[spamizbad]

US homeowners made a decision to use their homes as their primary or secondary investment vehicles so they have little interest in allowing any new construction that could be viewed as lowering their property values.

There’s also a good bit of plain old racism involved but people are in denial about it and insist they’re implying something else.

For example, in a nearby community they were proposing some “starter townhomes” priced at $295K (median home price in the area is 350K). These were not rentals, low income, section 8a - they were new construction townhomes on the lower end of the pricing spectrum. People FREAKED out, and suggested they’d be bought up by gangs and junkies and all sorts of ne’er-do-wells and the project was killed. Someone stood up at a zoning meeting and said “Do you really want someone who lives in one of these as your neighbor? Do you want their kids going to our schools? I sure don’t!” To thunderous applause.

I personally can’t wrap my head around the logic. It’s not like these existing homeowners are rich - in fact the sort of person who scoops up a $300K townhome is probably a young professional with an office job who probably make the same or more as the residents complaining that they’ll bring poverty. It’s nuts!

[bombcar]

If the median home is 350k, then there are already houses somewhere down around 295k or all the houses are identically priced.

Even now, $50k is only $350/mo. I doubt there's terribly many gangbangers for whom $350/mo is the cutoff.

They just don't want anything to change (literally "conservative" even if progressive politically) and will make any argument they can find for it.

At some point you can't win by convincing them, you either bribe them or steamroll them.

The bribery is very effective, make the developer build a new library or redo all the streets or something.

[jeffbee]

In my city we've had some success naming and shaming those people. After someone makes a really obscene comment like that we figure out who they are, or often we already knew, then one of my group uses their two minutes to put that speaker's name on the record. After these racist pricks realize we're paying attention, they stop coming to council meetings.

[mikrl]

>so they have little interest in allowing any new construction that could be viewed as lowering their property values

This logic is so backwards on behalf of homeowners it’s unreal. Which cities are associated with out of control house prices?

SF, New York, Toronto…

What do these cities have a lot of? Housing. Increasing population density increases the tax base, which increases the level and quality of services which increases property values.

This trend shows no sign of reversal AFAIK