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by FranklinJabar 123 days ago
> But I can also see how this will be used as one more arrow in the quiver of NIMBYs.

How much are NIMBYs actually a problem these days? It seems to me that YIMBYs insisting on building anything, anything, anything at all, damn the cost, be it a privately developed five over one or a publicly funded ferris wheel downtown, are a much bigger issue now. We should be intentional about the communities we are developing (say, FUCKING PUBLIC HOUSING), and ideally not spoonfeeding capital more of our lifeblood as most YIMYs insist on
2 comments
testdelacc1 123 days ago
I live in a city that consistently builds about 3-4% of the number of homes we need to build each year. We don’t build rail, we don’t electricity transmission infrastructure, all of which increases our cost of living.

NIMBYs are doing great, I’d say.

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FranklinJabar 123 days ago
> NIMBYs are doing great, I’d say.

NIMBYs, or just typical anglo incompetence? How can you tell the difference? It's easy to blame other people for systemic dysfunction.

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inglor_cz 123 days ago
This sort of construction failure is present everywhere where the public is allowed to make extensive inputs into what gets built. It is not just a US-specific reaction to urban engineering by Robert Moses.

We've let the pendulum swing too hard and instead of a dictatorship of technocrats, we have a dictatorship of vetocrats. A relatively small group of people, sometimes one single individual, can make new construction more complicated than lunar exploration, and there are indeed neighbourhoods whose permitting process took longer than the entire Apollo project.

I live in a house built on a former brownfield, 32 semi-detached houses in total. The whole project was delayed by four years by one dedicated octogenarian who didn't like the idea of new people in "his" neighbourhood and pulled out all stops he could (or even couldn't).

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JuniperMesos 123 days ago
What do you consider to be anglo incompetence in dwelling construction that isn't NIMBYism?
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FranklinJabar 123 days ago
Owning land. Whoever came up with this idea needs to be hung and revived a million times, and then tortured to death a million more. Our society has been mutilated as a result.

I think you could ascribe this to either NIMBY or YIMBY harebrained thinking. We need a third option that's pro-human.

We need public fucking housing.

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zajio1am 123 days ago
Most of NIMBY legislature and processes that block private construction also block public construction. So most YIMBY arguments to improve the situation apply to both public and private constructions. (Not to mention that public construction has a plenty of problems specific to it.)
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energy123 123 days ago
There is no trade-off or contradiction between public housing and YIMBY deregulation to allow more private development. I want both. They are complementary.

There's also overlap between YIMBYs are Georgists, they share some skepticism around private land ownership.

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FranklinJabar 123 days ago
> There is no trade-off or contradiction between public housing and YIMBY deregulation

Sucking off developers removes all air from the room.

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roenxi 123 days ago
You seem fairly keen on building public housing. Wouldn't that qualify you as a YIMBY? The YIMBYs are the lobby that tends to be pro-new-buildings.

If you want to build public housing, only the NIMBYs would really oppose the idea.

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FranklinJabar 123 days ago
> Wouldn't that qualify you as a YIMBY?

YIMBY is the pro-private-development lobby, as best I can tell. PHIMBY is the term I've seen.

> If you want to build public housing, only the NIMBYs would really oppose the idea.

I suspect most who go by YIMBY would also oppose this.

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Nasrudith 123 days ago
We get it, you're a commie. No need to constantly repeat that you want public versions of everything that already exists.
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energy123 123 days ago
You can tell the difference by observing that, intra-city (not inter-city, inter-state, or inter-country, which introduces confounds), the suburban locations with the highest land values build the least. Enclaves like where Marc Andreessen lives, where his family unit has been involved in successful NIMBY activism. That is an outcome that can only be explained by asymmetric government interference due to more effective lobbying from politically active NIMBYs.
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DocTomoe 123 days ago
That would imply that 96-97% of population growth in your city immediately becomes homeless. Obviously, that is not the case.
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econ 123 days ago
I've seen people live with their parents till 40 while waiting for a tiny room that will cost 2 or 3 times what their parents pay for their large villa with large garden.

Its quite simple to me. We the grown ups (together) are to facilitate housing for the kids. If we can't do that anymore we should ask ourselves why we don't want to do that anymore?

Quite interesting is how the (now proverbial) 40 year old isn't really attacking the problem.

I won't be around but I'm curious how their kids in turn will share the tiny room till 40.

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ziml77 123 days ago
No it doesn't. The number would be the percentage of additional housing needed. Existing housing doesn't suddenly disappear each year.
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kjshsh123 123 days ago
Market housing will be expensive until you allow developers to build as much housing as the market demands.

Non-market housing will have extremely long wait times if there is not as much of it as the market demands.

And the NIMBYs and left-NIMBYs are still winning.

Relevant substack article (Towers Don't Cause the Housing Crisis):

https://open.substack.com/pub/shonczinner/p/towers-dont-caus...

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