#YIMBY

[radicalurbanista]

i hate YIMBYs

[righthandarm-man]

What’s your housing philosophy, if you don’t mind me asking?

Don't mind at all anon, thanks for asking! For the sake of clarity; I'm going to make this into a numbered list lmao

In the year 2023, the vast majority of anglophone countries are experiencing a housing shortage. This part is non-negotiable. If we can’t agree on this basic fact of reality, the rest of this conversation is moot. Housing vacancy rates are at or near their lowest in decades according to the U.S. Census.

An abundance of housing empowers tenants. The number one contributor to our recent spike in housing costs is a lack of housing supply first and foremost. Landlords suck, but they’ve always sucked, and yet housing hasn’t always been this expensive. What has actually changed is the number of constraints on housing supply. Exclusionary zoning, parking minimums, and NIMBYism keep housing scarce, enabling landlords to price gouge and rent seek.

Density is good, actually. Letting people agglomerate in one area (i.e. live in a city) is good. It’s good for the environment (prevents sprawl, increases transit use), good for communities (deters class and racial segregation, provides more tax revenue relative to infrastructure costs) and good for preventing housing scarcity (when you’re allowed to build up, you’re able to provide more houses for less money).

Wealthy enclaves should either not exist or pay their fair share. Urban3 has done some fantastic work recently breaking down how city tax revenues are distributed per household. Their findings…poorer residents living in city centers are essentially subsidizing wealthy suburbs nearby, with most subsidies going to roads, highways, and parking. This is the opposite of good housing and tax policy and is one more reason to be in favor of density and in opposition to things like parking minimums and minimum lot sizes.

Neighborhood change is good and necessary. Living in a just, multi-cultural society means you can’t restrict who moves in and what gets built, freezing a city in amber helps no one. This means you build housing for immigrants and college kids, for refugees and tech yuppies, for abuse survivors and old-timers, for young families and nepo babies. You may like the former group more than the latter, but a just society is one that makes housing maximally accessible for both.

[ersatzpenguin]

I grew up in the suburbs of Denver, on the outer edge of the metro area. One of my school field trips as a kid was to just… go to Denver for a day. That’s how isolated we were in our little culdesacs—most of us had never been into the city. We had learned about cities the same way we had learned math: as abstract concepts and processes whose reality we couldn’t quite grasp. And, our first exposure to a city was to one that literally bulldozed or paved over almost every good thing about it from 1930-1976 in favor of wider streets for cars, parking lots, and corporate offices.

So, I get how hard it can be for many folks in North America to see the benefit of living in cities. We often don’t see them as places people actually live. At best, they’re just places for skyscrapers and stadiums. Maybe a trendy bar or two. And, to the extent we view them as places people live, it’s colored by the history of “white flight” and the absurd amount of racist and classist rhetoric telling suburbanites they should fear other people, cities, mass transit, etc.

But I am so glad to have broken out of that trap—so glad to have been able to experience cities as living, thriving places. Every time I’ve moved as an adult, it’s been to a denser area. And every time, it’s been like peeling back layers of learned anti-social behaviors to discover what it’s like to actually be part of a community.

Today, I biked 6 blocks to a local co-op grocery store. As I paid for my groceries, the cashier noticed a group of kids from a local child care center walking to a park across the street. We talked about how cute they were, and about how nice it is that the kids can walk to multiple playgrounds in the span of a few blocks—a fact that would have seemed absurd to me as a kid growing up in the suburbs.

Then, I loaded up my groceries and rode home.

[hellstobetsy]

Rent growth, Austin vs Boston.

I often hear liberals/leftists oppose housing construction as a remedy to high rents because "the only new housing is luxury housing" or "you can't build your way out of a housing crisis". But you totally fucking can, and places in America are doing it!

You may not like it, but this is what peak performance looks like.

[the-frog-blog]

Ok grimes is a YIMBY queen your move ms. Banks

[aharonov-bohm-affect]

[solarpunkpresentspodcast]

Today on the podcast, Ariel talks to Melissa Bowman, cofounder of the group Waterloo Region Yes In My Backyard (WRYIMBY) about what a YIMBY group is, what some actions are that it might take, the issues that it might address, and how to start up a YIMBY group in your area, if there’s not one already!

[kratomqueen]

Kansas City, before and after it was destroyed for cars (x)

[floralisolation]

is the neighborhood “sketchy” or are you just not used to seeing what little to no public infrastructure looks like?

Is the neighborhood “ghetto” or have you never lived in a community that’s government has failed them?

Is the neighborhood the “rough part of town” or have you never lived below or on the poverty line?

Are you scared to walk alone at night because you’ve actually been harassed or attacked in this neighborhood, or is it just dark and quiet?

Does that person look “suspicious” or are they just existing in public space in a way you don’t like?

anyways. tired of white people from the “nice neighbors” or the burbs who don’t talk to their neighbors and scare their kids into thinking they’ll get murdered in the city.

[realcleverissues]

Affordable housing does good!

What she found, after an analysis using Zillow data between 2000 and 2020, and controlling for overall market trends, was that the only significant change was in the positive direction. Homes located within a typical block of the affordable housing developments saw property values increase, on average, by a small but still significant 0.9%... The link between affordable housing construction and property values has been studied before, with mixed results. A look at federally subsidized rental housing in New York City, conducted by researchers from New York University’s Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy, showed that property values were typically not depressed by nearby affordable projects. “In fact,” researchers wrote, they “led to increases in many cases.” Another study, from Stanford Graduate School of Business researchers in 2017, looked at properties built with Low Income Housing Tax Credits in 129 counties, most of them in California and New England. They found that the low-income housing developments were associated with nearby home value increases of 6.5% when located in lower-income neighborhoods, and home value declines of 2.5% in higher-income neighborhoods. Less variable was the impact on crime: Low-income areas saw violent and property crime decline, and higher-income areas saw no increase.

[ersatzpenguin]

A decision tree for how I’m approaching my local transit decisions.

Can you get there comfortably under your own power (walk, or roll)? If yes, do it. If no…

Is it because of low density/poor city planning? If yes, advocate for better city planning/relocate as necessary and proceed. If no…

Is there a train that can get you there (in combination with walking/rolling)? If yes, take it. If no…

Is it because of poor transit infrastructure? If yes, advocate for better transit infrastructure and proceed. If no…

Is there a bus that can get you there (in combination with walking/rolling, or a train)? If yes, take it. If no…

Is it because of poor route planning/bus frequency? If yes, advocate for better planning/staffing and proceed. If no…

Is it somewhere you have to go? If no, stop. If yes…

Did you answer the previous questions accurately? If no, start over. If yes, proceed.

Is there anyone else nearby that needs to go there as well? If yes, carpool. If not, fine, take a car.

Cars can be helpful tools, but only in as much as they make up for the failings of city planning and transit infrastructure. So, if you find yourself consistently relying on a car without advocating for changes/looking at whether you actually need to live where you do or take trips that require cars, you’re doing it wrong.

[parallelmc]

Hey everyone,

While the Parallel Team is busy working tirelessly on Part 3 of the Community Update, we've whipped up something else to bring to you...

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Parallel Heights is also complete with a cafe run by one of our builders, Asher, an indoor pool, a working elevator, and much more! We're also open to suggestions for decoration, and players with apartment access actually have building access to everywhere upstairs!

We hope that Parallel Heights gives all of you a neat little extra thing to do in the interim before our last part of the Community Update, and we can't wait to see what all of your rooms become!

*Happy $2800/month rent,*

**The Parallel Team**

[archstar]

[jdpink]

The YIMBY movement annoys a lot of people who are highly engaged with politics because we are living in a time of intense political polarization, and YIMBYism is not aligned with either pole. 

But the core YIMBY thesis that quantitative restrictions on housing production are costly to the economy and harmful to society is true. The upshot of this is that a lot of smart, highly engaged people want to express negative sentiments about YIMBYism that don’t involve directly contradicting the core YIMBY thesis since they are too smart to deny its veracity. The result is a lot of tone-policing and concern-trolling where people express the idea that YIMBYs are doing this or that wrong, ideas that normally amount to “I wish you’d be less focused on your goal” or “I wish you’d do more to align yourself with my camp in the polarization dynamic.”

🔥🔥🔥

[commiemartyrshighschool]

I'm a pessimist when it comes to voting as a way to solve Federal problems but this makes a persuasive case for the material good you can have by engaging in existing politics at the municipal level.