I saw this coming, honestly, from the first time I read your and Jonathan Chait's tweets on it, became a champion of YIMBYism--and realized exactly where the right would go as a reaction to it, the better to own people like you and me.
NIMBYism will be 100% a right-wing, MAGA viewpoint before the end of the decade. It will certainly be a central plank of the 2024 Republican nominee's platform. Keeping the "wrong people out", even at the cost of making housing expensive and life bad for everybody, will trump all.
Donald Trump essentially pioneering right-wing NIMBYism in the 2020 election came as no surprise. The man is dumb as an animal, but often has an animal cunning. It lets him smell out leverage long before smart people have let themselves believe it exists.
As much as conservative populists have ideas, they have greed and powerlust to a greater degree. Making people's lives better is not their priority.
Articles like these, necessary though they are, won't arrest the inevitable slide of this, like so many other issues, into culture war and bullshit. It will only force them to avow their support of exclusion and segregation, in the open. :/
Republicans will oppose zoning reform for the same self-interested reasons that they oppose immigration: they don't want to make more Democrat voters.
Population density clearly turns people into Democrats -- all that diversity and the mental model of complex interdependencies eroding countervailing narratives about my atomized individual rights.
Matt. I have to mention it. In an odd twist, me, a New Yorker, is in Kerrville, Texas for the month until June 1st. Anyway. Hope your in-laws are liking it. Was happy for the shout-out... did not expect that.
If we do deregulate land use, will millions of homeowners find themselves underwater on their mortgages because the new abundance of housing has lowered their home values?
In the National Review comment boards (under a different screen name) I tangle with social(ist) conservatives for whom property rights and free market take a back seat to preserving the "character" of their neighborhoods. In my area, the "character" is apparently defined by junky strip malls with tattoo parlors and hookah lounges which the local NIMBYs prefer to new apartment buildings.
There is a reason your iPhone is labelled "Designed in California, Assembled in China". In Apple's hometown of Cupertino, a three bedroom 1500 square foot house goes for $1.9 million (one example I found on Zillo). Even the most generous employer can't afford to pay an assembly line worker a wage that let's him spend that much for a modest family home. Housing deregulation could make American manufacturing more competitive.
I think a fundamental problem is that almost everyone is a closet NIMBY regardless of political leanings. And I'm hypocritical too - I like the principle of freer zoning but I bought my current house in large part for the view and would be pissed if zoning allowed construction of a high-rise that would block it.
And one also has to factor in the change in the value of a property, which can represent a homeowner's primary or only asset. People are naturally going to oppose a change that could lower the value of the property.
This is certainly true. People don't like to give up their entitlements and housing comes with a lot of entitlements, some of which are baked into the price and some of which aren't. Having a "view" is a big one. Nobody is willing to pay full price for it (i.e. buy the actual piece of land that is "the view" and maintain it undeveloped) but they still feel entitled to it and disgruntled when they lose it.
Same basic story for on-street parking and fears about losing it due to denser development and probably lots of other examples I can't think of right now.
While I'm basically YIMBY, it is also hard to square YIMBY with the reality that we're asking people to take on a 30-year investment (their mortgage) but also saying everything about that investment can change dramatically over that period.
We know that businesses don't like instability and that's with investments over much, much shorter time periods. So little surprise that there's a temporal mismatch between 30-year mortgages and "but we want to change the neighborhood over time periods of less than 30 years".
It's a bit like encouraging people to take on massive educational debt on the order of magnitude of medical school in order to join a career that may get offshored or replaced by robots in just the next 10 years.
Efforts to change policy at the federal and state levels are good and necessary, but one thing I (maybe half-jokingly) think YIMBYs ought to do is treat suburban balkanization as an opportunity and not just a challenge, by choosing one or two or three "YIMBYtowns" in every high-cost metro, moving in, taking over, and changing the rules about the physical environment. Sort of like what some immigrant groups have done (Armenians in Glendale CA, Filipinos in Daly City CA, Koreans in Palisades Park NJ, Indians in Edison NJ, etc). It won't solve the problem alone, but if you turn, say, Hayward CA into Hong Kong on the East Bay *and it's nice*, then it'll be helpful as a proof of concept that dense, upzoned communities are nothing to fear.
That's a good idea. In fact, getting a bunch of modest single family homes rezoned to allow apartment towers in the right locations could also be economically rewarding. Developers would normally be afraid to try to assemble the land due to the problems caused by a couple of holdouts.
Thanks. Thinking about this some more, I guess you'd want to pick towns that aren't too big (less than 100k pop?), aren't so rich that people can't afford to move there (less than 80k median household income?), aren't so poor that moving there would be seen as "gentrification", are middle-of-the-pack for ethnic diversity, and have good transit access into the city. Maybe places like San Leandro CA or New Rochelle NY?
The problem with Austin building more suburbs is that Austin weirdly already has some highways on the TTI list of most congested (that are otherwise just New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Washington) despite not being a top-30 population urban area. There's occasional talk of a third level of I-35 through town, but that just isn't going to happen. There's a ring of current suburbs full of apartments in parking lots that are only livable because you can drive downtown in 20-30 minutes. Creating more car-dependent suburbs farther out will make these ones unlivable, unless they start densifying with their own amenities first. (In general, the hills and river in Austin make it a very poor geography for high-capacity long-distance transportation.)
I always wonder how no conservative state government has enacted some sort of "right-to-build" law on urban areas in their state to own the libs. That seems like a win-win from a jobs and culture war perspective.
MA sort of did with Chapter 40b in the 70s. If don't go far enough to preserve affordability in Boston/Cambridge/Somerville, but a HUGE percentage of the market rate housing in Eastern Massachusetts was built because of this bill.
How powerful are construction unions in state/national politics? They seem much less powerful than say police and teachers unions. Shouldn't they be a potent YIMBY force in politics? Why hasn't that happened?
"But the difference between a place like Miami and a place like Santa Fe or Monterey is that Miami accepted quantitative growth rather than insisting on becoming an overpriced boutique area."
Another big difference is that Santa Fe and Monterey have extremely limited -- and declining -- water resources.
Miami is surrounded by a swamp to the west and an ocean to the east and the first few decades of rapid growth occurred prior to the AC so it had miserable weather.
Monterey's water issue are no more severe than Phoenix were the homes are being built because coastal Californians refuse to allow growth in their communities.
I think unfortunately at this point the anti-zoning advocates are just mainstream very liberal Democrats, except for the few Cato type libertarians who don't really have any constituency. These people are not really going to be interested in presenting arguments in a way conservative populists find palatable.
At one point the "YIMBY" movement was much closer to an independent political entity in California, insofar as it was basically an attempt to knit together the pro-building interests in politics from tech, developers, tenants, etc. But now YIMBYs seem ashamed to be associated with the tech industry, and basically get super defensive with the idea that more supply will help the tech industry/developers/whatever. So given this I feel like it will be hard to make the case to conservatives. But IDk.
How will a declining population growth rate affect these issues? Are we likely to see more rehab of older housing stock than new home construction in the decades ahead?
Make sure to emphasize that the liberal elites Republicans hate are all anti infill
Unfortunately, I think the cake is baked. :(
I saw this coming, honestly, from the first time I read your and Jonathan Chait's tweets on it, became a champion of YIMBYism--and realized exactly where the right would go as a reaction to it, the better to own people like you and me.
NIMBYism will be 100% a right-wing, MAGA viewpoint before the end of the decade. It will certainly be a central plank of the 2024 Republican nominee's platform. Keeping the "wrong people out", even at the cost of making housing expensive and life bad for everybody, will trump all.
Donald Trump essentially pioneering right-wing NIMBYism in the 2020 election came as no surprise. The man is dumb as an animal, but often has an animal cunning. It lets him smell out leverage long before smart people have let themselves believe it exists.
As much as conservative populists have ideas, they have greed and powerlust to a greater degree. Making people's lives better is not their priority.
Articles like these, necessary though they are, won't arrest the inevitable slide of this, like so many other issues, into culture war and bullshit. It will only force them to avow their support of exclusion and segregation, in the open. :/
Republicans will oppose zoning reform for the same self-interested reasons that they oppose immigration: they don't want to make more Democrat voters.
Population density clearly turns people into Democrats -- all that diversity and the mental model of complex interdependencies eroding countervailing narratives about my atomized individual rights.
Matt. I have to mention it. In an odd twist, me, a New Yorker, is in Kerrville, Texas for the month until June 1st. Anyway. Hope your in-laws are liking it. Was happy for the shout-out... did not expect that.
If we do deregulate land use, will millions of homeowners find themselves underwater on their mortgages because the new abundance of housing has lowered their home values?
In the National Review comment boards (under a different screen name) I tangle with social(ist) conservatives for whom property rights and free market take a back seat to preserving the "character" of their neighborhoods. In my area, the "character" is apparently defined by junky strip malls with tattoo parlors and hookah lounges which the local NIMBYs prefer to new apartment buildings.
There is a reason your iPhone is labelled "Designed in California, Assembled in China". In Apple's hometown of Cupertino, a three bedroom 1500 square foot house goes for $1.9 million (one example I found on Zillo). Even the most generous employer can't afford to pay an assembly line worker a wage that let's him spend that much for a modest family home. Housing deregulation could make American manufacturing more competitive.
"Zoom will not save us"
Are we going to have a tikki torch parade chanting "Zoom will not replace us"?
I think a fundamental problem is that almost everyone is a closet NIMBY regardless of political leanings. And I'm hypocritical too - I like the principle of freer zoning but I bought my current house in large part for the view and would be pissed if zoning allowed construction of a high-rise that would block it.
And one also has to factor in the change in the value of a property, which can represent a homeowner's primary or only asset. People are naturally going to oppose a change that could lower the value of the property.
This is certainly true. People don't like to give up their entitlements and housing comes with a lot of entitlements, some of which are baked into the price and some of which aren't. Having a "view" is a big one. Nobody is willing to pay full price for it (i.e. buy the actual piece of land that is "the view" and maintain it undeveloped) but they still feel entitled to it and disgruntled when they lose it.
Same basic story for on-street parking and fears about losing it due to denser development and probably lots of other examples I can't think of right now.
While I'm basically YIMBY, it is also hard to square YIMBY with the reality that we're asking people to take on a 30-year investment (their mortgage) but also saying everything about that investment can change dramatically over that period.
We know that businesses don't like instability and that's with investments over much, much shorter time periods. So little surprise that there's a temporal mismatch between 30-year mortgages and "but we want to change the neighborhood over time periods of less than 30 years".
It's a bit like encouraging people to take on massive educational debt on the order of magnitude of medical school in order to join a career that may get offshored or replaced by robots in just the next 10 years.
I'm a mostly closeted YIMBY, at least when I'm at neighborhood parties.
Efforts to change policy at the federal and state levels are good and necessary, but one thing I (maybe half-jokingly) think YIMBYs ought to do is treat suburban balkanization as an opportunity and not just a challenge, by choosing one or two or three "YIMBYtowns" in every high-cost metro, moving in, taking over, and changing the rules about the physical environment. Sort of like what some immigrant groups have done (Armenians in Glendale CA, Filipinos in Daly City CA, Koreans in Palisades Park NJ, Indians in Edison NJ, etc). It won't solve the problem alone, but if you turn, say, Hayward CA into Hong Kong on the East Bay *and it's nice*, then it'll be helpful as a proof of concept that dense, upzoned communities are nothing to fear.
That's a good idea. In fact, getting a bunch of modest single family homes rezoned to allow apartment towers in the right locations could also be economically rewarding. Developers would normally be afraid to try to assemble the land due to the problems caused by a couple of holdouts.
Thanks. Thinking about this some more, I guess you'd want to pick towns that aren't too big (less than 100k pop?), aren't so rich that people can't afford to move there (less than 80k median household income?), aren't so poor that moving there would be seen as "gentrification", are middle-of-the-pack for ethnic diversity, and have good transit access into the city. Maybe places like San Leandro CA or New Rochelle NY?
The problem with Austin building more suburbs is that Austin weirdly already has some highways on the TTI list of most congested (that are otherwise just New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Washington) despite not being a top-30 population urban area. There's occasional talk of a third level of I-35 through town, but that just isn't going to happen. There's a ring of current suburbs full of apartments in parking lots that are only livable because you can drive downtown in 20-30 minutes. Creating more car-dependent suburbs farther out will make these ones unlivable, unless they start densifying with their own amenities first. (In general, the hills and river in Austin make it a very poor geography for high-capacity long-distance transportation.)
I always wonder how no conservative state government has enacted some sort of "right-to-build" law on urban areas in their state to own the libs. That seems like a win-win from a jobs and culture war perspective.
MA sort of did with Chapter 40b in the 70s. If don't go far enough to preserve affordability in Boston/Cambridge/Somerville, but a HUGE percentage of the market rate housing in Eastern Massachusetts was built because of this bill.
How powerful are construction unions in state/national politics? They seem much less powerful than say police and teachers unions. Shouldn't they be a potent YIMBY force in politics? Why hasn't that happened?
"But the difference between a place like Miami and a place like Santa Fe or Monterey is that Miami accepted quantitative growth rather than insisting on becoming an overpriced boutique area."
Another big difference is that Santa Fe and Monterey have extremely limited -- and declining -- water resources.
Miami is surrounded by a swamp to the west and an ocean to the east and the first few decades of rapid growth occurred prior to the AC so it had miserable weather.
Monterey's water issue are no more severe than Phoenix were the homes are being built because coastal Californians refuse to allow growth in their communities.
Ironically, the rising (salt) water in Miami means less (fresh) water.
I think unfortunately at this point the anti-zoning advocates are just mainstream very liberal Democrats, except for the few Cato type libertarians who don't really have any constituency. These people are not really going to be interested in presenting arguments in a way conservative populists find palatable.
At one point the "YIMBY" movement was much closer to an independent political entity in California, insofar as it was basically an attempt to knit together the pro-building interests in politics from tech, developers, tenants, etc. But now YIMBYs seem ashamed to be associated with the tech industry, and basically get super defensive with the idea that more supply will help the tech industry/developers/whatever. So given this I feel like it will be hard to make the case to conservatives. But IDk.
I am a California home owner whose neighbors went full ADU, and now I have their renters sitting on my sidewalk all day smoking cigarettes.
No thank you. NIMBY all the way for me.
How will a declining population growth rate affect these issues? Are we likely to see more rehab of older housing stock than new home construction in the decades ahead?