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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

#51

Post by vaidhy »

loeg wrote: post #35
TulliusCicero wrote: post #3

> In many ways, Jerry was ahead of the curve. He was lamenting “everything bagel liberalism” and “process over outcomes” before it was cool. Process over outcomes is a great way of putting it. For example, California has a well known environmental law, often referred to as its acronym, CEQA. Intended to protect the environment, it was certainly well intentioned, and surely much of what it accomplishes is good. But as…

Yeah, the entire result of NEPA/CEQA/SEPA legislation is mandated process rather than any specific environmental goals or regulation. They should be scrapped and replaced with specific goals and/or a government regulatory authority (like the EPA).

One is strategic and other is tactical. The goal is the strategy and the process is tactical. Just having a goal without specific means of achieving it is useless.

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

#52

Post by cortesoft »

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.

“Delivering better lives for people” is already an inherently social issue, though. There are many people who don’t WANT to improve certain people’s lives, and if your proposed policies help them, they will be against it even if it makes everyone’s life better; they are willing to forgo improving their own life to make sure the people they hate won’t see any improvement.

Unless your policies go out of their way to exclude the groups they hate, you aren’t going to get their support.

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

#54

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

avidiax wrote: post #9

I think the author has it quite backwards, at least as it comes to housing. Politicians are beholden to the members of their district, not would-be members. Sure, more affordable housing would benefit many people, but it wouldn't benefit the members of the district, particularly the wealthy and powerful, since more affordable housing is very nearly equivalent to real estate values decreasing (at the very least, as pe…

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 worth more in that case, market evaluation be damned.

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

#55

Post by Gothmog69 »

wwweston wrote: post #29
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.

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?

[flagged]

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

#56

Post by TulliusCicero »

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…

> 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.

Yeah, see, this mindset is exactly the problem.

Letting anyone put a granny flat on their property if they have space for it is radical? Come on, that's a moderate change at most.

And yeah, that kind of thing is never going to make a big difference over the short or even medium term. You want a big impact quickly, you need bigger changes: allow for higher density "missing middle" housing across the whole city, drastically streamline the approval process to be "as of right", get rid of all mandatory parking minimums, invest tens of millions of tax dollars every year into new public housing, etc.

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

#57

Post by crooked-v »

JadeNB wrote: post #36
woah wrote: post #20

A popular view in the YIMBY community is that restrictive zoning and other policies that limit housing are pushed by homeowners who are benefitting from a housing shortage, in some kind of long-range Machiavellian conspiracy to alter macroeconomics in their favor. But this doesn't really hold up when you think about it. Restrictions on housing expansion are generally very local, with projects being blocked on the mun…

> A popular view in the YIMBY community is that restrictive zoning and other policies that limit housing are pushed by homeowners who are benefitting from a housing shortage, in some kind of long-range Machiavellian conspiracy to alter macroeconomics in their favor. But this doesn't really hold up when you think about it. > Restrictions on housing expansion are generally very local, with projects being blocked on the…

You just have to look at the Trump tariffs to see that lots of people will vote entirely against their own rational interests just because of vibes.

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

#58

Post by nimish »

crooked-v wrote: post #49
nimish wrote: post #7

Old people are 'aging in place' instead of cultivating the new generation and it really, really shows

With that said, a substantial part of that is that every major city in the US has spent decades underbuilding housing, so the smaller homes that urban seniors might otherwise want to downsize to are in very short supply in the first place.

yes becaause old people are afraid their house values will go down. now they don't have grandkids and are going to die alone. many such cases

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

#59

Post by jf22 »

wwweston wrote: post #29
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.

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?

I think it's simply that being mad about social issues gets more interactions on social media.

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

#60

Post by e40 »

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…

>* 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 edge cases (really bad owners and renters).

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