Hacker News Reader

Comment by fpo | Hacker News Reader

Genuine question, how is giving even more (hyper)local control gonna solve it? This is the exact breeding ground for NIMBYism and the like. The author doesn't really present an argument in favor of that, just sort of drops it as an assertion in the end with a CYA "but yea maybe I'm wrong".

View on HN

It turns 'sell your house to a developer' into a prisoner's dilemma. If every other block is zoned single-family and your block votes to rezone for large apartment buildings, the value of your property goes up. Of course, then every block should do vote yes, and then the value of everyone's property goes down. And lots of housing gets built.

(City-wide NIMBYism is a solution to the prisoner's dilemma: band together to require that nobody be allowed to redevelop.)

Disclaimer: armchair analysis.

I think the unstated assumption is that if you limit the number of people who have a say enough, a developer could just offer kickbacks to the lot. It's hard to change people's mind by giving a lot of people a little money. It's much easier to give fewer people a modest amount of money.

Whats wrong with locals deciding local issues?

They profit by blocking other people from becoming locals.

This seems like an unwarranted assumption. Some people are going to want to keep others out, other people will have a different attitude. Why would you assume the incentives run the same way for everyone?

Because the outcomes all seem to be the same.

When the phenomenon locks out development in an entire municipality, we can stop discussing it as a benign consumer/resident preference, and start discussing it as the public policy problem it is. That's where we're at now.

In the US, I look at it this way: once you get your own school system, you surrender the moral authority to erect barriers to entry for new residents.

They don't, but empirically the overwhelming majority of people who are property owners in some area will either do nothing or actively oppose new housing being built in their area.

That's a separate question. But I think all evidences points to that NOT solving any housing crises.

The Collective Action Problem. Locals have a concentrated interest in preventing development. The broader public's interest in there being housing outweighs that, but it's diffuse. You see the same thing play out over and over again in cities around the world: it's so much easier to organize opposition to housing than support that no housing gets built.

Sounds good to me. I don't really care for the masses/others.

Just take this a step further, bring "local" all the way down to "the person who owns the land". Let the locals decide what to do on the land they own. If they want an apartment, or a store, or a giant mansion in the middle of 20 acres, as long as they own the land let them do it! They're the most local individual, right?

I'd rather just manipulate zoning laws to prohibit soviet style apartment blocks from appearing in my little slice of heaven

To a US suburban resident in a single-family lot, any apartment building is a Soviet-style apartment block.

In any HN discussion on housing there is inevitably a couple of people acting like you’re trying to build a krushchevka on their lawn. It’s like if we pretended all detached housing was like the infamous “groverhaus”[0]. The user you’re replying to appears to be getting a kick out of trolling as a NIMBY, slightly odd but it takes all sorts I suppose.

[0] - best source is unfortunately knowyourmeme @ https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/groverhaus the phrase “load-bearing dry wall” appears

I mean, I spend a lot of time discussing this stuff with actual local development opponents, so arguments like these in the abstract just aren't that aggravating. I'm often happy for people to mount the most superficial arguments against things I believe in; might as well lay the flimsiness of the opposition out clearly.

Do you have any tips for a NIMBY that may help me stop/slow-down/impede local development? Even delaying for a day is worth the time to me.

Honestly, step 1 would be to stop writing stuff like this.

This is my flavor of activism. FWIW, I've participated in activism to stop destruction of green space and nature preserves from commercial interests. Stopping the expansion of urban sprawl, mcdonalds and walmart, and destruction of greenery (whether it be housing or a self storage business) is something I'm passionate about.

I couldn't ask for a better opponent, so thank you for that.

If you don't want an apartment block on your lot, you don't have to build one! But if your neighbor wants to build one, what moral right do you have to stop them?

I dont' care about morals, I care about legality, and if there are legal means to stop such projects, I pursue them with full force.

You end up with people trying to optimize for their own personal well-being at a micro level leading to an untenable macro-level situation.

Sounds good to me. I tend to try and optimize for my own well being over the the macro-level of society, as most do.

Which is why you shouldn't be in charge of making those kinds of decisions :) neither should I, for similar reasons.

Developer: "Hi neighbor, would you like me to build a house so that someone can live in it? Do keep in mind that it would increase housing supply in your area, thus increasing supply and putting downward pressure on your property's value. That okay?"

Neighbor: "No, thank you!"

Sounds good to me. I'm surrounded by woods, I'd 100% oppose any development around me.

Do you own the woods around you? If not, it’s these attitudes as to why we can’t have nice things.

Understandable on a personal level, but bad policy. Other people's right to have somewhere to live trumps your right to be surrounded by woods.

That's an opinion, of course, but I can't see how any other opinion leads to a stable outcome for society at large.

Nothing, so long as their decisions don't abridge other fundamental rights. I can't speak to Ireland, but we've pretty clearly in the U.S. created a regime that fundamentally violates foundational principles of private property.

Because "local issues" aren't just local issues, as much as NIMBYs hope to frame it that way for persuasion purposes. There are larger global effects. In this case, a crippling housing crisis, leading to disenfranchisement and alienation of large swathes of the populace, leading to human suffering, inequality, and political extremism.

I actually support that. That's why I think someone local to a plot of land is the person who should decide what to build there.

The problem is which locals end up being those that dominate the deciding.

What we've seen happen over the decades is that those with the most amount of time and money available end up drowning out the voices of others, as they have more time to devote.

So inevitably older, wealthy, established interests end up dominating the discussion as younger, marginalized, working class people are too busy just trying to get by to engage in local planning.

Accordingly the local consultative process ends up favouring the older wealthy and established land owning locals and not the marginalized working renter class locals.

There isn’t enough housing. To solve this we must do some of the following:

- Increase density of living in existing stock (no more solo pensioners living in mansions)

- Increase housing stock

This will have to impact someone, somewhere. All locals will say no so the problem will not get solved by local groups.

More fair is that there is a process by which the impact is spread somewhat evenly and extreme impact is avoided entirely.

This cannot be coordinated by locals because they have no incentive to take on any of the burden.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com