[grahamplace]

> This is democracy in action

One challenge in YIMBY-oriented organizing is that "future residents" who would benefit most from new developments have no political power to wield in order to get them approved — because they don't live there yet — because they can't, since there is not housing for them

[opportune]

Yes, as someone in his mid 20s I am pissed that everyone before me kicked the can down the road long enough for this to become my problem. It’s not just SF, it’s a Bay Area/California/National problem - at varying levels of severity and impact.

Of course nobody forces me to live in SF. But if I leave someone will just take my place - this isn’t just a housing problem, it’s also a mismatch in where jobs are relative to where housing is. My desk will get reassigned to someone else who will likely also live in SF (because we can afford it, but the people with families making my food can’t).

The least we can do now is fix it forward and make sure it doesn’t get worse. Even for people like me and the hypothetical low wage worker with a family, the sooner we fix this the sooner we can reap the benefits.

[rr888]

"everyone before" you created America's state with the richest and largest population. It has the highest desity of people West of the Mississippi. If you want cheap housing move to Wisconsin and work remotely. If you want to live in the most desireable state in the world, dont complain people before you "messed things up".

[opportune]

Some of them created that, a whole lot more just did regular jobs and voted for things like neighborhood preservation or fixing property taxes when a property is exchanged.

One reason I am in this position to begin with is that Bay Area municipalities approved huge office projects without increasing housing in tandem. Those policies were explicitly to attract people like me - high income office workers who would generate payroll and sales taxes while stimulating the local economy as I buy goods and services, without a large net increase in public expenditures since the static housing supply also keeps the population relatively static.

I have no reservations in calling that out as a mistake. I understand the rationale behind those decisions and if I hadn’t seen what it led to now, I may have supported them. I can understand why people who aren’t affected because they are longtime homeowners, or who were affected and bought in at high prices, really don’t want to rock the boat.

But those policies are reaching their breaking point and materially affecting people’s lives negatively. Because of high housing prices many people are living in smaller/older units, crammed in with more people than they’d prefer, or living very far away from their job. Besides high housing prices this has plenty of other negative effects like bad traffic, social spending on people with what would be middle incomes in the rest of the country, and definitely a contributor to homelessness (something like half of which have jobs and live in unstable environments like their cars - not talking about the addicts at 7th and Market).

It’s systemic - you can rationalize the pain by saying any individual could move away if they don’t like it, but that doesn’t change the imbalance in jobs relative to housing.

Also, I can easily pay for as much housing as I want. But I’d like to stay here and have room for children, not deal with high priced everywhere because rent is too high and it’s too hard to find low skill workers, and not see my neighbors suffer. If you don’t like my presence in this area why don’t you move?

[rr888]

> If you don’t like my presence in this area why don’t you move?

I live on the East Coast. You should come here its great.