What do you think of YIMBYs?

[Anonymous]

The densification argument is a classic YIMBY argument. Densification is not a new concept. Tell me where in DC housing prices have gone down or been stabilized based on new construction?

Such a tired and ignorant argument.

Prices are going up because we aren't building nearly enough to satisfy demand. It's like you invited 100 people to a BBQ, cooked 10 meals and are demanding to know why there are still hungry people.

The bigger question is not "why are prices still expensive," it's "how much less expensive would they be if we built an adequate number of units and how much more expensive would they be if we had done nothing."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:YIMBY's love cloaking themselves in woke terminology and then guilting areas into YIMBY priorities and then feigning shock when the programs never amount to anything.

The densification argument is a classic YIMBY argument. Densification is not a new concept. Tell me where in DC housing prices have gone down or been stabilized based on new construction? How many below market rate houses are in the Navy Yard area? How many of those houses have families with kids in them? How many new schools have been built to accommodate the newly attracted families?

YIMBY is code for I have money invested in something involved with development.

Exactly. The most visible spokesman for densification in upper NW, a director of Ward 3 Vision, is a former Trump operative who uses the terminology of the woke left (affordability, equity, inclusion, fighting climate change) to secure windfall profit opportunities through zoning changes for the big developers who retained him. Yet the consulting firm he owns twice worked as chief pollster for Donald J. Trump, the president who used dog whistles to "save the suburbs" from affordable housing and the most anti-climate, anti-equity, anti-inclusion president in modern US history. The guy uses focus groups to test messaging to sell the agendas of unpalatable candidates, but this is beyond cynical even by DC standards. And yet the local politicians seem to accept at face value woke-sounding arguments pushed by Trumpers, to give the developers what they want.

How dare anyone make money! The nerve of some people? Taking empty land and putting houses and businesses there. How dare they?

Scamming people is good now?

You live in a house built by a developer. Did you get scammed?

Didn't think so.

"You live in a house built by a developer" is such a tired trope.

It's not a tired trope, it's literally true. You live in housing where there didn't used to be housing, be it a greenfield, warehouse, former commercial space, or whatever, and somebody thought they could make a buck by building housing there.

Even if you built your house all by yourself, you still performed an implicit calculation that it was more lucrative for you to build your own house than buy one from someone else.

It’s not just a trope, it’s cliché and a meme.

It's not a trope, clichéd, or a meme to anyone with any semblance of critical thinking skills. It's inconvenient to your narrative, which is why you're desperately trying to discredit it without addressing its merits.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

The densification argument is a classic YIMBY argument. Densification is not a new concept. Tell me where in DC housing prices have gone down or been stabilized based on new construction?

Such a tired and ignorant argument.

Prices are going up because we aren't building nearly enough to satisfy demand. It's like you invited 100 people to a BBQ, cooked 10 meals and are demanding to know why there are still hungry people.

The bigger question is not "why are prices still expensive," it's "how much less expensive would they be if we built an adequate number of units and how much more expensive would they be if we had done nothing."

Can you point to actual evidence?

The only way that affordable rental housing has ever been constructed for low income people is when the government did it. Current “affordable” rental housing is just full depreciated structures in bad locations in need of CAPEX (which is how the market is supposed to work).

The only historical time in this country that real estate prices ever went down in real terms was due to the unique combination of two factors, a population bust combined with a mass expansion of greenfield development (ie the suburbs).

Your entire mental model is invalid and unfortunately you don’t understand that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

The densification argument is a classic YIMBY argument. Densification is not a new concept. Tell me where in DC housing prices have gone down or been stabilized based on new construction?

Such a tired and ignorant argument.

Prices are going up because we aren't building nearly enough to satisfy demand. It's like you invited 100 people to a BBQ, cooked 10 meals and are demanding to know why there are still hungry people.

The bigger question is not "why are prices still expensive," it's "how much less expensive would they be if we built an adequate number of units and how much more expensive would they be if we had done nothing."

Can you point to actual evidence?

The only way that affordable rental housing has ever been constructed for low income people is when the government did it. Current “affordable” rental housing is just full depreciated structures in bad locations in need of CAPEX (which is how the market is supposed to work).

The only historical time in this country that real estate prices ever went down in real terms was due to the unique combination of two factors, a population bust combined with a mass expansion of greenfield development (ie the suburbs).

Your entire mental model is invalid and unfortunately you don’t understand that.

DP. I posed this in a different thread, but increasing supply lowers prices, and is well-established in academic literature:
https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/7fc2bf_ee1737c3c9d4468881bf1434814a6f8f.pdf
https://research.upjohn.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?ar...=1334&context=up_workingpapers
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/3345
https://www.dropbox.com/s/oplls6utgf7z6ih/Pennington_JMP.pdf?dl=0

I hate to "nuh-uh" you, but it's actually your mental model that's incorrect, and you can't see it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

The densification argument is a classic YIMBY argument. Densification is not a new concept. Tell me where in DC housing prices have gone down or been stabilized based on new construction?

Such a tired and ignorant argument.

Prices are going up because we aren't building nearly enough to satisfy demand. It's like you invited 100 people to a BBQ, cooked 10 meals and are demanding to know why there are still hungry people.

The bigger question is not "why are prices still expensive," it's "how much less expensive would they be if we built an adequate number of units and how much more expensive would they be if we had done nothing."

Can you point to actual evidence?

The only way that affordable rental housing has ever been constructed for low income people is when the government did it. Current “affordable” rental housing is just full depreciated structures in bad locations in need of CAPEX (which is how the market is supposed to work).

The only historical time in this country that real estate prices ever went down in real terms was due to the unique combination of two factors, a population bust combined with a mass expansion of greenfield development (ie the suburbs).

Your entire mental model is invalid and unfortunately you don’t understand that.

DP. I posed this in a different thread, but increasing supply lowers prices, and is well-established in academic literature:
https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/7fc2bf_ee1737c3c9d4468881bf1434814a6f8f.pdf
https://research.upjohn.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?ar...=1334&context=up_workingpapers
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/3345
https://www.dropbox.com/s/oplls6utgf7z6ih/Pennington_JMP.pdf?dl=0

I hate to "nuh-uh" you, but it's actually your mental model that's incorrect, and you can't see it.

LOL.

1. Not published or peer-reviewed
2. Broken link to “think tank” that does not publish peer reviewed work
3. A legislative report?
4. Not published or peer reviewed. Affiliated with same “think tank” as #2

Keep Googling.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

The densification argument is a classic YIMBY argument. Densification is not a new concept. Tell me where in DC housing prices have gone down or been stabilized based on new construction?

Such a tired and ignorant argument.

Prices are going up because we aren't building nearly enough to satisfy demand. It's like you invited 100 people to a BBQ, cooked 10 meals and are demanding to know why there are still hungry people.

The bigger question is not "why are prices still expensive," it's "how much less expensive would they be if we built an adequate number of units and how much more expensive would they be if we had done nothing."

Can you point to actual evidence?

The only way that affordable rental housing has ever been constructed for low income people is when the government did it. Current “affordable” rental housing is just full depreciated structures in bad locations in need of CAPEX (which is how the market is supposed to work).

The only historical time in this country that real estate prices ever went down in real terms was due to the unique combination of two factors, a population bust combined with a mass expansion of greenfield development (ie the suburbs).

Your entire mental model is invalid and unfortunately you don’t understand that.

DP. I posed this in a different thread, but increasing supply lowers prices, and is well-established in academic literature:
https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/7fc2bf_ee1737c3c9d4468881bf1434814a6f8f.pdf
https://research.upjohn.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?ar...=1334&context=up_workingpapers
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/3345
https://www.dropbox.com/s/oplls6utgf7z6ih/Pennington_JMP.pdf?dl=0

I hate to "nuh-uh" you, but it's actually your mental model that's incorrect, and you can't see it.

LOL.

1. Not published or peer-reviewed
2. Broken link to “think tank” that does not publish peer reviewed work
3. A legislative report?
4. Not published or peer reviewed. Affiliated with same “think tank” as #2

Keep Googling.

Hopefully when you are done Googling you can have a coherent explanation based only on housing supply for this chart of Shiller’s historical national home prices, adjusted for inflation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

The densification argument is a classic YIMBY argument. Densification is not a new concept. Tell me where in DC housing prices have gone down or been stabilized based on new construction?

Such a tired and ignorant argument.

Prices are going up because we aren't building nearly enough to satisfy demand. It's like you invited 100 people to a BBQ, cooked 10 meals and are demanding to know why there are still hungry people.

The bigger question is not "why are prices still expensive," it's "how much less expensive would they be if we built an adequate number of units and how much more expensive would they be if we had done nothing."

Can you point to actual evidence?

The only way that affordable rental housing has ever been constructed for low income people is when the government did it. Current “affordable” rental housing is just full depreciated structures in bad locations in need of CAPEX (which is how the market is supposed to work).

The only historical time in this country that real estate prices ever went down in real terms was due to the unique combination of two factors, a population bust combined with a mass expansion of greenfield development (ie the suburbs).

Your entire mental model is invalid and unfortunately you don’t understand that.

DP. I posed this in a different thread, but increasing supply lowers prices, and is well-established in academic literature:
https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/7fc2bf_ee1737c3c9d4468881bf1434814a6f8f.pdf
https://research.upjohn.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?ar...=1334&context=up_workingpapers
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/3345
https://www.dropbox.com/s/oplls6utgf7z6ih/Pennington_JMP.pdf?dl=0

I hate to "nuh-uh" you, but it's actually your mental model that's incorrect, and you can't see it.

LOL.

1. Not published or peer-reviewed
2. Broken link to “think tank” that does not publish peer reviewed work
3. A legislative report?
4. Not published or peer reviewed. Affiliated with same “think tank” as #2

Keep Googling.

Hopefully when you are done Googling you can have a coherent explanation based only on housing supply for this chart of Shiller’s historical national home prices, adjusted for inflation.

Oops. ^^this chart. Enjoy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

The densification argument is a classic YIMBY argument. Densification is not a new concept. Tell me where in DC housing prices have gone down or been stabilized based on new construction?

Such a tired and ignorant argument.

Prices are going up because we aren't building nearly enough to satisfy demand. It's like you invited 100 people to a BBQ, cooked 10 meals and are demanding to know why there are still hungry people.

The bigger question is not "why are prices still expensive," it's "how much less expensive would they be if we built an adequate number of units and how much more expensive would they be if we had done nothing."

Can you point to actual evidence?

The only way that affordable rental housing has ever been constructed for low income people is when the government did it. Current “affordable” rental housing is just full depreciated structures in bad locations in need of CAPEX (which is how the market is supposed to work).

The only historical time in this country that real estate prices ever went down in real terms was due to the unique combination of two factors, a population bust combined with a mass expansion of greenfield development (ie the suburbs).

Your entire mental model is invalid and unfortunately you don’t understand that.

DP. I posed this in a different thread, but increasing supply lowers prices, and is well-established in academic literature:
https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/7fc2bf_ee1737c3c9d4468881bf1434814a6f8f.pdf
https://research.upjohn.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?ar...=1334&context=up_workingpapers
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/3345
https://www.dropbox.com/s/oplls6utgf7z6ih/Pennington_JMP.pdf?dl=0

I hate to "nuh-uh" you, but it's actually your mental model that's incorrect, and you can't see it.

LOL.

1. Not published or peer-reviewed
2. Broken link to “think tank” that does not publish peer reviewed work
3. A legislative report?
4. Not published or peer reviewed. Affiliated with same “think tank” as #2

Keep Googling.

Okay, it's trivial to find more papers on the link between supply and affordability. This has been thoroughly established in the literature.

https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/mac.20170388
https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdf/10.1257/jep.32.1.3
https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/epr/03v09n2/0306glae.pdf
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.3982/ECTA9823
https://faculty.wharton.upenn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Regulation-and-Housing-Supply-1.pdf

The evidence is so overwhelming, one wonders how you have avoided it all these years. Could it be that your ignorance is willful because you're a beneficiary of restrictive land use regulations?

Also, I think it's great that you demand high-quality research that has been peer-reviewed! Where's your evidence? Besides what you've pulled from your ass, I mean.

And I love how you think that the Shiller chart is some sort of gotcha, because you've placed a nonsensical restriction that the explanation only relies on supply issues. That's absurd. That chart, however, is easily explained by the interaction of supply with demand, which is what we're all talking about to begin with.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

"You live in a house built by a developer" is such a tired trope.

It's not a tired trope, it's literally true. You live in housing where there didn't used to be housing, be it a greenfield, warehouse, former commercial space, or whatever, and somebody thought they could make a buck by building housing there.

Even if you built your house all by yourself, you still performed an implicit calculation that it was more lucrative for you to build your own house than buy one from someone else.

It's a tired trope because it almost always is true and adds nothing to the discussion except an opportunity for you to say "ooooo sick burn." It's not literally true, as you correctly contradicted yourself in the following paragraph. (Nice argumentation)

I am pro new housing and commercial development. I think single family zoning near transit needs to go away, and I think we should find ways to impose costs on developers who sit on approved plans to add units for years upon years or who decide to shrink projects after they're approved.

The problem with a lot of YIMBY argumentation is that it's pro developer without being pro development. I don't think it's government's role to maximize profits for developers (really Wall Street) at the expense of everyone else. I don't think government should be subsidizing market rate housing. I don't think government should be prioritizing high-rise development (the least affordable) at the expense of putting in any effort to promote other forms of increased density that have the potential to deliver more affordable housing.

And I really resent the implicit and explicit charges of racism and classism when anyone questions whether a project that's getting a subsidy in any form is delivering adequate public benefit. Guess what? When a developer wants to add housing in my neighborhood, I am always certain that the new residents will make as much or money than I do. I am reasonably certain that they will almost all be white, and that we'll continue to warehouse poor or Brown people just in some neighborhoods. I have big problems with both of those facts, and so should the YIMBYs if they're true to their advocacy. That the YIMBYs don't have a problem with the outcomes makes the whole movement look more like astroturf than grass roots.

If you want to be pro development instead of being pro developer, start thinking about ways government can get projects moved from approval to groundbreaking more quickly and calling out developers who have been sitting on approved plans for decades. They're at least as much a part of the affordability problem as NIMBYs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
"You live in a house built by a developer" is such a tired trope.

DP. The point of "a developer built your house" is: what if, when the developer proposed the building you now live in, the neighbors had been able to stop it?

I personally know people who live in new developments, who oppose the building of even newer neighboring developments. I've never had the heart to tell them that the pre-existing neighbors didn't want their new development, either.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
"You live in a house built by a developer" is such a tired trope.

DP. The point of "a developer built your house" is: what if, when the developer proposed the building you now live in, the neighbors had been able to stop it?

I personally know people who live in new developments, who oppose the building of even newer neighboring developments. I've never had the heart to tell them that the pre-existing neighbors didn't want their new development, either.

I think it's totally OK for current community to have a say in the future of where they live.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

The densification argument is a classic YIMBY argument. Densification is not a new concept. Tell me where in DC housing prices have gone down or been stabilized based on new construction?

Such a tired and ignorant argument.

Prices are going up because we aren't building nearly enough to satisfy demand. It's like you invited 100 people to a BBQ, cooked 10 meals and are demanding to know why there are still hungry people.

The bigger question is not "why are prices still expensive," it's "how much less expensive would they be if we built an adequate number of units and how much more expensive would they be if we had done nothing."

Can you point to actual evidence?

The only way that affordable rental housing has ever been constructed for low income people is when the government did it. Current “affordable” rental housing is just full depreciated structures in bad locations in need of CAPEX (which is how the market is supposed to work).

The only historical time in this country that real estate prices ever went down in real terms was due to the unique combination of two factors, a population bust combined with a mass expansion of greenfield development (ie the suburbs).

Your entire mental model is invalid and unfortunately you don’t understand that.

DP. I posed this in a different thread, but increasing supply lowers prices, and is well-established in academic literature:
https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/7fc2bf_ee1737c3c9d4468881bf1434814a6f8f.pdf
https://research.upjohn.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?ar...=1334&context=up_workingpapers
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/3345
https://www.dropbox.com/s/oplls6utgf7z6ih/Pennington_JMP.pdf?dl=0

I hate to "nuh-uh" you, but it's actually your mental model that's incorrect, and you can't see it.

LOL.

1. Not published or peer-reviewed
2. Broken link to “think tank” that does not publish peer reviewed work
3. A legislative report?
4. Not published or peer reviewed. Affiliated with same “think tank” as #2

Keep Googling.

Okay, it's trivial to find more papers on the link between supply and affordability. This has been thoroughly established in the literature.

https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/mac.20170388
https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdf/10.1257/jep.32.1.3
https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/epr/03v09n2/0306glae.pdf
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.3982/ECTA9823
https://faculty.wharton.upenn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Regulation-and-Housing-Supply-1.pdf

The evidence is so overwhelming, one wonders how you have avoided it all these years. Could it be that your ignorance is willful because you're a beneficiary of restrictive land use regulations?

Also, I think it's great that you demand high-quality research that has been peer-reviewed! Where's your evidence? Besides what you've pulled from your ass, I mean.

And I love how you think that the Shiller chart is some sort of gotcha, because you've placed a nonsensical restriction that the explanation only relies on supply issues. That's absurd. That chart, however, is easily explained by the interaction of supply with demand, which is what we're all talking about to begin with.

You were gone a long time and still have not been able to address the core question of how your model explains real housing prices. This is not a “gotcha”, this is actually the most important test because it is a real world test of your model in practice. You still have not achieved that outcome because according to you, if would be equally valid to reduce demand for housing to reduce price and make buying a house more affordable. It’s a weird thing to argue and I’ll let you figure out why.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

"You live in a house built by a developer" is such a tired trope.

It's not a tired trope, it's literally true. You live in housing where there didn't used to be housing, be it a greenfield, warehouse, former commercial space, or whatever, and somebody thought they could make a buck by building housing there.

Even if you built your house all by yourself, you still performed an implicit calculation that it was more lucrative for you to build your own house than buy one from someone else.

It's a tired trope because it almost always is true and adds nothing to the discussion except an opportunity for you to say "ooooo sick burn." It's not literally true, as you correctly contradicted yourself in the following paragraph. (Nice argumentation)

I am pro new housing and commercial development. I think single family zoning near transit needs to go away, and I think we should find ways to impose costs on developers who sit on approved plans to add units for years upon years or who decide to shrink projects after they're approved.

The problem with a lot of YIMBY argumentation is that it's pro developer without being pro development. I don't think it's government's role to maximize profits for developers (really Wall Street) at the expense of everyone else. I don't think government should be subsidizing market rate housing. I don't think government should be prioritizing high-rise development (the least affordable) at the expense of putting in any effort to promote other forms of increased density that have the potential to deliver more affordable housing.

And I really resent the implicit and explicit charges of racism and classism when anyone questions whether a project that's getting a subsidy in any form is delivering adequate public benefit. Guess what? When a developer wants to add housing in my neighborhood, I am always certain that the new residents will make as much or money than I do. I am reasonably certain that they will almost all be white, and that we'll continue to warehouse poor or Brown people just in some neighborhoods. I have big problems with both of those facts, and so should the YIMBYs if they're true to their advocacy. That the YIMBYs don't have a problem with the outcomes makes the whole movement look more like astroturf than grass roots.

If you want to be pro development instead of being pro developer, start thinking about ways government can get projects moved from approval to groundbreaking more quickly and calling out developers who have been sitting on approved plans for decades. They're at least as much a part of the affordability problem as NIMBYs.

The bolded really strikes a chord with me and expresses my objection better than I could.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
"You live in a house built by a developer" is such a tired trope.

DP. The point of "a developer built your house" is: what if, when the developer proposed the building you now live in, the neighbors had been able to stop it?

I personally know people who live in new developments, who oppose the building of even newer neighboring developments. I've never had the heart to tell them that the pre-existing neighbors didn't want their new development, either.

I think it's totally OK for current community to have a say in the future of where they live.

Sure, as long as you acknowledge that if the community had had an equivalent say when your house was built, your house probably wouldn't have been built.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
"You live in a house built by a developer" is such a tired trope.

DP. The point of "a developer built your house" is: what if, when the developer proposed the building you now live in, the neighbors had been able to stop it?

I personally know people who live in new developments, who oppose the building of even newer neighboring developments. I've never had the heart to tell them that the pre-existing neighbors didn't want their new development, either.

I think it's totally OK for current community to have a say in the future of where they live.

Sure, as long as you acknowledge that if the community had had an equivalent say when your house was built, your house probably wouldn't have been built.

So NIMBYs would have been more effective in preventing growth than they are today? In Montgomery County, projects have been downsized at developers' requests, not residents' requests. The YIMBYs stomp their feet every time a community asks for a project to be smaller but never says a peep when developers come back and seek to reduce previously approved density. The outcome is the same: less housing. Why is one OK but the other isn't?