Inequality

[Eric the .5b]

I can't understand why "NIMBY laws harm the poor; work to get rid of those if you want to help poor people afford housing" is so fucking controversial. There are SO MANY examples to illustrate this -- it's not one of those esoteric wonky things where you need to spend lots of time learning minutiae to grasp the concept.

I assume it's like I said—the people behind these efforts know that they derive power from "protecting" their neighborhoods from change or improvement. Any actual change or improvement might cost them power.

[Eric the .5b]

Really, this is when I turn misanthropist and want to say, "Fine, we'll protect your town/neighborhood from the big, bad world...", build Escape from New York-style walls around these places, and leave them to die.

The clinically-depressed online acquaintance who waxes indignant about the evil of a system that expects her to expend effort to pay for food annoys me less than these people. At least she doesn't pretend she wants to contribute to the functioning of society.

[Andrew]

UPTALK

CisChrono-coitus is chiral?

/UPTALK

Only if it's organic.

[Jennifer]

I can't understand why "NIMBY laws harm the poor; work to get rid of those if you want to help poor people afford housing" is so fucking controversial. There are SO MANY examples to illustrate this -- it's not one of those esoteric wonky things where you need to spend lots of time learning minutiae to grasp the concept.

I assume it's like I said—the people behind these efforts know that they derive power from "protecting" their neighborhoods from change or improvement. Any actual change or improvement might cost them power.

The scary people in the Yahoo story, sure. They're the sort which (I hope) even most rent-control-supporter-types would abhor. But, surely not EVERYONE who [justly] complains about the high cost of housing is motivated by things other than actually bringing that cost down. Yet even those who presumably know better than to, like, blame the new coffee shop for the real and growing problems of America's poor, those whose intentions are good even if their proposed solutions indicate they're naive or clueless -- yeah, I know, but why?

It's not like (for example) the war on drugs, where for all the many drug warriors who obviously did not want to "fix" the problem of drug addiction because their motives were less noble, there were always plenty who said "Get law enforcement out of the picture, to solve the problem"-- even if it took and continues to take a loooong time for this idea to trickle upwards to enough politicos to actually change the law. I don't get why the "how to solve the problem of affordable housing' movement never had its own equivalent group: "Look, if you want to fix this problem, you need to get rid of the laws causing the problem!" Nor even any scarce-housing equivalent to drug-war harm-reduction policies.

[Eric the .5b]

The scary people in the Yahoo story, sure. They're the sort which (I hope) even most rent-control-supporter-types would abhor. But, surely not EVERYONE who [justly] complains about the high cost of housing is motivated by things other than actually bringing that cost down.

I don't think those people are all that abhorred, Jennifer.

And no, not every one of them, but enough of them are.

ETA: These people really do trigger my misanthropy, though. Like the trumpkins, it's not that they're trying and failing, or that they're beyond trying. It's that they're trying damn hard not to try.

[JasonL]

At a certain point, and I'd summarize many disagreements I've had over the years like this - being mad about your current situation doesn't excuse any arbitrarily harmful type of lashing out. It just doesn't. Go after the thing that's wrong or accept your fate. Don't hold up other people to make them pay for your problem.

[lunchstealer]

I can't understand why "NIMBY laws harm the poor; work to get rid of those if you want to help poor people afford housing" is so fucking controversial. There are SO MANY examples to illustrate this -- it's not one of those esoteric wonky things where you need to spend lots of time learning minutiae to grasp the concept.

I assume it's like I said—the people behind these efforts know that they derive power from "protecting" their neighborhoods from change or improvement. Any actual change or improvement might cost them power.

I have a simpler explanation. The need for an unsympathetic but easily caricatured villain. Starbucks and insufficiently woke hipsters and fat cat developers are easy to call evil. Soccer moms who don't want strip malls and the 'extra traffic congestion' associated with high density development (oh yeah that just happens to be the kind of development you can afford to turn into cheap housing) are a much less satisfying villain.

The people behind these efforts have a chosen enemy and City Hall is only it when it's on the side of Teh Corporashunz and the white people. Nimbyism is the will of the people and local control, so that can't be the problem.

[Eric the .5b]

I assume it's like I said—the people behind these efforts know that they derive power from "protecting" their neighborhoods from change or improvement. Any actual change or improvement might cost them power.

I have a simpler explanation. The need for an unsympathetic but easily caricatured villain.

Eh, I don't see these as at-all exclusive.. Easy targets are the tool of rabble-rousers and officious fucks alike.

[dead_elvis]

"if you met an exact copy of yourself, would you end up making out with them, or trying to kill them?"

If I met a copy of myself we'd be having sex so fast it would be break the sound barrier.

(hat tip- discovered this song through a Jesse Walker radio show. It was rather humorous as he described how terrifying it was to hear this song as an early teen)

[Kwix]

Maybe it's just me but I look at the supposed benefits of living in places like San Francisco or New York and when weighed against the costs and for me... well the rent is just too damn high. I'd rather live in an affordable but smaller city, particularly given the advent of online entertainment and shopping options. Granted, cities with less infrastructure mean things like having to buy a car, pay for insurance, etc. so that has to be factored in to the equation. Even so you can't tell me that living in Cleveland, Austin or even that redneck place JasonL lives is that much worse than Palo Alto or Long Island.

EDIT: I forgot to state my point. If you can't afford to live in "your community" move to one you can and make it your own.

[Jennifer]

I can't understand why "NIMBY laws harm the poor; work to get rid of those if you want to help poor people afford housing" is so fucking controversial. There are SO MANY examples to illustrate this -- it's not one of those esoteric wonky things where you need to spend lots of time learning minutiae to grasp the concept.

I assume it's like I said—the people behind these efforts know that they derive power from "protecting" their neighborhoods from change or improvement. Any actual change or improvement might cost them power.

I have a simpler explanation. The need for an unsympathetic but easily caricatured villain. Starbucks and insufficiently woke hipsters and fat cat developers are easy to call evil. Soccer moms who don't want strip malls and the 'extra traffic congestion' associated with high density development (oh yeah that just happens to be the kind of development you can afford to turn into cheap housing) are a much less satisfying villain.

The people behind these efforts have a chosen enemy and City Hall is only it when it's on the side of Teh Corporashunz and the white people. Nimbyism is the will of the people and local control, so that can't be the problem.

I still remain baffled by the lack of quote-unquote "sensible" people working on the issue, though. Going back to my drug war comparison earlier -- the people fighting the drug war in various ways (ranging from pushing for legal changes, to focusing on whatever harm-reduction measures are legally possible at the time) manage to do so, and work toward improvements, WITHOUT any easily caricatured villain. (We-here might use "drug warriors" as a pejorative, but it has NOT taken root in popular culture at all.)

[nicole]

Maybe it's just me but I look at the supposed benefits of living in places like San Francisco or New York and when weighed against the costs and for me... well the rent is just too damn high. I'd rather live in an affordable but smaller city, particularly given the advent of online entertainment and shopping options. Granted, cities with less infrastructure mean things like having to buy a car, pay for insurance, etc. so that has to be factored in to the equation. Even so you can't tell me that living in Cleveland, Austin or even that redneck place JasonL lives is that much worse than Palo Alto or Long Island.

I mean, there’s no opera in Palo Alto or Long Island and you still have to drive everywhere so...

For me there is a very real difference when comparing anything else to the density of a “real city.” L-dub has talked from time to time about leaving the urban core and I’m like...first of all you can’t drive. Second, you aren’t thinking about what it really means when you have to—when you basically have to be sober to do anything. We don’t even have to go beyond the radius of a few blocks to do most of what we normally do. I travel farther on a run than I do anywhere else I go in an average day.

[dhex]

Having to drive everywhere fucking sucks

[lunchstealer]

I can't understand why "NIMBY laws harm the poor; work to get rid of those if you want to help poor people afford housing" is so fucking controversial. There are SO MANY examples to illustrate this -- it's not one of those esoteric wonky things where you need to spend lots of time learning minutiae to grasp the concept.

I assume it's like I said—the people behind these efforts know that they derive power from "protecting" their neighborhoods from change or improvement. Any actual change or improvement might cost them power.

I have a simpler explanation. The need for an unsympathetic but easily caricatured villain. Starbucks and insufficiently woke hipsters and fat cat developers are easy to call evil. Soccer moms who don't want strip malls and the 'extra traffic congestion' associated with high density development (oh yeah that just happens to be the kind of development you can afford to turn into cheap housing) are a much less satisfying villain.

The people behind these efforts have a chosen enemy and City Hall is only it when it's on the side of Teh Corporashunz and the white people. Nimbyism is the will of the people and local control, so that can't be the problem.

I still remain baffled by the lack of quote-unquote "sensible" people working on the issue, though. Going back to my drug war comparison earlier -- the people fighting the drug war in various ways (ranging from pushing for legal changes, to focusing on whatever harm-reduction measures are legally possible at the time) manage to do so, and work toward improvements, WITHOUT any easily caricatured villain. (We-here might use "drug warriors" as a pejorative, but it has NOT taken root in popular culture at all.)

Well even among drug warriors the alternate is drug social workers. Pot excepted, most people want to replace a criminal-industrial regime with a rehab-industrial regime.

Gentrification is even more that way. Almost the only people who ever give a shit about zoning and code regulations are libertarians, and we're already the heartless corporations in the eyes of the city planners and anti-gentrification warriors. For them, the solution to bad regulations is not to say, "hey we can't predict the bad outcomes of our regulations so lets just not do it or do it as minimally as possible," but rather "the answer is to make sure the RIGHT PEOPLE write the regulations now!"

[lunchstealer]

EDIT: I forgot to state my point. If you can't afford to live in "your community" move to one you can and make it your own.

This does overlook the social infrastructure/capital of having decades of history with the people around you. A lot of low income communities operate on a partial barter system of services. So and so down the hall looks after the kids in emergencies and vice versa. It's not trivial to replace the network of people who help each other out day to day.

[Kwix]

EDIT: I forgot to state my point. If you can't afford to live in "your community" move to one you can and make it your own.

This does overlook the social infrastructure/capital of having decades of history with the people around you. A lot of low income communities operate on a partial barter system of services. So and so down the hall looks after the kids in emergencies and vice versa. It's not trivial to replace the network of people who help each other out day to day.

It is absolutely not trivial. It however less of dick move than lobbying to not have more housing and jobs because you don't want the "character of the neighborhood to change" to be something other than fuck poor.

[lunchstealer]

Oh well yeah.

I'm still okay with telling them that ghettoization is really what they want so why not codify it to keep rich and upper middle class people out completely.

[Sandy]

Soccer moms who don't want strip malls and the 'extra traffic congestion' associated with high density development (oh yeah that just happens to be the kind of development you can afford to turn into cheap housing) are a much less satisfying villain.

https://mic.com/articles/125084/the-bru ... .wAZ0NYGXo

https://dearwhitefeminists.wordpress.com

And yet, they persisted.

[lunchstealer]

Soccer moms who don't want strip malls and the 'extra traffic congestion' associated with high density development (oh yeah that just happens to be the kind of development you can afford to turn into cheap housing) are a much less satisfying villain.

https://mic.com/articles/125084/the-bru ... .wAZ0NYGXo

https://dearwhitefeminists.wordpress.com

And yet, they persisted.

Well sure, if they have no corporations to fight. But there are way too many steps from there to NIMBYism to gentrification. They're just too far separated.

I mean, NIMBYism gets the occasional callout, but not in the way that starbucks and hipsters do.

[Eric the .5b]

Maybe it's just me but I look at the supposed benefits of living in places like San Francisco or New York and when weighed against the costs and for me... well the rent is just too damn high. I'd rather live in an affordable but smaller city, particularly given the advent of online entertainment and shopping options.

We should build a wall around San Francisco.

I'd say NYC, too, but that's been done.

[Fin Fang Foom]

Yimbyism is increasingly a thing in California.

[Warren]

Maybe it's just me but I look at the supposed benefits of living in places like San Francisco or New York and when weighed against the costs and for me... well the rent is just too damn high. I'd rather live in an affordable but smaller city, particularly given the advent of online entertainment and shopping options.

We should build a wall around San Francisco.

I'd say NYC, too, but that's been done.

What we need to do is redraw the state lines to put NYC in NJ.

[JD]

Maybe it's just me but I look at the supposed benefits of living in places like San Francisco or New York and when weighed against the costs and for me... well the rent is just too damn high. I'd rather live in an affordable but smaller city, particularly given the advent of online entertainment and shopping options.

We should build a wall around San Francisco.

I'd say NYC, too, but that's been done.

What we need to do is redraw the state lines to put NYC in NJ.

I don't even get that. But I think you should be thrown in the East River just on general principles.

[nicole]

Maybe it's just me but I look at the supposed benefits of living in places like San Francisco or New York and when weighed against the costs and for me... well the rent is just too damn high. I'd rather live in an affordable but smaller city, particularly given the advent of online entertainment and shopping options.

We should build a wall around San Francisco.

I'd say NYC, too, but that's been done.

What we need to do is redraw the state lines to put NYC in NJ.

I don't even get that. But I think you should be thrown in the East River just on general principles.

I think it's funny that depending on where you're from you either hate NJ because it's too dense or because it's not dense enough.

[JD]

I think it's funny that depending on where you're from you either hate NJ because it's too dense or because it's not dense enough.

Oh, come on, Nicole. There are so many more reasons to hate New Jersey than just that. (In all honesty I kind of like Hoboken.)