What do you think of YIMBYs?
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Anonymous
| I think most stereotypical YIMBYs are very happy to say that stuff should go near other people's houses, as long as it's far away from the YIMBY house. I also think they prioritize nice townhomes and UMC amenities and stuff that seems hip and progressive, while ignoring actual community needs. |
Anonymous
I think you can let them off the hook now. This doesn't work in the real world because developers also know the YIMBY secret that increasing supply too fast causes prices to fall. Developers have gotten better at forecasting demand at their desired price range, and they seem to be more worried about getting caught long in a soft market than they are about getting caught short in a hot market, probably because when they get caught short there's a windfall both for their existing holdings and their new properties. There is plenty of already approved density, projects just sitting on the shelf with all of the NIMBY hurdles cleared. If NIMBYs were the only thing preventing development, then these projects all would be built by now. The reason you can't find a two bedroom in new construction in a great neighborhood for $2,000 a month is because developers don't want to provide it. |
Anonymous
Do you think YIMBYs should ask the county to force developers to build projects? Regardless, that's not the point. Your position is: building MY house THEN was ok even though the then-neighbors opposed it, but building YOUR house NOW is not ok because the now-neighbors oppose it. |
Anonymous
I think that YIMBYs should call out developers who make decisions counter to increasing housing supply. I also think local governments should look at imposing costs when developers seek to delay or downsize projects, and they should make short-term rental conversions very expensive to account for the societal impact of exacerbating the housing shortage. Also, that's not my position. I'm pro development. I just don't find the case that NIMBYs or zoning are causing a housing shortage in the area to be a compelling one. The pipeline of approved projects just waiting for a developer to pull permits is plenty deep. |
Anonymous
A simpler solution is to shorten the allowable period between approval and construction. If you haven't broken ground within 3 years of approval, your approval should go away, and you should have to start over from scratch. That would remove the incentive to get approval for projects that are mostly speculative. Most of those approved projects in the pipeline of approved projects are never going to get built, and everyone knows it. Changing the zoning would certainly have an effect, though. Think of all of the stupidly-big one-household teardowns in Bethesda. Lots of people don't even necessarily want a house that big, but that's what it makes sense for the builders to build. If the builders had had the option of building two-household buildings (i.e., duplexes) instead, there are some parts of Bethesda where the number of housing units would have doubled in the last 20 years or so. |
Anonymous
I support changing the zoning near transit for sure. It would be a game changer for housing supply because it would open the market to small and medium developers who take more modest returns than the high-rise developers. There's a bill to do this before the council but Hans Riemer has refused to move it through his committee and Planning recommended adding a number of regulatory requirements that would make it difficult for small and medium developers to work. It's puzzling that two of the loudest YIMBYs haven't supported the bill, which isn't perfect but is much better than what we have. It's almost as if they want to protect big developers from competition. I'm not sure such a rigid restriction on the development window is the right way to go. Securing financing for these projects is hard because many of them are too big for banks, so the developers need to seek equity investment instead. Some kind of tolling fee -- which would terminate if the developer withdrew and escalate if the developer sought further delays -- would also get speculative projects off the books. |
Anonymous
I was gone a long time because I have obligations outside of responding to strangers on a message board for moms in DC. I'm really glad to hear that you have a lot of time to sit around and refresh this thread, though. Good for you! I wish I had as much free time as you. Housing prices go up when there is high demand and short supply. That was the story in 2008, and that is the story today. Yes, housing prices go down when demand decreases, but I do not think it is wise policy to induce a recession to reduce demand for housing, so I prefer the approach of increasing supply, but to each their own. I have provided plenty of high-quality peer-reviewed papers out of the vast literature that demonstrates a link between housing scarcity and affordability. Now tell me, where are the high-quality peer-reviewed papers supporting your theory? I'll be sure to refresh this thread before I go to work tomorrow morning, I promise. |
Anonymous
They love to preach to others before retreating to their Takoma Park home, safely protected from all this new development. |
Anonymous
The outcome in Westbard fascinates me. The developer has proposed to scrap half of the proposed apartment units which would have produced the MPDUs (which YIMBYs used to accuse the community as being against affordable housing) and now requests to convert it into an assisted living facility. It is effectively a bait and switch that seems to be a common end-around the planning and permitting process and I have not seen or heard anything from the usual YIMBY suspects about this outcome, despite it resulting in a major impact to the amount of both market rate and regulated "affordable" housing units produced. Similarly, look at the Carr property in downtown Bethesda, another bait and switch. Project site plan originally approved with 480 units. Later the developer reduces the units to 456 and then later comes back and requests to make 80 of those units "short-term rentals" and the MDPU requirement only applies to the remaining units and there is no impact to the overall project footprint. Again, where are the usual YIMBY voices? Where is the howling and screaming? I would honestly respect YIMBYs more if they were not dishonest about their goals. On the one hand they extol great urbanism of European cities, evoking continuous low-rise density with abundant tree canopy, public open space and parks. However, in practice the YIMBYs actually advocate for allowing developers free reign to build imposing and lifeless monstrosities that promote an urban environment that is exactly the opposite of what they claim to extol and any opposition to moderating developers is countered with vicious attacks and attempts at public shaming to effectively label people as racist (everyone knows who I am talking about). Requesting a setback to allow for a wider sidewalk with planted trees is bad because it reduces the number of units that developers can build which affects the availability of overall supply which prevents their mythical housing supply/price mechanism from working when hurts affordable housing for low income residents which makes the person requesting this effectively racist. Let's be clear, this chain of events is the exact logic and as you can see in this thread, to point out the fallacies of these arguments is to be met with attacks. It's bizarre. The Planning Department is guilty of this too. Presenting these preposterous utopian renderings of things like continuous step downs in density (which I think most people think is fine) but cannot actually be implemented in practice. They also lack the ability to plan for actual day to day details of the lived experience, which is troubling. Where in their plans have they accounted for parking of delivery vehicles, for example? Or, when you look at their Silver Spring 4 stack "missing middle" proposals, where in their proposed site plans does the dumpster go? These are the practicalities of life and it really is telling how little interest there are in these things, which really need to be accounted for at the planning stage. |
Anonymous
I don't know who you are talking about, but you know, we are in a pandemic where people are wherever they are until it is over. |
Anonymous
1) Ward 3 Vision doesn't have any "directors" 2) there is no one on the steering committee who has ever worked for Trump or has any association with Trump. Maybe you are thinking about a second or third degree relationship? |
Anonymous
he lives what he espouses, an urban lifestyle with better housing and transportation options |
Anonymous
It's not about making the value of real estate decrease. It is about trying to stabilize and reduce the rate of increase, because it is unsustainable to have our teachers and first responders living in West Virginia. |
Anonymous
What developers have been sitting on approved plans for decades? |
Anonymous
having a say is one thing blocking anything and everything is another. we don't live in amber |