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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

#81

Post by ReptileMan »

e40 wrote: post #60
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 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 like rent control or whatever.

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

#82

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#83

Post by baggy_trough »

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.

Yes, there's no chance I'm going to rent an ADU under these incredibly tenant-biased regulations as in California. I have to be able to evict people at the end of their lease for any reason if they are going to be in an ADU on my property.

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

#84

Post by dkjaudyeqooe »

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?

> Yet "tangled up in social issues" remains a popular misconception. Why?

Do you think declaring their preferred pronouns helped liberal politicians? Who did it ultimately help? Probably the Trump campaign.

Also, "defund the police" is easily the stupidest political slogan ever. It's bewildering. Did no one think "Reform the police" was a winner? And yet liberal politicians lapped it up.

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

#85

Post by gotoeleven »

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…

It's not really surprising that places with the most onerous "tenants rights" regimes have the biggest problems with housing inventory. I wish the people enacting these laws understood that for every squatter or rent deadbeat you prevent a landlord from evicting, there's a hundred potential landlords that just say no thanks I'll just leave my property empty.

https://www.pacificresearch.org/time-to-ask-why-so-many-san-...

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

#86

Post by HaZeust »

Scaring politicians misses the mark. Incumbent homeowners often block change too, fearing value dips more than scarcity's fallout.

Maybe just cutting red tape isn't enough push. What if we need structural leverage? Think broader checks & balances, and empowering citizens and maybe even corps to pressure each other and politicians directly. Make everyone with skin in the game actually fear the status quo because other players have real teeth, not just politicians worried about votes.

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

#87

Post by ragingroosevelt »

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.

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

#88

Post by PaulHoule »

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…

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 at least he was paying rent. Between that and another tenant losing her shit we lost at least a years rent plus still have a unit vacant even though we have been using the time to catch up on maintainance.

I’ve seen other small landlords in the same situation where they were psychologically devastated by the process of dealing with a bad tenant and evicting them. Right now my wife is helping a friend who inherited two homes from their parents who recently passed away which might have been a takeaway and not a gift because she has yet to clean up the mess left behind and struggles to with precarity (doesn’t have a working car, can’t find the title abstract and will have to cough up a few $1000 to be able to sell, …) renting the place out for a few years made some money but probably resulted in lost value in selling it.

The juiciest gossip in our small town us that the owner of an equipment rental company (probably able to afford to do it right) attempted an illegal ‘self-help” eviction by crashing into the building with a backhoe which is not only an own goal in terms of property damage but could probably cost $10,000 or more in court. (A friend of our who has struggled with homelessness got a settlement of that much for being illegally evicted by the homeless shelter when it closed but then struggled to cash the check because he had no bank account an no id to create a bank account…)

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

#89

Post by TulliusCicero »

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 never made any predictions, that would require them to actually introspect, you see.

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

#90

Post by crooked-v »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #65
huijzer wrote: post #25

Noah Smith also wrote a IMO nice review of the Abundance book [1]. I'm very happy that problems like this are discussed: > This is only one way that Klein and Thompson would have us focus on outputs instead of on inputs. Progressives love to focus on the number of dollars the government spends on high speed rail or green energy; Klein and Thompson would have us focus instead on how much actually gets built as a resul…

Unfortunately, we have one party that wants the government to get some stuff done but doesn't really care about how much it costs, and another party that cares about costs but doesn't really want the government to get stuff done. So we end up either getting things done for an exorbitant price, or not getting anything done.

The Republicans care to claim about costs, but DOGE actions like mass firing inspectors general make it obvious that's a lie. The actual function of the party at this this point is to funnel money to the rich and/or do whatever Trump got into his head is important this week even if it means setting the economy on fire.
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