[eropple]

I don't intend to speak for 'davidw, but communities imply a social contract and people picking where to live based primarily on rental prices seem quite a bit less likely to build a rapport with that community. I'm not blaming them for it--late capitalism, yo--but it is a thing and it's not unreasonable for an established, community-concerned member to be like "hey, there's more to us than where your apartment is."

[jjeaff]

>cash out and live like a king

That's increasingly the problem in CA. Current residents have spent so much on housing that their only chance for a decent retirement is of their home values keep going up. They've paid so much that they haven't contributed nearly enough to their retirement accounts.

You can hardly blame a NIMBY if nearly 100% of their net worth is tied up in their home value and falling home values will result in them having 0 retirement and no ability to sell their home and move because they are so far underwater.

[eropple]

That depends on the definition of the word "blame" that you're using. If it's a moral castigation? No, of course not; they are being ground down by the shitty circumstances that entrap most of us and of course it's hard to hold as a moral failing the maximization of what little they have (and while it is a lot to people below them, yeah, it's little in the grand scheme of things).

But if it is an identification of a problem? I think it is fair. The amount of misery that NIMBYs can spread through forced inaction significantly outweighs the amount received in the case of action, I think.

[jjeaff]

The first one. "You can hardly blame them" pretty much always denotes moral castigation rather than the technical attribution of fault.