right to keep the area around your home exactly how you want it either.

I agree. I was responding, in context, to the idea that people should be able to live wherever they want affordably.

> positive rights should not exist

That's like, your opinion man, and I don't know if you mean aspirationally, as in, there shouldn't be racist classist assholes out there so we shouldn't need positive rights to protect the dignity we all deserve, or you mean you so libertarian you side with the racist classist assholes like Ayn Rand, but surely if you meant to debate Kant and Shue: I wouldn't be the first to argue that a fundamental right to freedom is worthless if people aren't able to exercise that freedom, and you can just google search "criticisms of the virtue of selfishness" if you want; People write proper papers and thesis on this stuff, not internet comments.

So I still won't comment on whether positive rights should or should not exist, and instead say it is undignified to have to live in fear and that a lack of equity fosters fear, and ideologically I don't care how we do it, so I believe it ethical to support things like traffic laws, minimum-wage laws, health-and-safety laws especially in farms, restaurants and hotels, and maybe even a commuter-premium to prevent companies from exploiting another way humans are willing to degrade themselves.

> That's like, your opinion man

Well, and the opinion of people that don't like slavery and theft.

> I don't know if you mean aspirationally, as in, there shouldn't be racist classist assholes out there so we shouldn't need positive rights to protect the dignity we all deserve

I mean positive rights cannot be established without evil. They should never exist, and any you can think of should be abolished.

> I wouldn't be the first to argue that a fundamental right to freedom is worthless if people aren't able to exercise that freedom

You don't need to take from others to be free. That is, in fact, the opposite of freedom.

> you can just google search "criticisms of the virtue of selfishness" if you want; People write proper papers and thesis on this stuff, not internet comments.

This isn't about selfishness. Well, kind of. Selfishness on the part of people demanding the positive rights, which _forces_ others under threat of violence to make their lives easier, regardless of whatever efforts they make on their own.

> So I still won't comment on whether positive rights should or should not exist

I maintain they should not.

> and instead say it is undignified to have to live in fear

So don't.

> and that a lack of equity fosters fear

Equity is impossible without violence and restrictions on freedom. It's not equitable that one person should be lame and another not: it only becomes equitable when we break the other person's legs.

> and ideologically I don't care how we do it

Neither did Mao, Stalin, or Pol Pot.

> so I believe it ethical to support things like traffic laws, minimum-wage laws, health-and-safety laws especially in farms, restaurants and hotels, and maybe even a commuter-premium

None of those things are rights.

> to prevent companies from exploiting another way humans are willing to degrade themselves.

If someone is willing to 'degrade themselves', why are you preventing them from doing so?

> You don't need to take from others to be free. That is, in fact, the opposite of freedom.

But irrelevant: Things have already taken from others and they want it back.

> Equity is impossible without violence and restrictions on freedom.

Agreed, so because violence was used to obtain an UN-equitable position, they want it back.

(I feel a little bit like I'm repeating myself; what's another way to say this?)

People the color of your skin used violence to take people with different skin-colors freedoms and property, and they used it to finance schools and police forces that resulting in you opportunities or advantages that other people with other skin-colors no longer had the possibility of as a result. You don't deserve that advantage, and so they want it back.

> I mean positive rights cannot be established without evil. They should never exist, and any you can think of should be abolished.

If "positive rights" can also be established in response to evil, then I don't see why they cannot be used to correct for equity. Property-rights are enforced by taxes, so on some level, if these are "positive rights" then they're just like a minimum-wage law designed to correct previous evils. Maybe one day they will not be necessary and can be abolished, but in the meantime, I think we need them and I support them in that aim.

> It's not equitable that one person should be lame and another not: it only becomes equitable when we break the other person's legs.

I think that's fair. Your parents poison them which makes it more likely for them to be born lame, so I think it's perfectly fair to break your legs if you can't find another way to make that right.

I'd like to think I'm just trying to find another way that doesn't involve more violence; surely an expansion of minimum-wage is less violent than breaking your legs?

> If someone is willing to 'degrade themselves', why are you preventing them from doing so?

Why do I tell a slave that they do not need to be a slave? Gosh, again, people write papers on this stuff. We tell people they don't need to be slaves because that's how we stop slavery -- by making it so nobody believes they need to be a slave in order to survive. The only rights we have are the ones we can convince other people we have. I already said this, but you chose to narrowly interpret rights which will make it hard to understand why I can't help myself: I don't want to be a slave, I don't know what kinds of torture I would be able to refuse, but I don't think that would be a life worth living, so I tell anyone who will listing they don't need to be a slave.

> Well, and the opinion of people that don't like slavery and theft.

And yet here is someone who does not like slavery or theft, who does not have that opinion because I'm not a racist asshole.

See how that works? Don't characterize me. I don't deserve to have my supporting of taxation to be equated with supporting theft just because you don't like to pay taxes, any more than you deserve to be equated with other racist assholes just because you're quoting racist assholes. You want me to take you seriously? You have to do the same.

> But irrelevant: Things have already taken from others and they want it back.

Who took what, from who, when?

> Agreed, so because violence was used to obtain an UN-equitable position, they want it back.

Again: what, from who, when? There are two answers to this: something that isn't actually violence (agreeing to employment), or something from hundreds of years ago ('stolen land'). Neither are good arguments, in any way.

> People the color of your skin used violence ...

I'm brown. Want to try again? Maybe without criticizing someone's position based on their race?

> If "positive rights" can also be established in response to evil, then I don't see why they cannot be used to correct for equity.

I don't think you read that sentence correctly. Three things:

1) Positive rights should not exist, because: 2) Positive rights cannot exist without violence and slavery 3) Equity, and demands for it, are inherently evil.

> Property-rights are enforced by taxes

No, they aren't. Property rights are _usually_ enforced by the state, because of their monopoly on violence. There is nothing stopping me from defending my property myself.

> on some level, if these are "positive rights" ...

They aren't. As I explained.

> Your parents poison them which makes it more likely for them to be born lame, so I think it's perfectly fair to break your legs if you can't find another way to make that right.

Sins of the father, huh? Maybe we should punish out to 3 generations? Seems like you'd love the DPRK.

> Why do I tell a slave that they do not need to be a slave?

There are more slaves alive now than there have ever been in history. Someone working a minimum wage job in the US is very much not that, and it's patently absurd. Comparing a retail job to chattel slavery is disgusting.

> who does not have that opinion because I'm not a racist asshole.

Are you sure? You supported breaking my legs when you thought I was white. Now that you know I'm not, what now?

I mean, I know the answer: break them anyway, he's probably a counter-revolutionary.

This is exactly what's wrong with your entire philosophy. It's based on violence to get what you want, because you're incapable of achieving it any other way. Try harder.

> I don't think you read that sentence correctly. Three things:

> 1) Positive rights should not exist, because: 2) Positive rights cannot exist without violence and slavery

Violence exists regardless of whether "positive rights" exist. You are stating this again, but you haven't proven any kind of relationship beyond the tautological one.

I can't move on to the third point until you clear this up. Everything else seems like a distraction:

If we can agree that violence and slavery is bad, why can't we agree that some kind of retribution is required? Maybe this is why:

> something that isn't actually violence (agreeing to employment), or something from hundreds of years ago ('stolen land'). Neither are good arguments, in any way.

They're excellent arguments. Even agreeing to be "employed" for room-and-board in exchange for work could be slavery, especially if the person agreeing doesn't know if they have other choices. "Stolen land" was still stolen. What's the good reason for a statute-of-limitations on this?

I think you are dismissing these out-of-hand, and if you can't address them, maybe this is what is wrong with your entire philosophy?

> There is nothing stopping me from defending my property myself.

Of course there is. What are you going to use to defend your property besides violence?

> There’s no inalienable right to live in a popular place you cannot afford.

I agree, that's why single family households should have a higher property tax and high density a lower one. Currently single family households are subsidized.[1]

[1]: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/4/16/when-apartment...

But property taxes are local. Raising them only supplies more revenue to the local area. For the US, also, one needs to take into account many states have limits on property tax rates and revenue raises in general, such as millage rates have to be fully balanced with spending, which in turn, has limits. Excess rate increases will simply make those areas less valuable, which will push people to even lower taxed areas, which, at least in the US, are even more rural areas, thereby increasing the concern for climate change and a reduction in population density.

From a strictly ethics point of view, government in the general sense exists for its people and their well-being. I think this should be a fairly uncontroversial starting point.

Now the question is whether one can show that the people are in a very general sense better off if a desirable city is affordable accessible compared to the alternative. I say “very general sense” because I want to avoid any argument that involves the minutiae of utilitarianism; it should be overwhelmingly in favor regardless of your exact ethical framework.

With that in mind, my argument would be that [cities should be affordable] is the obvious ethical choice if and only if the city in question is designed / planned in a pro-social manner. Where pro-social is defined such that the addition of new people is positive.

This should sound fairly tautological so let me give a few examples:

Pro-social design:

shops that rely on foot traffic are pro-social because adding more people (housing etc) to the immediate vicinity increases foot traffic

Mass transportation is pro-social because as more people are added to a particular neighborhood, this justifies expansion of train lines, bus routes, etc

Anti-social design:

Shops that rely on car traffic are usually anti-social because (a) adding people to other neighborhoods can still increase traffic to the shop, (b) removing parking space to add housing is a net negative to the shop (as parking capacity dictates shopping throughout)

Road systems are anti-social because adding more people to the system increases traffic at a nonlinear rate (ie: a road system at capacity decreases in throughput as more cars are added)

In other words, cities designed like cities benefit from more people, and thus everyone benefits from lower housing prices.

The kicker is, the United States doesn’t have a single city designed as a city. We have dense pro-social urban cores surrounded by anti-social suburbs and exurbs.

In contrast to a place like Tokyo where literally every resident has a bus or train (or combination thereof) to get downtown, America has split between two designs, and progressing along one design hurts anyone living in the other.

A noteworthy corollary is that if you live in a suburb or exurb (and are a homeowner protected from rent increases), property values going up to the moon are almost always positive, because your environment is anti-social in the first place. While in the city core it’s more complicated, because your property value going up raises your net worth but harms the pro-social environment around you.

Alternatively, people who can't afford to have babies could stop having them and then we could all have a better quality of life.

> Is it putting forth that local governments shouldn't be controlled by the people who are local, or is it saying that homeowners hold more power than renters?

It's that the NIMBY subset of homeowners has disproportionate power in local government over other residents.

> If the former, that's just silly. If the latter, renters get the same one vote per person as everybody else. If they don't care enough to vote that's their problem.

This is facile -- zoning decisions are essentially never put up to a democratic vote. The outsized NIMBY power doesn't come from voting; it's from activities like attending local government functions, filing complaints, advocating to their representatives, etc. These are not things everyone has time or know-how to do.

If there is a place where there should be more homes if you were looking at it from a regional perspective, it is in the interest of the people who live there to block those new homes from being built to limit supply of the asset they own. The people who would vote in favor of the new homes don't actually get to vote, since they don't live there yet.

> a place where there should be more homes if you were looking at it from a regional perspective

aka, somebody else deciding that there should be more homes.

I think that's the wrong perspective to take. I don't want an authority to decide this - the locals should make their own choices (right or wrong).

Wrong choices are still wrong. I'd like to move into a house with my wife, but at this rate we'll be saving for a decade to get there. With climate change we have no idea how the real estate market will be at 1.5 degrees warming.

NIMBYism is a thing.

But the flip side of that coin is local authorities that have zoning laws that allow the big and powerful builders to build pretty much whatever they want, wherever they want. Which always turns out to be high-rise condos for multi-millionaires and billionaires, most of whom have them as investment properties and don't actually live there.

You see that here in Austin, all along the river, especially downtown.

I wish we had some NIMBYism that we could actually aim at those plans for high-rise condos.

Don't worry, you see the same thing in ultra liberal areas as well. All the plans for "improvement" turn into gentrification that pushes out the current residents, with a tiny allotment of subsidized units that current residents don't qualify for either.

Not doing the development doesn't prevent the gentrification, though. It's not like desirable places to live suddenly become not-desirable because there's not enough housing to go around. The rich people just outcompete the current residents for the existing housing stock. Unless housing supply actually keeps up with demand, someone's going to get squeezed out, and it'll almost invariably be whoever has the least money.

What real estate do you think those people would buy if the condos weren't build?

If they were buying single family detached homes, at least those wouldn't block the views, ruin the skyline, and wipe out the natural areas near the river.

Huh, I think the condos downtown "wipe out" a lot less of the river (they're not even that close to the river, there's a whole hike and bike trail between them and the river...?) than all of the single family detached homes right up against the river that go on for mile after mile upstream (literally for cities-worth of land!).

And without downtown, I don't know what your view or skyline would be of, other than an empty blue sky, of which 99.99% of Texas offers you that, if you want it.

Oh well, like you said, NIMBYism is certainly a thing.

There were plenty of older buildings in downtown Austin that were not right up on the riverbanks, before the flood of the multi-million dollar condo hi-rises. They would be the skyline that I would want to maintain.

The expensive single-family homes further up the river may take up a lot of horizontal space, but they don't ruin the skyline and since you have to dig down about as far as the building will be tall, they don't cause such massive damage to the natural surroundings.

Moreover, most of them are occupied. Most of the hi-rise condos are not occupied. They are pure empty investment properties from people who have more money than they know what to do with. If those condos came with a local residence requirement, then I'd feel a lot better about them being there.

> … at this rate we'll be saving for a decade to get there.

I saved for a decade to buy my home in an area I enjoy, at a level of density I enjoy.

You can do the same, or you can choose to live somewhere cheaper that you can afford.

It’s your choice to live somewhere expensive, and to not want to save for a decade to get what you want.

> but at this rate we'll be saving for a decade to get there.

That's normal. Median first-time homebuyer is 34, and that's for a starter house, which most people refuse to do nowadays.

I think it makes sense that people who don’t live within a community should not be permitted to vote in that community’s elections.

Consider the question for states or countries. Would it make sense for Massachusetts residents to vote in Connecticut‘s elections? Or Canadian residents to vote in the US’s elections?

> Would it make sense for Massachusetts residents to vote in Connecticut‘s elections?

They do. Residents of Massachusetts, Connecticut and other states all vote for President, Congressfolk and Senators.

President is a federal election, run by the individual states. Congressional members are likewise state run elections, but only affect the members assigned by each state. It's a nonsensical comparison.

I think the question is more oriented around voting for the representation allotted to other states, rather than voting for candidates that will serve at the same level.

For instance, Presidents, Senators, and Representatives are all Federal positions. The states (or for President, the state's electors) get to pick their own representatives, though, and it would be odd for one state to elect another state's representatives to Federal office (e.g. a Massachusetts vote being counted in the Connecticut US Senate election.)

Likewise, all counties in a state vote in State elections, but don't vote in each others' county elections. This goes down the line to cities within counties, districts within cities, etc.

Not that I disagree with your point (it's totally valid to point out that elections from multiple areas can all serve in one body), but I think the question was more about citizens from outside a region voting for policies/representatives within that region.

Ask it differently. Ask it about time.

"Does it make sense that the people voting today can decide to stop other people from voting here in the future?"

That's what zoning, housing policy and other local government decisions are capable of doing.

Of course it makes sense. They’re the people who have the biggest stake in the place that they live, and in the community that they built.

Very few communities are populated today by the people who built them.

I don't want people living in San Francisco voting on my small Midwestern town's policies or elections just because they might hypothetically choose to live here one day.

Likewise, I don't want non-Americans living in Europe or elsewhere voting in state or federal elections because they might someday choose to become American citizens.

In both cases, those people might vote then end up never following through on their half of the commitment.

You're missing the point. It's not about whether people who do not live in X should be able to vote in X. I think most people would agree that they definitely should not.

It's about whether the people currently living in X should be able to arrange things so that certain other groups of people will be impeded from living in X in the future.

There's clearly room for some debate there: most people would agree that nations can set their own standards for immigration and that these may exclude large classes of people.

However, if a town explicitly said "we do not want anyone who earns less than 400% of median household income to move here", I think that most people would find that at least a little troubling.

There really are not any mechanisms that would allow a US municipality to say that explicitly. However, things like zoning laws can be used to go fairly far in this direction in a more implicit way.

I think that's wrong.

I don't think anyone argues against the idea that people should belong to the community in which they're voting. But the question is, how fine or coarse grained of a "community" should be in charge of land use. For instance, someone who stays unemployed in a poor region passing up jobs in Seattle or San Francisco because of housing shortages is arguably just as affected as home owners that have to deal with greater density. But only the latter gets to decide local zoning laws.

I think people who don’t live in a parcel shouldn’t get to vote on that parcel’s height limit.

The municipality is a more or less arbitrary level of aggregation at which to make land use decisions.

What about someone working in Mountain View and contributing to the Mountain View economy, but living in Morgan Hill because that’s all they can afford?

You can do the same thing right down to neighbourhoods. Why should zoning be done at the municipal level?

If I live in Ward 10 of the city, why should the people of Ward 11 have any say in the by-laws for a neighbourhood that they don't live in? I'd argue because cohesive planning across neighbourhood boundaries is necessary for a healthy city.

The difference between your position and that of the grandparent is not one of fundamental principle. You're just at different places on a continuous scale.

> Is it putting forth that local governments shouldn't be controlled by the people who are local

It's obviously the case that local voters do not get "unchecked authority" over their local government. They can't vote to say that black people aren't allowed to live there, they can't vote to build an unregulated chemical factory, etc. The proposition that local voters should be allowed total control over zoning is defensible, but it's not a given.

No, they have to do those things indirectly via HOAs and property values.

The main real problem is FYIGM, which means that in a local area with all land used there's no incentive for those living there to vote to change how it is.

Democracy empowers a majority, or sometimes a plurality. It is not necessarily the case that whatever that bloc of voters wants respects the rights and interests of other citizens. Hence the possibility of a 'tyranny of the majority'.

It may be, as in this case, that homeowners actively try to protect their asset by excluding non-homeowners from the market, perhaps by obstructing the construction of new houses, or by supporting the inflation of house prices. Is that a good situation just because it is sanctioned by a majority?

In liberal societies, there are side-constraints on what a demos can sanction - it cannot, for example, curtail the free speech of individuals. There is no reason why that should not be the case with respect to certain basic means of life, like housing.

In Tokyo, zoning is controlled by the national government.

I like the way that Japan handles zoning.

It's based on population densities. Localities can designate industrial and commercial areas, but can't deviate from federal guidelines to prevent growth.

Instead of single family homes they allow triplexes where a percentage of space can be used for a low-impact business, like a barber shop or something. They have setbacks geared towards making sure that you don't build three stories on top of your neighbor's house.

They have neighborhoods. They don't have a housing shortage. They don't have a system that doesn't empower developers who want to clear-cut cheap land on the outskirts of town and build sprawling anti-social subdivisions of oversized identical houses.

Here's some more information: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfm2xCKOCNk

The interesting thing is that the value of a typical home in Tokyo decreases with time.

This idea would be terrifying for most of the US homeowners.

Agreed. It's crazy that we got into this spot where places people live are also expected to be an investment that forever out-paces inflation. It's not sustainable.

Tokyo is considered an entire prefecture, not a mere city. Considering its population (23M), it makes sense.

> > Local governments [...] are entirely captured by homeowners.

> I'm not fully clear on this statement.

Me neither. It is a very often repeated sentiment and I've asked in various threads, but there has never been an explanation how homeowners supposedly have any kind of influence over local government, beyond the single vote everyone gets.

For the record, as a homeowner, I've never had any access to any local (or non-local) government representative. They don't ask what I think, they certainly don't seem to care what I think. I get one vote in the elections, but so does everyone in the county.

> if they don't care enough to vote that's their problem.

The life of a renter is completely different from that of a homeowner. Most renters are of a lower class, living paycheck to paycheck. All they think about is staying afloat, not getting involved in local politics. You need a surplus of time and energy, and roots, to get involved.

Comments like this ignore the conditions under which people live and how these conditions modify their behavior.

I don't believe this to be true. Maybe if your goal is to live where you can't afford.

As an immigrant that can't ever vote, has restrictions on buying property, and belonged to a 40% immigration population in SF, i beg to differ.

Are you currently in SF or in Vancouver?

Bay Area

It was true for my working class family.

Many places make voting difficult. I recognize this, and agree that it is terrible. Voting should be as easy and widespread as possible. There comes a point on the effort scale, however, below which not voting means you just don't give a damn. Voting in my city involves thirty seconds on a website to request a ballot and then dropping your envelope in the mail. If you don't care that much, or have managed to screw your life up to the point where that is just too much work, then I don't really care to have your input on how my city is run.

It's more complicated than this. Most working class people aren't even exposed to local politics. I guarantee you that the majority of working class people don't even know how or where to vote in local elections.

Democracy sounds egalitarian in principle, but in reality, economics on the ground insulates a large number of people from the power process.

I get what you are saying about not wanting these clueless people to have a say in how things are run, but they weren't born in a jungle...they were were made into what they are by the system.

> Democracy sounds egalitarian in principle, but in reality

And your proposed alternative is?

As long as we live for material things, there is no alternative--armageddon is guaranteed. This materialistic system naturally causes imbalances which inevitably lead to breakdown.

Democracy has always been a dog and pony show where the interests of the rich and powerful are sublimated into a socially acceptable "war of ideals." Behind every issue, some group is playing power politics. Abortion, for example, isn't about the issue in itself, but about subverting traditional GOP values, thereby weakening their platform and making them look bad.

We must fundamentally alter human beings in order to avoid doomsday. In particular, we must suppress the life instinct which demmands continual growth or death. If everyone--not just workers-- could be made to be content with just sitting in their houses, the world would be saved.

I'm a working class person. I don't have a bachelor's degree. My pay is hourly, I spend a good portion of my day on my knees with tools in my hands, and I rented until I bought a house last year at the age of 35. I gave a damn. I spent a lot of time living in the same building with a bunch of people who didn't. It wasn't being poor that made half my neighbors dump trash off their balconies and scream at their kids and walk right past graffiti literally three feet from their door. It was not giving a damn. I've struggled my entire life with motivation, but I tell you what, disgust is a good motivator.

What an empty circular argument. Maybe they didn't give a damn because...they were living in bad conditions? Maybe they felt like there was no future ahead of them?

Your life isn't the success story you think it is. You bought into an overpriced housing market--probably, I don't know where you live--and had to live as a slave for 35 years.

You will continue living as a slave as you continue to pay your mortgage to a banking system that is completely antagonistic to your class interests.

Sorry man, you were taken as a fool. Enjoy your trophy for being a good compliant slave.

You may vote purely in your self interest, but not everyone does. That's a choice you make.

> renters get the same one vote per person as everybody else

It's not just directly voting for a city councilor, planning board member, etc. that counts. Showing up to public meetings to show support or disagreement with something can do much to pressure those elected officials. But renters are going to have a much more difficult time showing solidarity for pro-development action, not only because of the difference in socioeconomic status (e.g. living paycheck to paycheck vs. a homeowner who has a stable, white-collar job).

1. Homeowners can shoot down a proposed development by demonstrating a strong response against threats on just their street or block. As long as homeowners defend their turf locally, and it can be counted on them to do so across town, they win. Renters, on the other hand, have an asymmetrically difficult battle: pro-development individuals need to show up to all the proposed-development meetings, not just one for a particular street or block, if they want to expand housing.

2. Homeowners are probably much more strongly driven to show up because the focus is on what they lose. Character of neighborhood, traffic, safety, noise, etc. and the threat against the status quo seems more likely to trigger that visceral defense mechanism. Renters probably focus on what they gain: affordable housing, access to new communities, etc. My intuition is that the perception of losing something is a greater call to action than the possibility of gaining something.

3. Homeowners are well-defined and known individuals. They already exist, and their turf is already developed. Renters, on the other hand, are an abstract group of people who may or may not even move in, should something be built. I currently rent an apartment - but will I show up to a neighboring town's planning board meeting to voice my support for some proposed apartment complex that's still in the early stages, could flop at any point, and even if it succeeds I may not even move there? The renters of a future complex may not even know who they are yet, if they aren't adamant on moving in there should a place be built.

4. There's strong stigma against renters, to the point of being demeaning and tribal. A local council near me voiced their opposition to building more affordable developments, and the chairman said he was concerned about "derelicts" (exact word) moving in to the neighborhood and said if they built more affordable units, you'd see a rise in street drug vendors, threatening the local children. How can renters and low-income earners combat such ridiculous accusations when local leaders cast them as criminals, just because they can't afford to buy a median $400,000 house?

Your comment ignores so much of the asymmetric power dynamic between owners and renters.

Fantastic points. I plan on attending Cupertino council meetings to voice support of development (as a new Cupertino home owner) for these reasons.

> much more strongly driven to show up because the focus is on what they lose. Character of neighborhood, traffic, safety, noise, etc. and the threat against the status quo seems more likely to trigger that visceral defense mechanism.

Not just those. For most home-owners, their homes are by far the highest-value assets they own, and especially given the lack of strong social safety net in the US, they often represent a large store of value that home-owners expect to be able to support them in retirement, in the event of unforeseen emergencies, etc. The thread of homes losing their value can be much more tangible than just fears about neighborhood character (and those aren't nothing).

> Renters, on the other hand, have an asymmetrically difficult battle: pro-development individuals need to show up to all the proposed-development meetings, not just one for a particular street or block, if they want to expand housing.

It's not homeowners vs renters, it's homeowners vs property developers. Property developers who, I can assure you, are perfectly capable of sticking up for themselves.

> Homeowners are probably much more strongly driven to show up because the focus is on what they lose. Character of neighborhood, traffic, safety, noise, etc. and the threat against the status quo seems more likely to trigger that visceral defense mechanism.

Are these.. bad reasons to be opposed to development?

> Homeowners are well-defined and known individuals. They already exist, and their turf is already developed. Renters, on the other hand, are an abstract group of people who may or may not even move in, should something be built.

This is all the more reason to listen to homeowners vs renters.

> There's strong stigma against renters, to the point of being demeaning and tribal. A local council near me voiced their opposition to building more affordable developments, and the chairman said he was concerned about "derelicts" (exact word) moving in to the neighborhood and said if they built more affordable units, you'd see a rise in street drug vendors, threatening the local children.

Sleight of hand there. Renting != affordable housing. To be blunt, although maybe not as much as that councilman: poor people commit more street and petty crime. This is inarguable. Most people commit crimes near where they live. Also inarguable. He's not wrong.

> It's not homeowners vs renters, it's homeowners vs property developers. Property developers who, I can assure you, are perfectly capable of sticking up for themselves.

I'd argue that current zoning laws and processes encourage large developers. They are the only ones who can navigate the system.

That's why so much new construction in the last several decades (at least) has been by large developers who buy cheap land on the outskirts of town, cut down all the trees, build a bunch of identical cheaply made houses isolated from everything else, sell them all at once, and hand over management to a homeowners association where rules are enforced to ensure conformity.

Cities that are getting bigger are presumably doing so because their economies are expanding. While I can guess why you don't like growth, you may be overlooking that your own economic opportunities are also improving.

Be that as it may, I think it's a problem with our system that homeowners are given such a strong incentive to keep housing scarce.

People who live in a town (homeowners or renters) are not the whole stakeholders, though they are the only ones who can vote there. Workers who commute into the town, and out-of-town property owners (commercial or residential) don't usually get the ear of the local government the way homeowners do

> If the latter, renters get the same one vote per person as everybody else.

Well, that's not quite true -- there's many (highly paid) immigrants living in my building. None of them can vote on housing policy even though it directly affects their lives.

> > If the latter, renters get the same one vote per person as everybody else.

> Well, that's not quite true -- there's many (highly paid) immigrants living in my building.

But the variable there is immigration status, not homeownership status.

Non-citizen immigrants who are homeowners don't get a vote either.

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