Comment by epistasis | Hacker News Reader

Comment by epistasis | Hacker News Reader

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There are zero consequences for elected officials that knowingly and willfully violate laws that constrain municipal actions.

I've seen enough willfully block affordable housing in violation of law that I've looked several times.

NIMBYs also encourage these sorts of lawsuits, because even if they know they will lose, these projects are 1) so close to not making sense that an affordable housing developer literally can not afford to fight for legal rights, and 2) there's a big fear that fighting the city legally will make all further building attempts by an affordable housing developer even more difficult and likely to fail.

I have zero empathy or sympathy for my NIMBY neighbors that have been displacing so many people in my community after several years of trying to fight for affordable housing. People that are otherwise "nice" behave in the most amoral ways when it comes to excluding people from their neighborhoods. It's been very eye opening for me in a sad way.

It seems reasonable to me that the city pays, and it comes from tax payer money. After all, these tax payers elected those officials, and can choose to recall them.

In other words, if "NIMBYs" are to blame, it's fine if they are the one that need to pay.

I was wondering this as well. Are individual supes indemnified from their actions taken while in office?

In my mind I play out some RICO case takedown where they all get indicted in one fell swoop but surely this is impossible.

Not from SF and clueless, I wonder:

> NIMBY neighbors that have been displacing so many people in my community

Who are the people getting displaced?

The Not In My Backyard people, are they ... rich and affluent who don't want low income people nearby?

California exports a ton of lower income people, and imports about the same number of higher income people. Check out the heat map here:

https://lao.ca.gov/LAOEconTax/Article/Detail/265

The NIMBYs are almost exclusively wealthy homeowners. Not 100% but close to 99%. But in California, the wealthiest homeowners also co-opt the language of the displaced, and take on the mantle of those who can no longer afford rent, even as their actions of exclusion increase their home values and rents in general.

Thanks, interesting diagrams.

> co-opt the language of the displaced, and take on the mantle of those who can no longer afford rent

Oh this is too abstract for me (I don't understand)

> There are zero consequences for elected officials that knowingly and willfully violate laws that constrain municipal actions.

I mean, Kwame is still in jail, right?

I guess that's a different league than this though.

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