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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

#211

Post by danphilibin »

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…

> we also need to come up with incentives to light a fire under the butts of individual actors in our economy to actually go out and make things.

I've been watching something similar happen in LA with Measure HLA, a "safe streets" bill that was supposed to require the city to include safety improvements for pedestrians and cyclists during regular road maintenance. The bill passed with broad support but none of the people in charge of the agencies seem to want to do any of that stuff, so they either drag their feet or simply don't comply, leading to lawsuits and delays. (Just today, Metro voted unanimously to not include a now-legally mandated bike lane along a major new busway, claiming it's not their problem. Which might be true — and that's a separate issue — but playing hot potato with safety & mobility improvements feels like a leadership problem, not a legal problem.)

I like designing good incentives but in this case just passing laws is not working. You also need the actors to want the change. (I personally would be focusing on installing new leadership.)

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

#212

Post by tsimionescu »

knowknow wrote: post #77
tsimionescu wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where exactly did you get the idea that Kamala was running on this? Where was she advocating for, say, Medicare for all? Or fighting vested interests by running on campaign finance reform, to get money out of politics? She was running on an abstract, classical centrist non-program of "we've done great under Biden and we're going to keep doing the same". That is the exact opposite of what GP was suggesting.

The comment is saying that liberal politicians should be >prioritizing housing, infrastructure and government services supporting people's economic activity of all kinds. Nothing about what you mentioned at all. Nor did I ever claim Kamala ran on what you said. The fact that you and the commenter have different ideas of what rational policies are and assume politicians should be running on that platform is part of th…

They were was also saying:

> Delivering better lives for people, and having the courage to stand up to vested interests, from house owners to corporations

So I interpreted the first part in a more revolutionary direction, though you may be right that they were thinking a different direction than I was.

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

#213

Post by scoofy »

pessimizer wrote: post #209
scoofy wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have the tools, it's just going to be inter-generational warfare, and nobody really wants to say it out loud. The bigger the housing crisis gets, the more people are going to change things on the state level instead of the local level. This isn't a pendulum shifting event, it's a cascade, and that's why Abundance is doing so well, and that's why things are getting ugly on the left.

> We have the tools, it's just going to be inter-generational warfare, and nobody really wants to say it out loud. No, it's not. The people who own houses pass them down to their kids. As people invading a neighborhood, YIMBYs may be new , but they are not that young. They are early middle-aged and wealthy. They are trying to move into elite neighborhoods and cities that they can't afford, not trying to avoid homeles…

Yea, this is exactly what I mean by economic warfare:

>The people who own houses pass them down to their kids.

Pass them to one of their kids, who will likely be 65 or older when they inherit it. That leaves about 45 years where these kids will need to find housing.

>As people invading a neighborhood

That's an interesting way to say "moving somewhere for a job and to build a life."

>They are trying to move into elite neighborhoods and cities that they can't afford

Yea, this is absurd. People just want a decent place to live.

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

#214

Post by ethersteeds »

ReptileMan wrote: post #81
e40 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>* There's a general fear of being a landlord. Tenants have a lot of legal rights, and the risk of inviting someone onto your property who could start squatting or doing drugs and not being able to evict them is beyond the pale for most families.* This is a big problem in a lot of places. It's really hard for cities to strike a good balance between renters and owners, and I think few do it well. Especially for the ed…

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…

I think this completely elides the point the gp was making about the edge cases being the hardest part. As siblings have pointed out, even establishing "no damage to the property beyond normal wear and tear" is frequently contentious and not self-evident. Rights (and courts) exist precisely because parties frequently represent the facts of a situation to their maximal benefit.

Also, while reasonable people can agree that there's room to improve the balance on tenants rights, the idea of swinging from "total" to "0" rights based solely on payment status doesn't strike me as the debate's end.

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

#215

Post by steveBK123 »

rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #170
PaulHoule wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who owns a second house on a farm that has two rental units in it, I’m skeptical of attempts to expand ‘tenant rights’ in New York. I had a tenant who decided that he did not have to pay the rent, it took months of trying to reason with him, we hired a lawyer and went through the process which took several months, in the end the tenant stayed on a few months past what would have been the eviction date but…

I’ve also seen this happen in NYS. Tenants do the craziest shit (selling showers to crackheads and discovering a near thousand dollar water bill was one of the tamer tales), fight tooth and nail to stay, and leave the place uninhabitable when they finally are forced to go. Unfortunately the local mom and pop landlords get wrecked by this while only the big corporate landlords have the resources and scale to weather t…

It's a law of large numbers thing. Americans romanticized mom&pop landlords vs big greedy landlords, but.. it's a bad business to be a smalltime landlord. It's like putting all your money in one stock.

If, say, 5% of the population is crazy, and make for bad tenants.. then owning 10-20+ units puts you in a position of always having 90%+ of your revenue coming in.

If you have 1 unit then most of the time you are OK, but every once in a while you may lose 100% of your revenue for 3-12 months, while you have to keep spending on mortgage/tax/utilities, plus lawyers, repairs, etc.

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

#216

Post by hayst4ck »

dkjaudyeqooe wrote: post #4

Instead of getting tangled up in social issues, liberal politicians should be prioritizing housing, infrastructure and government services supporting people's economic activity of all kinds. Delivering better lives for people, and having the courage to stand up to vested interests, from house owners to corporations, would create a huge and lasting political win across a broad section of the electorate.

Democrats are largely controlled opposition. If you ask where democratic power comes from, it comes from campaign donations by America's richest and most powerful people. Bloomberg ran for president under their banner, think about that. At minimum it communicates that the democratic platform is compatible with oligarchs.

How are they supposed to wrangle corporate power, when that is exactly where their power comes from?

"Social issues" are a godsend for oligarchs because they allow for effort to be spent on issues that don't challenge corporate power. They provide a sink for democratic efforts that ultimately don't move the needle for most of their voters. It gives a pathway for "positive" change that doesn't threaten corporate power. It insidiously disempowers the people who would be most likely to wrestle with corporate power. Most of all it provides the illusion of opposition and therefore the illusion that I have representation because I have someone who has the appearance of representing my values (like empathy), but none of the substance of it.

Democrats have a choice. (1) don't threaten corporate power and focus on ultimately pro-corporate social issues that are ultimately dis-empowering (2) threaten corporate power/land owner power/Israel power and immediately have their campaign financing removed and their challengers funded.

Even if you believe that democrats are focusing on issues that meaningfully change people's lives, like build back better or CHIPS, they are doing it without challenging corporate power. Which is why no matter which regime is in power, it feels like democracy is in decline.

Then you get sad, because you realize there is no way to get actual representation for the issues you care about other than to run yourself, but if you ran explicitly to challenge those in power, those in power would fund your opposition. So then you realize that it's hard to get into power without expressing loyalty to those who grant power, and then you have a cogent explanation for why things are the way they are.

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

#217

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

danphilibin wrote: post #211
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…

> we also need to come up with incentives to light a fire under the butts of individual actors in our economy to actually go out and make things. I've been watching something similar happen in LA with Measure HLA, a "safe streets" bill that was supposed to require the city to include safety improvements for pedestrians and cyclists during regular road maintenance. The bill passed with broad support but none of the pe…

What usually happens with these mandates is you get road markings that pretend to be a bike lane just to satisfy the contract requirements and siphon off federal ISTEA funding for the budgetary savings. The reality is that they are usually fancy death traps with no engineering rigor put into making them safe or functional for bicyclists.

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

#218

Post by baggy_trough »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #217
danphilibin wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we also need to come up with incentives to light a fire under the butts of individual actors in our economy to actually go out and make things. I've been watching something similar happen in LA with Measure HLA, a "safe streets" bill that was supposed to require the city to include safety improvements for pedestrians and cyclists during regular road maintenance. The bill passed with broad support but none of the pe…

What usually happens with these mandates is you get road markings that pretend to be a bike lane just to satisfy the contract requirements and siphon off federal ISTEA funding for the budgetary savings. The reality is that they are usually fancy death traps with no engineering rigor put into making them safe or functional for bicyclists.

Or worse, "sharrows" in the middle of a busy car lane. Ride here if you don't value your life.

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

#219

Post by [deleted] »

rayiner wrote: post #137
dkjaudyeqooe wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

[deleted]

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

#220

Post by MrDarcy »

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 also live in Portland. Look into our local taxes for the answer. We have the highest local tax rate in the nation for families earning more than 200K a year, higher than Manhattan. It simply doesn't pencil to build an ADU and rent it out long term, so you’re incentivized to a short term rental like Airbnb, which does little to nothing to help the housing situation.

It’s the same for new apartment buildings. Next time you drive over the Fremont Bridge look at the skyline. 5 years ago there were 13 visible cranes mostly constructing high density apartment buildings. Today there are none. It’s the same reason, Portland has made it simply unprofitable to develop new high density housing.

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