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Comment by the_real_cher | Hacker News Reader

Its extremely disingenuous and pejorative to conflate artists, students, and service industry employees with criminals.

There's a number of reasons for people to be poor outside of being CRIMINALS.

That being said, what other incentives are there to eliminate affordable housing then other than property values?

The boomer NIMBY's are taking over regions by running local politics and enacting zoning ordinances that are out of control to keep their property values high.

The government is telling people what they can do with their own property to an insane degree.

I suspect at some point there will be a legal battle over this.

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> Its extremely disingenuous and pejorative to conflate artists, students, and service industry employees with criminals.

> There's a number of reasons for people to be poor outside of being CRIMINALS.

Right, yes, I agree with you.

The trouble is, the voters whose support is necessary to legalize SROs, do not agree and do not care how unfair we believe they are being.

So how does this get passed? Expressing anger at the ignorant hoping that they see the error of their ways?

There have been many legal values fought over this in the past. The courts have repeatedly affirmed that barring state laws to the contrary, it is entirely within the rights of municipalities to make these rules. So either the state needs to force the hand of the cities, or else the cities need to come around.

Zoning abuse is still at the periphery of the public conscious but as it get more exploitative and more brazen and people start realizing that a small set of property owners are capturing entire municipalities through zoning I suspect this will start to make main stream headlines regularly.

One activist's zoning abuse is a homeowner's "preserving the character and value of the largest investment in their life". Many people have chose to buy in single family zoned neighborhoods, neighborhoods with HOAs, communities that enforce anti-vagrancy statutes, etc.

As I said up-thread, a lot of people view these restrictions as a good thing for them and their community. The homeownership rate is 65%. The individual homeownership rate is 53% - it's not a small set of property owners capturing the entire municipality, but rather a literal majority of the population benefiting, and likely a majority of the population approving (- some liberal/anti-regulation homeowners, + people who prefer zoned communities even if they rent/don't own).

Like anything there's a line between utility and abuse.

When people are paying 5k a month the rent because zoning won't allow growth this could be considered abuse.

When people are prohibited from building an addition on their house (the most expensive investment of their life ) without overwhelmingly expensive bureaucracy that's abuse.

In many cases homeowners and renters are on the same side.

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