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Comment by typewithrhythm | Hacker News Reader

There seems to be a growing gap between the people who define "community" as the group of people who live in and wish to direct the changes in the area they are in. And the people who define community as the group who receives the benefits of government intervention.

YIMBYs is a silly term, since its usually a developers talking about forcing changes in someone else's neighbourhood. Considering the input they like, it's only from the second definition of community, notably people not currently in an area, or standing to endure the downsides.

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The idea behind the YIMBY movement is not that community input is bad it's that the community input process structurally encourages input only from people who don't like the project. The point of YIMBY activism is to show up in your own community (your back yard if you will) to say that you do want housing.

The main problem is that many people do want things, until those things present a negative impact to them personally. Yes, build housing, but do it the next street over. I don't personally know anyone who wants an apartment building or trailer park next to their single family home. The real point of zoning should be to group those types of housing together, but it seems many cities are too fragmented, not to mention that consumer preference is strongly aligned with SFH ownership.

I agree that people want things in theory but aren't willing support the policies necessary but that's why we need a movement to help change that.

Also I think it's important to consider what we call a community. We can't consider every single block a community, a community is a town or even a metro area. They use shared water, to to shared schools, and they need to make decisions together because these things are interconnected.

Is there a genuine market preference for single family home ownership? I'm sure some people prefer to live that way especially because it allows you to take advantage of the ample subsidies we give single family home ownership. But if there was a preference for it we wouldn't need to artificially restrict people's ability to redevelop them into multi family homes. No one would choose to live in them so no one would build them.

"We can't consider every single block a community, a community is a town or even a metro area."

And that's how you end up with the interstate cutting off the poor/black section of town from the rest. Of course there are different levels of community, but there tends to be some out-group that gets the short stick. If every neighborhood says no to new section 8 housing, where does it go?

Yeah, preferences vary by demographic and market, but overall, 65% of people want a SFH and the average preferred size has increased continuously over the past few generations.

The restiction isn't that people don't want to live there. The restriction is because you're intermingling the people who want SFH lifestyle with people who want multi-family home lifestyle. Of course the SFH current residents are concerned about the potential issues caused by neighbor renters, parking, etc. Even SFH rental properties are similarly looked down on due to the common problems that some tenants cause (noise, lack of respect for property, etc).

> And that's how you end up with the interstate cutting off the poor/black section of town from the rest.

It is the exact opposite. Fighting this sort of thing is exactly why I want to get involved. The reason that these projects are put in poorer, less white areas is because we give small groups of individuals (sometimes even one individual if they are willing to file a lawsuit) veto power over projects provided they have the time and resources to use these levers. So people build projects through poorer less white areas because these areas often don't have the time or resources to fight back. In my town the plans were to build two wide fast arterial roads, one through the rich neighborhood and one through the poor immigrant neighborhood. Guess which one had a successful campaign to shut it down?

The whole concept of zoning was created, not to concentrate uses as you say but to enforce racial segregation and horde wealth among land owners.

> If every neighborhood says no to new section 8 housing, where does it go?

Exactly! We do have this happen because of this hyper-specific veto levers so we are left with section 8 housing pushed to the worst parts of towns.

People want a single family home but is it because they want the shape or because society is arranged such that it is functionally the only way for the middle class to build wealth and feel a sense of housing stability? And would they still want it if the subsidies were removed and they had to internalize the costs? I am sure that some people really do want it, probably a lot but it seems strange to use that as a reason to put your thumb on the scales.

I get that people are concerned but I feel like all of society is negotiating things like this. Some people feel uncomfortable seeing people with piercings or tattoos, should we ban them or restrict the places they should go? Everything is a trade off but I don't feel good treating certain types of people like they are toxic waste that needs to be contained.

"It is the exact opposite."

Not considering each neighborhood is how we get here. If you treat the city as a whole as a community, you lose the granularity and it ends up as you describe - the rich veto in their area.

But what is your solution? The section 8 housing or other universally unpopular projects have go somewhere. Do you think the SFH owners in the poor part of town want it in their backyard? It has to go somewhere. It's not about containing people like toxic waste. It's about existing individuals not wanting to deal with a reduction in their estavlished quality of life over statistically founded concerns (not appearence related but project specific, such as traffc fatalies, noise, etc).

"People want a single family home but is it because they want the shape or because society is arranged such that it is functionally the only way for the middle class to build wealth and feel a sense of housing stability?"

Does it matter? Is there a solution that would make a difference? For most people, this isn't really building wealth because you need to live somewhere, so that wealth isn't available to use. From my experiences and talking with others, it is mostly because of the stability, freedom, and not having to deal with bad neighbors as closely. I'm not sure what costs you are referring to that wouldn't apply to other types of housing. The only real subsidy homeowners get would be the property tax deduction. Maybe some developers worked out deals that indirectly benefited homeowners, but so too for the apartments. Where I'm at, you have to pay to install utilities from the street, pay taxes to support the infrastructure, etc. In fact, SFHs tend to pay more taxes than condos and apartments, subsidizing the schools and other property funded programs.

> Not considering each neighborhood is how we get here

I am not saying we shouldn't consider each area as important I just don't think we should structure policy so tiny areas are incentivized to fight each other and the loser is where everything "bad" gets built. Also I pointed to a clear mechanism by which this sort of thing leads to inequitable outcomes, what part of that do you disagree with?

> But what is your solution? The section 8 housing or other universally unpopular projects have go somewhere. Do you think the SFH owners in the poor part of town want it in their backyard?

I feel like I have a solution here and you haven't proposed one. My point is that we should be more permissive with where we build affordable housing, including and especially in more exclusive areas. What is your solution?

I think towns or metro areas should come together, decide what they want for the region together, turn that into a set of rules that will bring about those outcomes, and then stick to those rules. If there are problems with the rules they can be revisited but not by making special exceptions for each individual project. I want to get close to John Rawls' veil of ignorance where people are setting rules based on what they think is fair and not based on their own interests. Obviously, it is impossible to achieve this ideal but I think a higher level conversation is more conducive to this kind of decision making.

> Does it matter?

It totally matters because if it is the result of policy then it is something we can change. There are numerous costs. Yes the individual needs to pay for utility hookup but in general water systems and roads are more expensive per housing unit if each segment of shared infrastructure serves fewer people. Zoning policy in general increases the supply of single family homes relative to multi family homes, decreasing their cost. 30 year mortgages are guaranteed by the government and home appreciation gives home owners a huge tax exemption when they sell their home. These apply to condos as well but loans are difficult to get for some forms of multi-family housing and they still put their thumb on the scales in favor of home owners at the expense of renters who are much more likely to live in multi-family housing.

"I am not saying we shouldn't consider each area as important I just don't think we should structure policy so tiny areas are incentivized to fight each other and the loser is where everything "bad" gets built."

I'm not disagreeing with the result. What is the solution to the factions not fighting? I haven't heard one so far, so I'm disagreeing with your stated cause of it.

"My point is that we should be more permissive with where we build affordable housing, including and especially in more exclusive areas."

That's not a solution because there's no path to achieving it and ignores the established legal processes, such as appeals, that society has decided are fair. As you've pointed out, the exclusive areas fight it. My solution isn't worth going over in detail again, but has been raised in similar discussions on here. Basically, these problems are the result of population distribution. Creating incentives to repopulate and employ shrinking cities will provide the best overall results through economic reinvigoration of places like the rust belt, take advantage of vacant housing, and have less barriers to development of new housing.

"It totally matters because if it is the result of policy then it is something we can change."

It wasn't posed as a policy issue. It was posed as an architectural vs stability issue. Stuff like not dealing with bad neighbors or landlords can't be cured with policy anyways. Many utilities charge a connection cost per building, where you have an apartment building paying lower per resident fees than a home. And higher density often requires larger infrastructure, so it's not just cost per stretch.

"Zoning policy in general increases the supply of single family homes relative to multi family homes, decreasing their cost."

Maybe that's happened in your area, but not around here. Most of the townships around here permit higher density housing in many areas, but it's rarely built. The predominate thing bring built is single family. The zoning does nothing for the cost - the cost of a townhome is significantly cheaper than a single family home. The mortgage guarantee applies to mortgages on other residential property types as well. The tax break when selling also applies to other residential properties like condos and townhouses. I have friends and family who live in condos and townhouse- loans were not difficult to get at all. There's no merit here to support that SFHs are favored over higher density ownership.

"they still put their thumb on the scales in favor of home owners at the expense of renters who are much more likely to live in multi-family housing."

I'm not sure what you mean here. Many areas even have rent control and rent assistance. I don't see anything being done to benefit home owners at the expense of renters.

Sad that you're being downvoted, because you're exactly right.

If you give local neighborhoods too much power over what gets built, guess what's gonna happen when the thing has to be built somewhere? That's right, it'll automatically go to whoever has the least political power, whoever will fight it in court the least.

And who has the least political power, in terms of neighborhoods? We all know the answer.

In areas where you can “build what you want” (eg semi rural or similar) there does seem to be a strong preference for SFH, followed by duplexes (though I rather call them 2x townhomes) followed by rowhouse-like things in 4 or 6 or more, followed by actual big condominium buildings.

And based on pricing, it seems that most would pick the SFH if they could afford it.

Of course, in a city with transit and traffic pressure the calculus may change.

Where I am there’s basically NO redevelopment pressure, as you can find empty land within a mile.

> I don't personally know anyone who wants an apartment building or trailer park next to their single family home.

I used to live in Munich and I'd be fine with it if it took the form it did there. We lived in a 'quiet neighborhood' in what amounted to a backyard duplex, where in front there was a 6-unit apartment building, with car parking underground. None of the ugly surface lots you see in the states.

It's a bullshit disingenuous media tactic trying to make people outside an area who would benefit from a project appear just as valid as the community members opposing it.

The fact is it's not actually your backyard just because you've added that label to yourself. (See the DPRK)

> "community" as the group of people who live in and wish to direct the changes in the area they are in

IMHO it is the genuine and most adequate 'community', because the less abusive way to decide is subsidiarity ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsidiarity ). Constraining people who live near the potential site makes them at best suspicious, they will better memorize this constraint than any benefit from other projects.

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