What do you think of YIMBYs?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Cool. He still lives in a SFH blocks from a Metro station, which writers and commenters on the blog he founded say should be illegal. He also admits to owning a car despite painting all cat drivers as evil.

Maybe he's trying to overcompensate for his hypocrisy by supporting that condo project.

If you're going to obsessively hate on GGW for some reason, please hate on GGW accurately.

"Multi-family buildings should be allowed by right near a Metro station" =/= "Immediately knock down all existing non-multi-family residential buildings!"

"Many drivers drive dangerously, and transportation policy should stop subsidizing/enabling driving to the detriment of all other modes" =/= "All car drivers are evil!"

The comments section of that place -- I'm going to guess you're one of the 5 people who comment on every story in that echo chamber, considering your weird need to come here and slurp GGWash constantly -- say that it's an accurate description, and if the blog owners let those comments stand, it's tacit agreement. The fact is, there are many, many GGW writers (Alex Baca, a deeply unpleasant woman who never met a Black churchgoer she couldn't call names on her Twitter feed) and commenters who do want to "immediately knock down all existing non-multi-family residential buildings" near Metro stations and who want to ban cars. To deny that is to deny the truth.

You might be a happier person if you spent less time on that website that you obviously loathe.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Dan Reed lives in a HOA community where his immediate neighbors cannot change anything due to HOA rules, on a lot that included racial covenants when it was platted and he literally calls everyone that disagrees with him racist.

You're going to have to make up your mind about what to hate on him for. Either you can hate on him for living in a late 1980s townhouse community that has a common-ownership association (with rules I don't know about; how do you know about them?), OR you can hate on him for living in an area that had racial covenants when it was originally developed decades before the 1980s, but not both.

Nice strawmen. "Hate". Either this or that.

Also, every HOA has rules and the rules are always the same, specifically in regards to regulating physical changes to the exterior and aesthetics of structures. It is a fair presumption that neither he nor his neighbors can further subdivide their property based on the mutual agreement of their community.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Dan Reed lives in a HOA community where his immediate neighbors cannot change anything due to HOA rules, on a lot that included racial covenants when it was platted and he literally calls everyone that disagrees with him racist.

You're going to have to make up your mind about what to hate on him for. Either you can hate on him for living in a late 1980s townhouse community that has a common-ownership association (with rules I don't know about; how do you know about them?), OR you can hate on him for living in an area that had racial covenants when it was originally developed decades before the 1980s, but not both.

Nice strawmen. "Hate". Either this or that.

Also, every HOA has rules and the rules are always the same, specifically in regards to regulating physical changes to the exterior and aesthetics of structures. It is a fair presumption that neither he nor his neighbors can further subdivide their property based on the mutual agreement of their community.

That's absolutely, completely, demonstrably, obviously false.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:YIMBY = Yes In My Backyard = the opposite of NIMBY.

The pro-development, pro-any kind of housing at any cost, a movement that straddles the social justice left and the libertarian/pro-corporate right. Locally, YIMBY outlets include Greater Greater Washington, Just Up The Pike, and Market Urbanism Report.

The idea is that deregulating zoning and building everything everywhere, housing at all price points including luxury, will ease the supply/demand ratio and help solve the housing affordability problem. Criticisms from the right include potentially threatening property values of homeowners in wealthy neighborhoods and "social engineering", criticisms from the left include "shilling for corporate developers" and skepticism surrounding the concept of filtering (meaning that construction of new "luxury" units will enable wealthier residents to move into them and open up older, cheaper units for middle and lower income residents).
YIMBY politicians include Montgomery County Councilmember Hans Riemer.

So what do you think of YIMBYs and their housing solutions? Does it work? Does it benefit high-earning young professionals exclusively? Does "filtering" work? What are your thoughts.

They love to preach to others before retreating to their Takoma Park home, safely protected from all this new development.

You haven't been to Takoma Park recently if you are claiming there hasn't been a ton of new development there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I ofter disagree with YIMBYs but I understand their point of view. It's the YIYBYs - the Yes, in your back yard! types - who are insufferable. They're the so-called smart growthers who want height and density everywhere, except in their own back yard. A case in point is the new chairman of the Woodley Park-Cleveland Park ANC, who has been a big cheerleader for up-zoning the area, even though much to it lies in two historic districts, and effectively ending single family zoning. Yet he resides most of the time not in DC, but in the single family home he purchased in Calvert County, MD. And while this "Absentee Neighborhood Commissioner" pushes density on the DC neighborhood he purports to represent, along with an ex-ANC commissioner he has opposed proposed infill development that might affect the view from his apartment rental in DC. A real YIYBY indeed.

Reminds me that the founder of GGW lives in townhome on a historically protected block in DuPont Circle. His life is totally impervious to everything that he advocates. I find that this is a common feature.

he lives what he espouses, an urban lifestyle with better housing and transportation options

By his own choice (which I don’t disagree with), he is personally insulated from the policies that he espouses regarding development. His whole street is NIMBYism by regulation. So no, he does not live what he espouses.

Ummm he was a vocal proponent of a project across the street from his home and even wrote about it:

https://ggwash.org/view/38823/neighborhood-commission-catches-height-itis-on-a-dupont-circle-church-and-condo-project

Someday I'll get my head around the irrational hatred on here for GGW but in the meantime you don't get to make stuff up.

Your description of what he is supporting is highly motivated. He is supporting turning a burned out church that s a blight on his neighborhood on the corner of a major thoroughfare into something usable. It does not affect any of the SFH low rise development on his street and in fact the development itself is low rise (5 floors) and does not go higher than the original height of the church. So this is nonsense, absolute nonsense.

Given that many in the neighborhood preferred the burned out shell of the church for the past 40 years, then yes, that is an improvement. And if you don't like that it was only 5 stories, then blame zoning and preservation. I am pretty confident the neighbor in question would have been fine with 15-20 or whatever stories.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Dan Reed lives in a HOA community where his immediate neighbors cannot change anything due to HOA rules, on a lot that included racial covenants when it was platted and he literally calls everyone that disagrees with him racist.

You're going to have to make up your mind about what to hate on him for. Either you can hate on him for living in a late 1980s townhouse community that has a common-ownership association (with rules I don't know about; how do you know about them?), OR you can hate on him for living in an area that had racial covenants when it was originally developed decades before the 1980s, but not both.

Nice strawmen. "Hate". Either this or that.

Also, every HOA has rules and the rules are always the same, specifically in regards to regulating physical changes to the exterior and aesthetics of structures. It is a fair presumption that neither he nor his neighbors can further subdivide their property based on the mutual agreement of their community.

There is no HOA there. They are bound by zoning regulations and historic preservation law.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I ofter disagree with YIMBYs but I understand their point of view. It's the YIYBYs - the Yes, in your back yard! types - who are insufferable. They're the so-called smart growthers who want height and density everywhere, except in their own back yard. A case in point is the new chairman of the Woodley Park-Cleveland Park ANC, who has been a big cheerleader for up-zoning the area, even though much to it lies in two historic districts, and effectively ending single family zoning. Yet he resides most of the time not in DC, but in the single family home he purchased in Calvert County, MD. And while this "Absentee Neighborhood Commissioner" pushes density on the DC neighborhood he purports to represent, along with an ex-ANC commissioner he has opposed proposed infill development that might affect the view from his apartment rental in DC. A real YIYBY indeed.

Reminds me that the founder of GGW lives in townhome on a historically protected block in DuPont Circle. His life is totally impervious to everything that he advocates. I find that this is a common feature.

he lives what he espouses, an urban lifestyle with better housing and transportation options

By his own choice (which I don’t disagree with), he is personally insulated from the policies that he espouses regarding development. His whole street is NIMBYism by regulation. So no, he does not live what he espouses.

Ummm he was a vocal proponent of a project across the street from his home and even wrote about it:

https://ggwash.org/view/38823/neighborhood-commission-catches-height-itis-on-a-dupont-circle-church-and-condo-project

Someday I'll get my head around the irrational hatred on here for GGW but in the meantime you don't get to make stuff up.

Your description of what he is supporting is highly motivated. He is supporting turning a burned out church that s a blight on his neighborhood on the corner of a major thoroughfare into something usable. It does not affect any of the SFH low rise development on his street and in fact the development itself is low rise (5 floors) and does not go higher than the original height of the church. So this is nonsense, absolute nonsense.

Given that many in the neighborhood preferred the burned out shell of the church for the past 40 years, then yes, that is an improvement. And if you don't like that it was only 5 stories, then blame zoning and preservation. I am pretty confident the neighbor in question would have been fine with 15-20 or whatever stories.

No he wouldn't. In the article he never defines what he thinks an acceptable height is and he does not have to because he is protected from that by the zoning and housing regulations of the community that he chose to make his home. That is why he chose to live there, the low density aesthetics that are protected by the zoning and housing regulations. He says himself that he highly values aesthetic qualities in statements that GGW would typically warp to make anyone else seem like a NIMBY racist ("other neighbors are adding a fourth story to their row house, which I will be able to see from my upstairs windows, but it’s set back so you can’t see it from the sidewalk (and, honestly, I’d be fine with it even if they didn’t have to set it so far back, since the design looks very well done").

Look, this is a boring back and forth. Choosing to live in a neighborhood due to the aesthetic qualities of being historically protected, living under those historic preservation regulations and then not just promoting other parts of the city to accept more density and development but actively mocking those who don't live under historic preservation regulations who want to keep their neighborhoods the same is pretty interesting, to be polite.

His neighborhood is almost 80% white and 7% black and which is historically protected.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Dan Reed lives in a HOA community where his immediate neighbors cannot change anything due to HOA rules, on a lot that included racial covenants when it was platted and he literally calls everyone that disagrees with him racist.

You're going to have to make up your mind about what to hate on him for. Either you can hate on him for living in a late 1980s townhouse community that has a common-ownership association (with rules I don't know about; how do you know about them?), OR you can hate on him for living in an area that had racial covenants when it was originally developed decades before the 1980s, but not both.

Nice strawmen. "Hate". Either this or that.

Also, every HOA has rules and the rules are always the same, specifically in regards to regulating physical changes to the exterior and aesthetics of structures. It is a fair presumption that neither he nor his neighbors can further subdivide their property based on the mutual agreement of their community.

There is no HOA there. They are bound by zoning regulations and historic preservation law.

It is governed by a "Community Association" aka HOA which has rules and for which residents pay dues.

I guess you are either Dan or a friend of Dan? Makes sense.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:YIMBY = Yes In My Backyard = the opposite of NIMBY.

The pro-development, pro-any kind of housing at any cost, a movement that straddles the social justice left and the libertarian/pro-corporate right. Locally, YIMBY outlets include Greater Greater Washington, Just Up The Pike, and Market Urbanism Report.

The idea is that deregulating zoning and building everything everywhere, housing at all price points including luxury, will ease the supply/demand ratio and help solve the housing affordability problem. Criticisms from the right include potentially threatening property values of homeowners in wealthy neighborhoods and "social engineering", criticisms from the left include "shilling for corporate developers" and skepticism surrounding the concept of filtering (meaning that construction of new "luxury" units will enable wealthier residents to move into them and open up older, cheaper units for middle and lower income residents).
YIMBY politicians include Montgomery County Councilmember Hans Riemer.

So what do you think of YIMBYs and their housing solutions? Does it work? Does it benefit high-earning young professionals exclusively? Does "filtering" work? What are your thoughts.

They love to preach to others before retreating to their Takoma Park home, safely protected from all this new development.

You haven't been to Takoma Park recently if you are claiming there hasn't been a ton of new development there.

You might want to check the jurisdiction. All new development has been in TAKOMA DC. There has been no new development in TAKOMA PARK, MD for decades and currently the community is embroiled in a massive battle over building a small two-story commercial building on a parking lot. The great county YIMBY leader Hans Riemer won't even weigh in - despite how ridiculous it is - but he's happy to tell everyone else except his own neighbors that they need to accept change. Profiles in leadership and courage.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Dan Reed lives in a HOA community where his immediate neighbors cannot change anything due to HOA rules, on a lot that included racial covenants when it was platted and he literally calls everyone that disagrees with him racist.

You're going to have to make up your mind about what to hate on him for. Either you can hate on him for living in a late 1980s townhouse community that has a common-ownership association (with rules I don't know about; how do you know about them?), OR you can hate on him for living in an area that had racial covenants when it was originally developed decades before the 1980s, but not both.

Nice strawmen. "Hate". Either this or that.

Also, every HOA has rules and the rules are always the same, specifically in regards to regulating physical changes to the exterior and aesthetics of structures. It is a fair presumption that neither he nor his neighbors can further subdivide their property based on the mutual agreement of their community.

That's absolutely, completely, demonstrably, obviously false.

Are you asserting that he and his fellow owners can subdivide their home into separate units so they can have more neighbors?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Dan Reed lives in a HOA community where his immediate neighbors cannot change anything due to HOA rules, on a lot that included racial covenants when it was platted and he literally calls everyone that disagrees with him racist.

You're going to have to make up your mind about what to hate on him for. Either you can hate on him for living in a late 1980s townhouse community that has a common-ownership association (with rules I don't know about; how do you know about them?), OR you can hate on him for living in an area that had racial covenants when it was originally developed decades before the 1980s, but not both.

Nice strawmen. "Hate". Either this or that.

Also, every HOA has rules and the rules are always the same, specifically in regards to regulating physical changes to the exterior and aesthetics of structures. It is a fair presumption that neither he nor his neighbors can further subdivide their property based on the mutual agreement of their community.

That's absolutely, completely, demonstrably, obviously false.

Are you asserting that he and his fellow owners can subdivide their home into separate units so they can have more neighbors?

No, the zoning code doesn't allow it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Dan Reed lives in a HOA community where his immediate neighbors cannot change anything due to HOA rules, on a lot that included racial covenants when it was platted and he literally calls everyone that disagrees with him racist.

You're going to have to make up your mind about what to hate on him for. Either you can hate on him for living in a late 1980s townhouse community that has a common-ownership association (with rules I don't know about; how do you know about them?), OR you can hate on him for living in an area that had racial covenants when it was originally developed decades before the 1980s, but not both.

Nice strawmen. "Hate". Either this or that.

Also, every HOA has rules and the rules are always the same, specifically in regards to regulating physical changes to the exterior and aesthetics of structures. It is a fair presumption that neither he nor his neighbors can further subdivide their property based on the mutual agreement of their community.

That's absolutely, completely, demonstrably, obviously false.

Are you asserting that he and his fellow owners can subdivide their home into separate units so they can have more neighbors?

DP. But what is the relevance of whether or not he can do that? He's not the HOA. He doesn't make the rules. If you want to live in anything denser than an SFH, you're looking at having an HOA or a condo association that's going to have rules, including rules you may not like. That's a fact of life and it doesn't mean you secretly support those rules, anymore than living in a county that's mostly zoned for SFHs means you secretly support that zoning either.

[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.

A study of upzoning in Chicago found that it neither increased housing supply nor drove down prices. In fact, prices went up. Here's an article on that from GGW hero Richard Florida:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-31/zoning-reform-isn-t-a-silver-bullet-for-u-s-housing

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I ofter disagree with YIMBYs but I understand their point of view. It's the YIYBYs - the Yes, in your back yard! types - who are insufferable. They're the so-called smart growthers who want height and density everywhere, except in their own back yard. A case in point is the new chairman of the Woodley Park-Cleveland Park ANC, who has been a big cheerleader for up-zoning the area, even though much to it lies in two historic districts, and effectively ending single family zoning. Yet he resides most of the time not in DC, but in the single family home he purchased in Calvert County, MD. And while this "Absentee Neighborhood Commissioner" pushes density on the DC neighborhood he purports to represent, along with an ex-ANC commissioner he has opposed proposed infill development that might affect the view from his apartment rental in DC. A real YIYBY indeed.

Reminds me that the founder of GGW lives in townhome on a historically protected block in DuPont Circle. His life is totally impervious to everything that he advocates. I find that this is a common feature.

he lives what he espouses, an urban lifestyle with better housing and transportation options

By his own choice (which I don’t disagree with), he is personally insulated from the policies that he espouses regarding development. His whole street is NIMBYism by regulation. So no, he does not live what he espouses.

Ummm he was a vocal proponent of a project across the street from his home and even wrote about it:

https://ggwash.org/view/38823/neighborhood-commission-catches-height-itis-on-a-dupont-circle-church-and-condo-project

Someday I'll get my head around the irrational hatred on here for GGW but in the meantime you don't get to make stuff up.

Your description of what he is supporting is highly motivated. He is supporting turning a burned out church that s a blight on his neighborhood on the corner of a major thoroughfare into something usable. It does not affect any of the SFH low rise development on his street and in fact the development itself is low rise (5 floors) and does not go higher than the original height of the church. So this is nonsense, absolute nonsense.

LOL, I figured as much. "BUT I support development on MY STREET". These folks are transparent, but sadly a lot in life is that somehow still draws 'true believers'. Rajneesh, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

A study of upzoning in Chicago found that it neither increased housing supply nor drove down prices. In fact, prices went up. Here's an article on that from GGW hero Richard Florida:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-31/zoning-reform-isn-t-a-silver-bullet-for-u-s-housing

Incredible. Efficient markets at work.