Post by penguincascadia in Sim Nimby comments

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No one is forcing you to have other people living in your own home. In contrast, NIMBYs blocking the construction of more housing on other people's property are reducing the property owners' freedom.

Most people are only weakly politically engaged on the local level. This allows for NIMBYs who are much more politically involved on the local level to block housing. Hence why California and Washington, among other states, are bypassing the NIMBYs by mandating broad upzoning on a statewide level.

You have the freedom to move to and live in a low density area. However, people do not have the right to force other people into poverty and homelessness just because they don't like new market rate housing.

That makes no sense. Cuban Americans are a big Republican voting group and the GOP caters to them, but you don't typically get people accusing the Republican Party of catering to Cubans as a tactic to divide white voters.

There is no infinite demand for housing because population growth is not infinite.

The entire population of the Earth is not moving to America.

NIMBYs blocked enough new housing supply to be built to meet demand from a growing population. Therefore, we can properly blame NIMBYs.

American birth rates are above replacement rate, and even if they were below replacement rate, population growth would still continue for a while because of new generations being born. There's no way around this- people need a place to live and we can build more housing or see more poverty and homelessness.

No one is saying that random people have to build housing themselves. By mass upzoning, we can leave that up to the free market which will respond to demand and lower prices.

Building more housing lowers prices, which reduces homelessness and poverty. Poverty and homelessness cause all sorts of other problems. Therefore, by building more housing, we reduce problems in the future.

Considering that upzoning typically is allowing up to five story buildings, where you are getting the skyscrapers stuff from?

NIMBYs are causing poverty and homelessness by blocking new housing. So NIMBYs are the one who are causing the problems, and people who want more housing are fixing the problems.

People do not have the right to force people into homelessness and poverty by blocking housing, just like I can't stop my car on the freeway for hours and block traffic and excuse it for saying "it's a personal choice".

NIMBYs blocking other property owners from building more housing on the other property owners' own land are forcing their own personal choice onto the property owners. It's no longer a matter of personal chpice if the NIMBYs are reducing other people's rights.

Ordinary people are the ones who are become homeless and having a lot of money being sucked away from them because of high housing prices. Ordinary people are the people who are paying the price for NIMBYs blocking housing. NIMBYs are the ones who are not leaving ordinary people alone. The people who are working for more housing are the ones leaving ordinary people alone so they are not paying high rents or mortgages or are not homeless.

Homeless people and people spending a lot of their income on rent are also, well, people. By blocking new housing that would stop them from being homeless and from shelling out too much hard earned money to big corporations, aren't NIMBYs treating people being hurt by high rents and little housing as numbers?

One group of people are working for more housing to reduce poverty and homelessness. They are also working to increase property owners' rights. They are working to increase people's rights to live decently and not be homeless. They are working to expand property rights.

Another group of people are blocking housing from being built, which throws more people on the street and more people into poverty. Their blocking of housing also reduces property owners' property rights. NIMBYs are taking away people's right to not be homeless and their right to live decently. They also are taking away people's property rights.

Tyrants are generally considered to be taking away rights. The people working to allow the construction of more housing are expanding rights. The people blocking housing are taking away rights. Who are really the tyrants?

Ravery (Ravery.net)3 years ago (1 edit) (-1)

"Cuban Americans are a big Republican voting group and the GOP caters to them, but you don't typically get people accusing the Republican Party of catering to Cubans as a tactic to divide white voters. "

Both parties in the US use identity politics and divide&conquer tactics to get votes, just so they come to power and then benefit their (rich) donors: Billionaires and big corporations.

"There is no infinite demand for housing because population growth is not infinite. The entire population of the Earth is not moving to America."

We know that due to migration (as birthrates are below replacement levels) the US has grown from 210 to 332 million in 50 years. That's a factor of 1.58. Even if we assume the same growth rate, you'd have 524 million in 50 years (so an increase by 192 million). Is your "not skyscraper" upzoning enough to house another 192 million? Don't forget that migrants typically move to big cities.

As you seem to be fond of Paris, let's take it for this example. Paris has a population of 2.161 million, so you'd need to build 88 Paris in the US in the next 50 years. Good luck with that.

(Also your polls showed support for duplexes up to sixplexes. That's far less dense than the 5-story vision that you have.)

"American birth rates are above replacement rate, and even if they were below replacement rate, population growth would still continue for a while because of new generations being born."

US birthrates are below replacement levels. Look it up. The last time it was above the 2.1 births per woman (i.e. replacement level) was in 1972. 50 Years ago. https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/fertility-rate

"population growth would still continue for a while because of new generations being born."

That's not how it works. If you have below replacement level birthrates the population will decline without external influence.

"Who are really the tyrants?"

If you were in charge, I'm pretty sure you'd be a tyrant as you operate based on

- ignorance (e.g. misunderstanding of replacement levels as a concept, and not knowing that US is below replacement level for 50 years),

- tunnel vision (e.g. blaming a very big, complex problem on a certain group of people. Completely dismissing other factors and solutions.)

- dishonesty (e.g. using a poll that supports duplexes to sixplexes, as support for 5-story downtown apartment blocks)

- and quite frankly malice (as you blame NIMBYs (just regular people, who are happy with the state of the community they are living in) for housing prices. And you sound very, very, very angry at them.)

I would never vote for you - as long as you have that kind of worldview. Have you even calculated it out? How much cost will your "88 Paris in 50 years" plan have? How many roads will you have to widen? How much infrastructure do you have to upgrade? Is infrastructure even upgradeable to that degree? What about services? What kind of economy will fuel all of that(can't be services as they are just internal circulation)?Are there even enough natural resources to fuel your vision of so much more upgrading? How do you avoid intensifying e.g. water shortages? What about energy?

Have you even looked at other places where some massive building spree has been done in the recent past? Have you looked at China and how their construction&housing industry do now after they were doing that kind of construction spree?

I think it is good that you want to improve the world, but I think you should expand the breadth of problems which you are considering and tackle the issues with a more holistic approach. Society is very, very complex and we had enough social engineers and tunnel-visionaries trying to do heavy handed improvements to one thing, which caused a bunch of other problems simply due to "unforeseeable" (i.e. dismissed) consequences.

Try to expand your knowledge in all directions. Always(!) listen to constructive criticism against your current positions. Always ask yourself: What are the underlying causes of the problems. Sometimes it might be sufficient to solve these underlying causes.

penguincascadia3 years ago (3 edits)

Politicians doing things that voters want is not a divide and conquer tactic.

Okay. So what? You don't have to live in a city if you don't want to. People are living on homes on their own land or other people's land that they mutually agreed to use. They are not living with you.

Besides, people are already here. Plus, there's children growing up and splitting off to start their own households, which will create more demand for housing. We still need to build much more housing.

There's also the fact that much of the demand in cities is from native born Americans moving back into cities. We would still need to build more housing in cities if we take into account just them.

Also, my point about population growth not being infinite and not everyone is moving to America still stands.

Other countries have built densely with mostly only five story buildings and below, and they are much more dense then the urban parts of the U.S. So yes, we can have low rise density to meet housing demand.

The polls I posted were in support of upzoning in general being a decently popular concept. I did not make any claims about them supporting specifically five story buildings (but there are polls out there showing support for low rise density like that).

Lisa the nurse from Colorado thinks that NASA's budget makes up 10% of the budget, when it really is much less. Does that make her a tyrant? No, it does not.

We know that a lack of housing is the primary factor behind America's housing and homelessness crisis: https://www.sightline.org/2022/03/16/homelessness-is-a-housing-problem/

We also know that NIMBYs blocking new housing is the main reason for the housing shortage.

Other things we have tried, like rent control and vacancy taxes, have only helped a little bit with housing. There's no other way to fix most of the housing and homelessness crisis without

So, we have examined all the options, found most of them not sufficient, and arrive at building much more housing as the solution. That's taking a broad view of things and examining all the options.

Regular people are the ones who are suffering from high rents and homelessness because of a lack of housing. Regular people are being made unhappy by shelling out huge parts of their income to landlords and struggling to find housing. No wonder why ordinary people are angry at NIMBYs, because NIMBYs are making them miserable by blocking new housing.

So, we can conclude that on my end, there has been no tyranny.

Also, NIMBYs blocking housing are preventing ordinary people from exercising their property rights. They are also blocking ordinary people from getting cheaper housing and blocking ordinary people from getting out of homelessness. In short, they are reducing ordinary people's rights.

Ordinary people working for more housing are expanding ordinary people's property rights. They are also helping ordinary people get cheaper housing and getting ordinary people out of homelessness. They are expanding ordinary people's rights.

Tyrants are typically considered to be reducing ordinary people's rights. Who are the tyrants, the NIMBYs who are reducing ordinary people's rights or the ordinary people for more housing who are increasing ordinary people's rights?

Also, a lot of what you originally brought up does not relate to the actual topic, the lack of housing for people. Could you please try to keep to the actual topic?

You'll note that we've been discussing market rate housing. The free market, if unburdened by NIMBYs, will build it for us. There's no cost to you for the housing.

It turns out that density costs less then sprawl: http://usa.streetsblog.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2015/03/Halifax-data.pdf So, we are saving taxpayer money in the long run with density.

Plenty of other countries have densities at that level, like most European cities. So, yes, it is very possible to upgrade infrastructure to and have an economy that supports that level.

Ditto for resources- other countries do it fine. And density is a savings on resources: https://news.berkeley.edu/2014/01/06/suburban-sprawl-cancels-carbon-footprint-sa... Denser areas use less resources per capita then sprawling areas.

Besides, the people are already here. They're going to be using the resources anyway. We're just building more housing to meet their needs. And as above, density saves on those resources.

More housing and more density:

-Lowers rents and housing prices

-Reduces homelessness and all the negative effects from that

-Reduces poverty and inequality stemming from high rents

-Reduces sprawl and its negative impacts on the environment

-Reduces resources use

-Uses less taxpayer money per capita then sprawling

-And more!

So, building more housing and allowing more density is a holistic solution that addresses a lot of society's problems. The underlying problem is that people don't have enough housing, and that is causing all sorts of other issues.

Other "solutions" like not building housing and forcing ordinary people to pay very high rents and driving ordinary people to homelessness are heavy handed in their effects. Still other possible solutions like rent control solve only a little of the issue. Building more housing is the solution that fixes most of the issue.

We have considered the housing and homelessness crisis from a wide variety of views (it's negative impact on ordinary people's lives, it's negative impact on ordinary people's finances, it's negative impact on the environment, it's negative impact on city finances), etc.) We have gotten a lot of information about it that expands our knowledge in all directions, and found that building more housing has a lot of positives for ordinary people. We have found that not enough housing is the underlying issue, and building more housing fixes that.

Building more housing is the best solution for a lack of housing for people.

Ravery (Ravery.net)3 years ago

You are starting to become quite incoherent. ("Lisa the nurse from Colorado thinks that NASA's budget makes up 10% of the budget, when it really is much less. Does that make her a tyrant? No, it does not." Not only does it not make sense, it also doesn't reference anything.)

When I ask how you imagine to build these 88 Paris over the next 50 years and you respond that population growth isn't infinite, then it's quite obvious that you haven't even considered the scale of things and now simply hide behind vague generalities and deliberate, ridiculous exaggerations.

So, just tell me how you'll build these 88 Paris. How will you do it?

How many millions of people will you force out of their houses each year, just to move them into some smaller apartment, while bulldozing their garden "for the greater good"?

How. Will. You. Build. 88 Paris? How?

Just answer specifics instead of that wall-of-text that is just vague and ridiculous debate tactics ("we do not have INFINITE population growth", yeah, duh).

penguincascadia3 years ago (1 edit)

It was referencing your previous post where you said that ignorance is a sign of a tyrant, and I was providing an example of how people not knowing a particular fact is not them being a tyrant. Responding to other people arguments with a counterexample is being coherent.

I already responded to that with my previous points that other countries have already done it quite successfully. Just look at other developed countries with higher urban densities then most American cities. Eirope has twice the population of the U.S and has successfully built many, many cities worth of density. A lot of them achieve it through low rise density like the aforementioned five story or lower buildings. I've already mentioned this several times before, so I have considered the scale of things and have concrete examples to back it up.

See above.

As we have discussed before, upzoning allows other people (not you) to voluntarily build higher density housing on their own land to meet housing demand. No one is forcing other people to live with you. No one is forcing you to build more housing on your own property. No one is forcing people to live in dense housing- the demand is coming from people who voluntarily want to live in dense housing. I do not know where you are getting this from.

See my second paragraph here, and my previous detailed discussions in previous posts.

You seemed to imply earlier that there was infinite demand for housing in cities. I pointed out that there wasn't.

Ravery (Ravery.net)3 years ago

How will you build these 88 Paris in the next 50 years.

Just respond with an actual constructive, precise answer or let's just end the discussion, because it is becoming more and more pointless as you somehow blame regular people for the housing problem, while ignoring literally everything that caused it. While you push more demagoguery against regular people, you also claim that the majority are for it (so where is the problem coming from) and that nobody will be forced to do anything against their will (so why exactly are they even a problem if their will will be respected).

So, just answer how you'll build those 88 Paris in the next 50 years or don't bother responding. And no. I don't want to read another vague wall of text that doesn't address the actual problems and only bases everything on superficial, uncommitted opinion, while pointing at e.g. Europe as if Europe wasn't full of short and long term problems, which you simply ignore.

Just assume you were in power and people had elected you to "solve the housing problem". What exactly will you do? Write the actual policies. Bonuspoints if you include the cost of construction.

penguincascadia3 years ago (1 edit)

Let me repeat myself since I already explained how:

This is a constructive, precise answer- other countries have done it successfully, so we can too.

As we already discussed above in previous posts, the blocking of new housing by NIMBYs has caused a shortfall in the housing supply. This is causing higher rents and more homelessness. I am pointing out that NIMBYs are responsible for the housing and homelessness crisis.

Ordinary people, meanwhile, are the ones who are being hurt by the NIMBYs' policies. They are the ones who are paying high rents and becoming homeless because of the housing shortage caused by the NIMBYs. Note that I said NIMBYs are causing the shortage, not regular people (in this and previous posts). Pointing out that ordinary people are being hurt by NIMBY policies is the opposite of blaming ordinary people.

So, we have a cause of the housing crisis (not enough housing), which we have discussed in previous posts. Pointing out the cause of the housing crisis is the opposite of ignoring what caused it.

As already posted in a previous post, the majority of the public is very weakly politically engaged at the local level. They don't pay much attention to local politics. However, NIMBYs tend to be heavily engaged in local politics. Because of this, they have much more power in local politics then their size would suggest. Because of this, they are able to much more easily block new housing construction.

Pointing out that NIMBYs are responsible for the housing shortage is pointing out well established facts, the opposite of demagoguery.

There is a problem because NIMBYs are blocking people's property rights to build new housing supply on their own land. NIMBYs are not being forced to build anything on their own land, yet they are dictating other people's decisions on what to do with said other people's land.

People working to build more housing are not forcing anything upon anyone else.

NIMBYs blocking other people from building housing are forcing something upon them.

I have already explained how we can build more housing in previous posts. We can copy what other countries have done with allowing much more housing construction and do that. Just look at all the other countries with denser cities then American cities, which they acheive in large part with low rise, five story and below, density.

The European and other countries that have successfully built enough housing to have low rents and homelessness have solved problems because of this. They have lower housing prices for ordinary people and low rates of homelessness. Pointing out that they have solved problems is the opposite of ignoring problems.

I've already posted at length throughout all my posts here about what can be done to fix the housing shortage. Just allow the construction of much more housing (and as already talked about in here in a previous reply, because it is market rate private sector construction, no public funding is needed for the housing construction) . That's it, that's the policy.

Ravery (Ravery.net)3 years ago

"Just allow the construction of much more housing (and as already talked about in here in a previous reply, because it is market rate private sector construction, no public funding is needed for the housing construction) . That's it, that's the policy. "

That's something I've already said I support. I'm opposing your "It's no longer a personal choice" attitude as it's so connected to your completely terrifying hate mongering and your obsessive blame against random regular people.

"However, NIMBYs tend to be heavily engaged in local politics."

Sounds like your great ideas don't have the support that you think they have, if there are so few people even bothering to politically oppose the people that you hate so much.

Maybe you should focus on forming arguments that point out how people that are already living there will benefit personally from your ideas, instead of going the Hitler path and blaming so many problems of society on some (according to you) tiny minority. Seriously. Replace "NIMBY" with "Jew" in your last comment and see for yourself how you sound.

Anyway. Read this: https://www.self.inc/info/empty-homes/

And please reread the sentence several times: "There are 33 empty properties for each homeless person in the US"

penguincascadia3 years ago (4 edits)

No, earlier you said you support NIMBYs blocking the construction of new housing. That's the opposite of supporting new housing construction. Your last sentence about empty properties (that aren't actually ready for people where they need to live) also suggests that you don’t want new housing.

The blocking of new housing by NIMBYs has caused a shortfall in the housing supply. This is causing higher rents and more homelessness. I am pointing out that NIMBYs are responsible for the housing and homelessness crisis. Pointing that out is pointing out facts, not hate mongering. How is it hate mongering to point out a policy of blocking housing hurts ordinary people through high rents and homelessness?

Think about how many people are not politically engaged on the national level despite the huge stakes for everyone. Now take that to the local level where a lot of people don't even know who their city council person is. It's not surprising that much of the public is disengaged from local politics despite the stakes.

I only started posting about NIMBYs repeatedly after you kept repeatedly posting about one mention of them in one of my posts. I never even said NIMBYs were a tiny minority. I only claimed that the majority of people want more housing. It seems to me that you are the one who are obsessed with NIMBYs, not me.

And earlier you were criticizing the influence of corporations in our government. Corporate executives and major shareholders also make up a small minority of people in this country. How would you feel if someone came up to you after you criticized corporations and said "Replace corporations with Jews and see what you get in your speech"? That would be unfair to you and you doing that to me is unfair to me.

Most of my arguments in my posts here are about how building more housing will benefit people. I have already formed many arguments about the positive effects, which is the opposite of focusing on negatives.

I've already addressed this in an earlier post. Most vacant properties are between residents or are in places where there isn't much demand, like a distant rural town: https://ggwash.org/view/73234/vacant-houses-wont-solve-our-housing-crisis. So vacant units are not a solution to the housing crisis.

And we want more vacancies because it increases competition between landlords (thus lowering rents) and makes it easier for residents of a city to move to where they need to live. Think of it like a siding square puzzle- the more empty spaces are around, the easier it is to move a square to where you want it.

And the higher the vacancy rate is in a city, the lower its homelessness and rent burden rate is: https://www.sightline.org/2022/03/16/homelessness-is-a-housing-problem/ The cities with high rents have low vacancy rates.

We still need to build much more housing. There's no way around this need.

Ravery (Ravery.net)3 years ago

"I only started posting about NIMBYs repeatedly after you kept repeatedly posting about one mention of them in one of my posts."

The game is literally nothing else but propaganda against NIMBYs, so why should I not address the point?

"Please do not accuse people of being Hitler...for pointing out negative effects of NIMBY created policy. Please keep on topic."

Just take it as constructive criticism and change how you sound, cause your "That minority is overrepresented in (local) politics and controls it. They are the single cause for X and they are hurting everyone for decades. Everything would be fine, if only that tiny minority didn't exist." narrative leaves a very bad taste in my mouth.

"How would you feel if someone came up to you after you criticized corporations and said "Replace corporations with Jews and see what you get in your speech"? That would be unfair to you and you doing that to me is unfair to me. "

Corporations aren't people. Introducing or increasing the vacancy tax isn't the same as your "just move to another place, if you want to keep your preferred lifestyle". Expelling some minority if they want to keep their lifestyle is conceptually the same as how Jews were offered to convert to Christianity or Islam (in the middle ages) or were expelled, if they wanted to keep their lifestyle.

So, no, I don't think you can turn that criticism on me. Also it wasn't my intention to call you names. Take it as a suggestion to reduce your fingerpointing against some minority and blaming them for problems which they didn't cause.

"I am pointing out that NIMBYs are responsible for the housing and homelessness crisis."

As I said before. I do not agree with your premise. Take an example like California where there is massive housing crisis. 50 years ago California was just half the population. The NIMBYs didn't import 20 million people that would obviously increase housing demand. So how can you blame them?

If some person watched too many Hollywood movies and thinks that they can simply walk into California to become rich and famous, but then end up a homeless meth addict on the streets, then it's personal responsibility. So don't blame NIMBYs for other people's terrible life choices. The only thing you can blame them for is not doing a better job in getting the growgrowgrow politicians out of office.

The extreme increase in demand is the problem. If you don't address the reasons of the demand, you'll never build yourself out of that situation without going the dystopian, cramped apartment skyscraper route. Also don't forget: An apartment skyscraper with 100 people per floor and 50 floors is just enough for 5000 people. (Look up how many undocumented migrants came into the US since Biden took office and how many migrants come in legally, then calculate how many of those 50 floors condos you need to build per day, if you want to solve the problem by simply building more). Also don't forget that this kind of grow in demand is despite the housing situation you are so concerned about. Simply doing the buildbuildbuild will simply increase the growth of demand.

Africa grew by 316 million in just the last 10 years. (US population in total: 332 million) So you can probably imagine what will happen, if you were in charge and simply started building and offering Downtown-Paris-quality apartments for everyone who wants to live in a nice place like good-weather California.

Your plan is simply and utterly unsustainable, when not putting some cap on demand growth. Especially when you simply go for the cities that are already full.

If you want to build more, then a good solution to the housing crisis is to decentralize. There is so much "middle-of-nowhere" in the US, where nobody lives for miles and you don't even have fertile land. Why not build new cities there or e.g. university campuses. Why not use tax-incentives to kickstart economic growth there. If e.g. some new university cities (plus hightech startups) were treated as self-sovereign regions, you wouldn't even have that much political oppositions from conservative areas, who'd otherwise be afraid of getting outvoted by a massive influx of (often) progressive young people. This would even increase the social/cultural density in the places where these students would otherwise have been as students rarely mingle with local population and don't start "rooting" themselves in local cultures as they anticipate to change locations several times.

The solution to the e.g. housing crisis among students is to have fewer students in overpopulated cities. Having less students in those areas would reduce housing cost for other people. Also this would have a good effect on democracy, if the newly built university cities were self-regulating regions as younger people are less risk-averse and are far more eager to try out radical, untested ideas in politics. I think this would add quite well to the "petri dishes of democracy" idea and would reduce the polarization of society.

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