[kelnos]

> It's nothing to do with nimbyism, is it? Nimbys are property owners. The problem only affects people who do not have back yards.

NIMBYs are property owners who vote for restrictive housing development policy in order to prop up their own home values.

Eliminate the NIMBYs and you end up with a lot more people who can have their own backyard.

[bumby]

>Eliminate the NIMBYs

This is said rather matter-of-factly, but how do you propose doing that in a society with democratic values (ie people get a voice in their governance) and also where 70% of most household wealth is in their property?

[JackYoustra]

Japan does this just fine: they have standardized zoning across all municipalities, decided at the national level.

[bumby]

What percent of Japanese household net worth is in their primary residence and how much has this been impacted by their largely stagnant stock market for the last 40 years?

I'm skeptical that national zoning is feasible if for no other reason than the diversity of land and land uses.

[JackYoustra]

Are you arguing for affordability? You can't have both affordability and high price (= huge % of net worth).

It's a very bad thing for people to invest in a fundamentally depreciating asset and expect a return, there's literally no other way to get a return then besides inflation.

And sure, returns have been low, but that's because the real interest rate in Japan for the last 30 years has been negative! You can't get a return if the fundamental balance of loanable funds leads to a negative real interest rate, you need stimulus instead, which they've been trying for over thirty years! And shocker, now that we're seeing Japanese interest rates rise, Japanese stocks are shooting up!

[bumby]

I'm trying to get clarity on this statement:

>Japan does this just fine

You seem to be implying Japan's scenario adequately mirrors the U.S. In other words, they have a high proportion of their net worth tied up in real estate, which is what I am pointing to as a driver of NIMBY-ism. If that analogy doesn't hold, then I would argue it's not an apt analogy and probably doesn't offer much in terms of policy insight.

Also, in the US, I don't think you can argue that real estate in general is a "fundamentally depreciating" asset. I don't think the recent history is illustrative, but over the long term real estate tends to be positive.

[JackYoustra]

Real estate is fundamentally depreciating: you build a building, it exhibits wear and tear, it's worth nothing in the long run. Assets are usually valued off of future cashflows, which would be the long-run rent it can fetch. For most investments, you just shove this into a calculator with the current risk free rate and it spits out a number that's the current price. The rent declines in the case of a building with the wear until it's condemned, at which point it goes to zero. I'm saying this because just because something is fundamentally depreciating doesn't mean it won't have real yields, my point is looking at the yields from a capital appreciation perspective is kinda distracting where fundamental yields come from. Usually, capital appreciation is far more muddled (did capital become cheaper, leading to bidding up of yields? did people secularly just want to pay more for renting a house? etc)

Of course in the US there's been huge capital appreciation: housing and shelter went from 10% of CPI in the 60s to 40% of CPI today! Are you going to keep drawing the line and say "yeah, it's totally reasonable for us to continue it to have capital appreciation out-of-line of actual yields when supply and demand are balanced" - like how far is enough for you? 50% of CPI? 60? You're never going to be able to get the real appreciation that we've had over the last 40 years because that'd take us to 160% of CPI!!!

[PaulDavisThe1st]

Don't have to be property owners. Anyone who can show up at a meeting, vote, submit comments ...

[JackYoustra]

Sure, and anyone can make their own crypto implementation that's not based on reference, but what matters isn't the theory but the actual facts: the overwhelming majority of community meeting retirees are retired homeowners.

Look at your local suburban school district's bond: you'll probably see some age-based exemption on paying to get support because old people are by far the most engaged. Is that democratic? In the sense that its based on votes of a voluntary electorate, yes. Is it the representative will? Clearly not! You want to cluster elections around high turnout to maximize representation.

[bluGill]

Anyone can, but existing property owners do.

[rightbyte]

AirBnB did 'eliminate' the NIMBYs by sidestepping local zoning laws.

And the outcome was bad for people living in these targets for mass tourism. Unless they were a YIMBY of course and wanted a hostel in their backyard.

'NIMBY' is like 'Karen' or 'boomer'. Some sort of convenient scapegoat, deserving or not.

[JackYoustra]

I could turn around and say "the outcome was bad for people willing to receive all of the benefits of a free-to-travel society in a bustling town but none of the costs." Of course if you say "mass tourism" it's bad, but idk, do you like to travel? If hundreds of thousands want to visit a beautiful town, should we limit supply in a way that makes it impossible for them to visit? There are millions of alternatives (you could ban lyft or cars for non-natives, you could restrict development to a resort and gated community on one part of town, etc) but the whole reason it's called NIMBY is because the only alternative NIMBYs have is freezing a town in amber while claiming a triple lock raise in pensions.

Zoning laws are, for the most part, a mistake. Any solution to housing prices that isn't a boost in supply either leads to scarcity or hideous Danwei-style planning that reaches into peoples life plans and the ability to afford a future.