Anti-NIMBY movement is winning with a simple message

In San Francisco, I think the real story is what YIMBYs are looking to do on the 2018 ballot: An initiative (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;yimbyaction.org&#x2F;prop&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;yimbyaction.org&#x2F;prop&#x2F;</a>) to allow affordable housing and teacher housing to be built &quot;by right&quot; -- which is wonky terminology for &quot;The architect will be told the rules (zoning, etc) in advance, and as long as they design something that complies with all of them, a permit will be issued easy peasy&quot;.<p>Under current law, even if you abide by all the rules that were stated in advance, you still have to wait years and might be denied in the end anyway.<p>The reason I think this is such a key move is that until now, the landlords and homeowners who reap all the benefits from the status quo have somehow been able to dupe the housing have-nots who suffer from it (low-income renters, etc) into thinking that blocking housing construction will somehow keep their rents low or stem evictions. But anyone who stands against this measure won&#x27;t be able to pretend they&#x27;re doing so in the interest of the less-fortunate. They&#x27;ll have to admit that they&#x27;re really just looking to protect their view &#x2F; parking space &#x2F; skyrocketing property values.

If you live in the Mission district of San Francisco and want to get involved, come to the Mission YIMBY general meeting at the end of November. I&#x27;m one of the organizers and we&#x27;re looking to grow our membership base! <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.facebook.com&#x2F;events&#x2F;771212863081381" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.facebook.com&#x2F;events&#x2F;771212863081381</a>

If you live in San Francisco you should consider supporting Sonja&#x27;s campaign for the Board of Supervisors (City Council)<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.sonja2018.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.sonja2018.org&#x2F;</a>

They’re not winning in Boulder. 4 of 5 seats on the city council were just won by Nimby supporters. And no wonder... the largest contingent here is wealthy boomers who moved to Boulder because its Boulder. Why would they want that to change?<p>I’m not one of them by the way. But I do think that increasing supply in crazy high demand markets is a linear solution to a logarithmic problem.

Is there any actual evidence of &quot;winning&quot; outside the headline? The best the article can muster is a single pending lawsuit that, if successful, would allow the construction of one (1) home in Sausalito.

As a Bay area home owner, I will stop being NIMBY when I see housing advocates accept that schools, parks, roads and retail must see consistent investment also.<p>So far I see a lot of advocacy for housing density but no concerns for quality of life.<p>More units will just mean more new residents...developers have no obligation to build to serve existing residents.<p>If we build 100k new units now, that is just another 100k new residents who will suffer abysmal traffic.

I&#x27;m very much a pro YIMBY kind of guy, but I feel like there&#x27;s a hard pro-urbanization, anti-expansion aspect to this. And the reason that gets to me now is that, while I totally get the pros and cons of both urban and suburban settings, but this debate always seems to be binary, when in reality, it&#x27;s like every other socioeconomic factor, and is just a matter of tradeoffs. I&#x27;m saying this as a guy who has done the 2+ hour commute each direction, but who also is fortunate enough to live in a suburb and my commute is a whopping 4 minutes, so I obviously am prejudiced here.<p>But I really think that expanding development into further areas brings with it economic advantages for those outlying communities (and yes, gentrification as well), and we have far more space right now by going out rather than up. Why not use it?

I am wish even people who owned houses could improve on them. I own a home in the Bay Area. If I could extend it out near the sidewalk I could probably double my living space and get rid of a dead yard, but he setback rules make reasonable expansion impossible.

Eventually they&#x27;ll work out that land cannot ever be a functional market - because they don&#x27;t make it any more.<p>A far more useful regulation would be to require those business owners funding these lobbying operations to release their own massive pads, demolish them and build high rise, high density accommodation for millennials. Then they get to feel the cost of over centralisation personally.<p>If you want to make a fortune out of this, buy land in the bubble areas and just sit on it. It&#x27;s a one way bet.

San Diego seems to be keeping up with new housing demand. It&#x27;s still California and on the beach.. Probably the best place to get in now.. Tech companies will develop there.

That is all good, but what will they do with transportation? When the supply of the housing is increased, it will attract a ton of people who now simply can&#x27;t afford (as many not-so-top, but still good coders - i know a ton of people who would move in, but can&#x27;t afford the Valley rent). Can you imaging the traffic then?

If your political opinions are little more complex than &quot;does this involve government intervention&quot;, it&#x27;d be wise to avail yourself over whether the proposed alternative actually entails more state intervention or less.

As much as I support what YIMBY is trying to do for San Francisco, I think this is trying to solve the symptom of a greater problem: that our economy has shifted to not needing (yet still somehow requiring) our workers to work in a physical office.<p>I recently became a remote worker and I cannot imagine going back. If this became the norm in the US I think this would do a lot for fixing the housing problems.<p><i>We have enough space to house everyone, the problem is we believe we need to house them close to where the &quot;jobs are.&quot;</i><p>But if employers allowed their workers to work from anywhere, then not everyone would need to live in NY, SF, LA, Boston, et al. The cities that experienced the worst emigration (e.g. Detroit, Cleveland, Milwaukee) could stabilize. Housing prices would normalize as a result of everyone not being forced to live within a 2-hr commute of the country&#x27;s biggest employers. And those same employers <i>could pay less for talent</i> because they wouldn&#x27;t have to give them a salary to afford places where the average starter home is over $1mm.<p>And yet, we see articles in the NYT how big companies like IBM are already rescinding their offers for giving people more flexibility. We&#x27;re not moving in the right direction.

Does California really want or need more people? If it&#x27;s so hard to get housing, then move out. The rust belt has really good deals on housing. It just needs something to jump-start its economy. Something is out of whack.

Can someone &quot;explain like I&#x27;m 5&quot;: why does this need government intervention? My gut reaction is that if these people can&#x27;t afford to live in&#x2F;near San Fran, a massive, amenities-filled city, they should find jobs elsewhere? If enough people take that approach, maybe the jobs will move elsewhere too? My family wanted to move to a big city but we saw the cost and decided not to. I don&#x27;t want to assume it&#x27;s an entitlement thing, but it sure reads like it.

The big elephant in the room that no one wants to touch is the massive immigration to San Francisco Bay Area from all over the world. The population stands at 7.68 million. Just in 2010 it was 7.1 mil. And in 2000, it was 6.7 million. So you essentially have an extra million people living in what was already pretty densely populated area.<p>I doubt NIMBY or anti-NIMBY is going to solve any problems.

I&#x27;m not sure the evidence suggests that building a lot of high-density housing will reduce rents.<p>Compare New York (very high density, very expensive) to Tucson (low density, very cheap).<p>Building more housing may just induce demand: more people will decide to move to SF but rents will remain the same.

Classic case of over-regulation. &quot;Let&#x27;s solve it with more regulation!&quot; I&#x27;m a millennial, and I apologize for my generation&#x27;s stupidity.

Here is the problem, the bay area is filled with hypocrites. After all, they are having formal galas for affordable housing. Let me explain. Most of the same people who are pro-affordable housing and homeless rights are making 200K a year plus and living comfortably in their $4,000 a month rent apartments. I fully expect this won&#x27;t be a popular opinion, but I don&#x27;t have a horse in this race anymore. I&#x27;m moving to Nashville Tennessee next month, but I believe in free markets. If you want to live in the bay area, then you&#x27;re going to pay bay area prices. It really comes down to basic economics.

I&#x27;ve met these &quot;YIMBY&quot; members personally, and only about 20% of them are actual home owners. The rest are renters. So first of all, it&#x27;s not their backyard to say yes to. Secondly, these people are promoting the Hong Kong-ification of small cities such as Palo Alto and Mountain View. Yes to 20 story apartment complexes along the 101? Vote with YIMBY!