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Comment by mullingitover | Hacker News Reader

The majority of people on the internet want housing to be affordable.

The majority of people who vote in elections and show up to city council meetings want housing to be an investment that grows in value by 10% annually. Building more houses is a direct threat to that investment. Guess which group wins.

(Caveat: California's state legislature is slowly clamping down. Regions which aren't submitting realistic plans to meet their projected housing needs are getting their zoning privileges taken away, which will help. However, this is like trying to empty a swimming pool with a teaspoon when it comes to the supply and demand mismatch that exists today.)

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> The majority of people who vote in elections and show up to city council meetings want housing to be an investment that grows in value by 10% annually. Building more houses is a direct threat to that investment. Guess which group wins.

It isn't purely financial. After all, the most expensive land is in areas with higher population density. You want cheap housing? Go out to where nobody else lives. Tons of it available. Doubling the population of Phoenix would increase people's property values a bunch - look at the land owners in the Bay Area over the last 50 years. Developers don't build shit because they think it's gonna make their property worth less.

So, no, what people who don't want upzoning don't want is change. Change in traffic, change in privacy, change in noise, etc.

That's actually a much harder problem. If it was purely financial it would be easier to buy people out. But it isn't, which - at the extreme end - is how you get the tiny houses next to big skyscrapers and such.

> So, no, what people who don't want upzoning don't want is change. Change in traffic, change in privacy, change in noise, etc.

These are also great fig leaf talking points when your real reason to oppose new development is financial, but you don't want to sound greedy.

> These are also great fig leaf talking points when your real reason to oppose new development is financial, but you don't want to sound greedy.

You could make the exact opposite claim that "my property values!!" is the fig leaf around "I don't want [certain people] to have the chance to move near me."

And that one agrees with the numbers of how property values go up with city growth and development, not down. Would the property values in Malibu be lower or higher if LA had taken Detroit's path?

Everyone wants cheaper stuff. The question is how to allocate limited resources.

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