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Abundance isn't going to happen unless politicians are scared of the status quo

inpractice.yimbyaction.org

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Re: Abundance isn't going to happen unless politicians are scared of the status quo

#131

Post by legitster »

ragingroosevelt wrote: post #87
legitster wrote: post #46

I've grown a little bit more skeptical of what can realistically be achieved by the passive nature of YIMBY-ism. In Portland, they passed some radical new zoning laws a few years ago that allowed anyone, anywhere the ability to zone ADUs on their property. And the cost to get permits is almost nothing. I have lots of friends and family in the area with property. But not a single one has added an ADU. It seems like it…

I live in Portland and own my house. I'd love to put in an ADU and rent to some of my friends but it's pretty expensive and I can't afford it.

The permitting in PDX is very permissive if you do the work yourself. You don't need to build a second house - you can essentially stand up a large shed and do some pretty basic work to finish it into a studio apartment.

Alternatively, the tiny home bubble has popped, and you can buy a used, pre-built tiny home and just park them on your property.

Re: Abundance isn't going to happen unless politicians are scared of the status quo

#132

Post by wormlord »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #89
wormlord wrote: post #31

Probably gonna get downvoted for quoting Lenin on this site -- but he nailed this 120 years ago in "What is to be done?". We are witnessing the collapse of Liberalism in real-time. Liberalism has outlived its usefulness as a tool of containing class conflict. The US ruling class has nearly consolidated absolute power and is disposing of Liberalism because it was only ever a tool used for their benefit . This is not j…

Nah, this is definitely still solvable. Specifically looking at housing for example, I believe Austin and Minneapolis have seen some good progress. Your rhetoric sounds like the doomerism I constantly heard around 2009 during the great recession, ala "THIS time capitalism's done for good! No coming back from this one!" And then after a few years things largely went back to normal and the doomers pretended they'd neve…

There are reformist policies that work and actions that can be taken on the local level to help alleviate some of these problems. But they are not robust long-term solutions.

> a few years things largely went back to normal

The US is deporting random immigrants to a concentration camp in El Salvador without due process claiming all of them are "gang members" with zero evidence.

If you are unable to tie the expansion of the executive power and capture of the courts to the class conflict in the US then idk what to tell you man.

Re: Abundance isn't going to happen unless politicians are scared of the status quo

#133

Post by rdm_blackhole »

singpolyma3 wrote: post #103
ReptileMan wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The balance simple - renters have total rights as long as they pay on time and there is no damage on the property except normal wear and tear and 0 when when not paying. You as landlord can't say anything as long as the property is not damaged for the duration of the contract. You always renegotiate at market rates. There is no concept of squatting and evictions are fast. That's it. Works like a charm. No bullshits l…

This is ideal if you're a landlord, but hell if you're a tenant.

Why would it be hell?

In France it can take years to evict people who stop paying rent. So now 90% of all rental contracts have an insurance for non-payments included in the contract.

A few bad apples forced every other tenant to pay more in rent just because politicians decided that squatters had more rights than the owners. And god have mercy on your soul if you decide to take back what is yours when you get tired of waiting for the justice system to do it's job. If you do, you'll be the one the cops will come for, not the squatters.

Re: Abundance isn't going to happen unless politicians are scared of the status quo

#134

Post by TimorousBestie »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #124
singpolyma3 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is ideal if you're a landlord, but hell if you're a tenant.

The courts should be speedy at forcing landlords to rectify problems just as the courts should be speedy at forcing out squatters. There is no reason either should take 6 months+ to litigate (real world example). I even had an email from the tenant stating they would start paying again if we would reduce the rent. No damage, no question about the facts, just someone who knew that worst case scenario is 6 months free…

I’m all for higher property taxes to increase courtroom bandwidth, but I doubt most landlords are.

Re: Abundance isn't going to happen unless politicians are scared of the status quo

#135

Post by lotsofpulp »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #130
__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given that I'm not trying to sell my house, its market value is meaningless to me. Meanwhile, that house is in the midst of an growing group of increasingly desperate people. Desperation has very real consequences for the people living nearby. The effect you're describing is not nothing, but I think you're overstating it. I'd rather see the homeless housed than see my property value go up by another 10k. It would be…

Not for $10k? How about $100k?

That results in even more property tax I have to pay. People should want higher land prices due to growing incomes and business opportunities, not solely due to lack of housing supply. The former is sustainable, the latter is either a tourist trap or a short term game of musical chairs.

Re: Abundance isn't going to happen unless politicians are scared of the status quo

#136

Post by bryanlarsen »

PaulHoule wrote: post #105
eddythompson80 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is what the Kamala campaign ran on, it didn’t work. It's what Obama ran on, and it worked for him. The fact that he achieved very little there is a different issue. Kamala's 2-month long campaign wasn't very convincing.

The odd trouble was that ordinary people saw the Harris campaign as being preoccupied with the issues of a lunatic fringe online plus what conservatives said Harris was preoccupied with. Harris would have had to kick the lunatic fringe to the curb but didn’t have the will to do so.

The lunatic fringe is generally randos on social media, not people of authority in the Democratic party. Kamala wasn't in a position to kick them to the curb.

Re: Abundance isn't going to happen unless politicians are scared of the status quo

#137

Post by rayiner »

dkjaudyeqooe wrote: post #75
knowknow wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s amazing that this gets upvoted while it is completely uninformed about what liberal politicians actually run on. This is what the Kamala campaign ran on, it didn’t work. People love getting tangled on social issues as it’s the most provocative. This conception that most people actually care about rational policies is false and has been false for at least the past decade.

Your assumptions are wrong. Kamala lost because of inflation during the Biden admin and some related missteps. Also her gender and skin color likely worked against her. Also you're misreading my point, campaigning on these things isn't a panacea, but delivering on them just might be.

It probably wasn’t either inflation or Harris’s race, because the rightward swing was heavily skewed by race. Compared to 2016, all of Trump’s gain came from non-whites: https://static01.nyt.com/images/2025/03/18/opinion/18eks-sho....

Whites didn’t shift at all from 2016 to 2024. Latino moderates shifted 23 points to the right, and Asian moderates shifted 11 points to the right.

It’s hard to explain how inflation would cause a racially unbalanced shift like that. The 2016 election was a pretty neutral baseline—the economy was fine and had been for years. So if inflation was the cause, why didn’t white voters shift right compared to 2016? It doesn’t make sense that inflation would only cause hispanics and asians to shift right.

Likewise, if race was the reason, why didn’t white voters shift right, compared to 2016 when the candidate was a white woman? And why did black conservatives (a bloc about the same size as black liberals) shift 8 points to the right?

Re: Abundance isn't going to happen unless politicians are scared of the status quo

#138

Post by PaulHoule »

soco wrote: post #39
wwweston wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's pretty much where liberal politicians end up targeting most of their policymaking and even a sizable portion of their campaign platform (as demonstrated in the Harris platform). Yet "tangled up in social issues" remains a popular misconception. Why?

Because anything related to "delivering better lives" gets labeled as "tangled up social issues" and discarded in favor of "increasing profits". Maybe the majority only understands life through money? Like, a better life means more money, period - and has no concept that a better life could mean road safety, reliable healthcare, serious schooling, quiet retirement, and such.

Republicans are trusted more on schools post-COVID and evidence is blue states lost more schooling progress than red state even if blue states were mostly ahead pre-COVID. (if you argue that we are not post-COVID, people are not going to trust you on schools even if the virus still lingers. As callous as it sounds, everybody dies, but not everybody gets a complete education and if you think the way the education-industrial complex thinks, students don’t get back social and educational progess they lost)

Re: Abundance isn't going to happen unless politicians are scared of the status quo

#139

Post by lotsofpulp »

TimorousBestie wrote: post #134
lotsofpulp wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The courts should be speedy at forcing landlords to rectify problems just as the courts should be speedy at forcing out squatters. There is no reason either should take 6 months+ to litigate (real world example). I even had an email from the tenant stating they would start paying again if we would reduce the rent. No damage, no question about the facts, just someone who knew that worst case scenario is 6 months free…

I’m all for higher property taxes to increase courtroom bandwidth, but I doubt most landlords are.

I am. I say hit everyone with a marginal land value tax rate too, so the more land value you own (even via partnerships), the higher your tax rate is.

Re: Abundance isn't going to happen unless politicians are scared of the status quo

#140

Post by TulliusCicero »

wormlord wrote: post #132
TulliusCicero wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah, this is definitely still solvable. Specifically looking at housing for example, I believe Austin and Minneapolis have seen some good progress. Your rhetoric sounds like the doomerism I constantly heard around 2009 during the great recession, ala "THIS time capitalism's done for good! No coming back from this one!" And then after a few years things largely went back to normal and the doomers pretended they'd neve…

There are reformist policies that work and actions that can be taken on the local level to help alleviate some of these problems. But they are not robust long-term solutions. > a few years things largely went back to normal The US is deporting random immigrants to a concentration camp in El Salvador without due process claiming all of them are "gang members" with zero evidence. If you are unable to tie the expansion…

> But they are not robust long-term solutions.

Why not? Sure, they could be undone, but that's true for any law in a democracy.

> The US is deporting random immigrants to a concentration camp in El Salvador without due process claiming all of them are "gang members" with zero evidence.

Got some bad news for you if you think abuses of executive power like this aren't largely normal here.

Yes, it sucks, but my point was that the doomers couldn't disentangle a few very bad economic years from their highly motivated belief that the whole rotten system is gonna come crashing down Any Day Now, I Swear.

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