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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   27731 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 13, 2024

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I don’t think that’s a fair statement if the belligerents here.

One can support exclusionary zoning and still make building easier compared to the status quo ante (there are a million ways to cut red tape besides allowing multiple family building in single family zones — some of them are indirect). Also one can support ending exclusionary zoning without making building easier (eg 80% of units must be affordable).

Not sure which way it all cuts.

There are two reasons why I think the description is fair

  • First, the "war on the suburbs" rhetoric specifically talks about how "your investment and lifestyle may soon come under attack." This isn't just about exclusionary zoning; it's about anything that could significantly depress housing prices
  • Second, Republican organizations have been using "war on the suburbs" are rhetorical demagoguery against almost any policy to increase housing supply: see this as another example.

Up zoning is great for property values. The nimby argument is not due to property values but rather "neighborhood character".

The honest rhetoric is “you don’t want a bunch of poors (largely black) underclass to move into your neighborhood making it crime ridden, destroying the schools, and crushing property values.”

That is different from “my home value decreased a little because there is more inventory because there is more building.”

The first thing is a catastrophe as it kills your investment and lifestyle. The second is a minor nuisance that on balance may be positive to you.

The white nationalist guy had me thinking about this a lot when they did the full discussion. You can’t just make whites holes by doing things to mitigate black crime. More policing makes a neighborhood feel worse. Many of the small crimes and generally annoyance of the lower class blacks that will find there way in will make the neighborhoods less desirable. People will do things to mitigate the undesirableness by doing nimby things or moving to the suburbs. The mitigations themselves have costs (longer commutes/more pollution). We would probably build our cities more like Buenos Aires which is chill and dense with very walkable communities.

I don't want my neighborhood torn down to make 5-over-ones packed full of 300 square foot apartments for NEETs even if they don't cause crime and make property values go up.

Except the actual regulations in question are often things like ‘allow duplexes and triplexes in single family zones’, which NEETS will not be living in except as a dependent, and they could easily live as dependents in single family homes as is the stereotype.

Few people want to build the Kowloon walled city.

Except the actual regulations in question are often things like ‘allow duplexes and triplexes in single family zones’

That's just the start, the foot in the door. As @Tomato said, "the entire sunset district could look like Manhattan".

I just don’t think you should be able to tell your neighbor what he can do on his land.

So you're against the ADA and the CRA, then? And are voting for people willing to repeal both?

Please avoid sweeping generalizations.

If that’s a priority for you there are tons of places in the country where demand is low enough to allow that. It’s totally crazy for us as a society to empower someone to prevent his neighbor from doing what he wants to do with his own land in the most productive, in demand location on the planet.

If that’s a priority for you there are tons of places in the country where demand is low enough to allow that.

I'm already living in my home. Let the NEETs have their pods elsewhere.

No, you can't even build housing in the middle of nowhere without hearing these nimby arguments.

Presumably in the process of self-segregation where the pod people and the McMansion people move into separate communities and redevelop them somebody is going to have to get pushed out of their home. Once this uncomfortable business is behind us we can all go on with our lives in peace.

Well, no. Because what the pod people want is basically Kowloon Walled City surrounded by farmland. An urban growth boundary, inside of which there is only high density development, outside of which no one may build at all. So if the pod people have their way the McMansion people will be pushed until they hit the boundary and then they'll be forced into pods.

Per Wikipedia:

Notable U.S. cities surrounded by UGBs include Portland, Oregon; Boulder, Colorado; Honolulu, Hawaii; Virginia Beach, Virginia; Lexington, Kentucky; Seattle, Washington; Knoxville, Tennessee;[17] and San Jose, California.

None of those cities are notably famous for their YIMBY attitude to urban infill and densification - Portland, Seattle and Boulder are possibly the three most notoriously NIMBY cities outside California.

An urban growth boundary, inside of which there is only high density development, outside of which no one may build at all.

I don't claim to want this at all. An urban growth boundary would be a terrible thing. Letting people build on farmland they own is no different to letting people build on urban land they own. You wouldn't get the Kowloon Walled city, you'd get a smooth gradient of housing densities slowly decreasing from urban centres to rural locations.

A lot of the UK's current housing problems stem from the fact that people can't build on farmland they own.

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What do these dystopian sci-fi scenarios of yours have to do with modestly easing California's land use regulations? You constantly attack strawmen positions instead of actually arguing against the policies being proposed.

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Sure, like your neighbor’s plot

Second, Republican organizations have been using "war on the suburbs" are rhetorical demagoguery against almost any policy to increase housing supply

You know why? Because it hits home. It takes some people a while and some never catch on, but a lot of people in the suburbs have figured out that the "sprawl" that leftists often decry is their home.

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