What do you think of YIMBYs?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Anytime you NIMBYs say building more housing doesn't work, please just read this article and be quiet. Thanks.

https://www.oregonlive.com/business/2019/01/apartment-rents-dropping-in-seattle-landlords-compete-for-tenants-as-market-cools.html

Yes, occasionally developers over forecast demand, and when there's a glut rents fall. No disputing that. Developers here have responded to falling rents by delaying new construction or warehousing units. It looks like they missed by a lot in Seattle.

Question for you: Of the 60,000 units that Montgomery County needs for new households by 2040, how many could be permitted tomorrow?

DP. Where do you get that figure from?

It's in the Thrive Montgomery paper. I'll just tell you how many units could be permitted in Montgomery County tomorrow: More than 30,000. That's right. Despite everything you've heard about NIMBYs causing housing to be unaffordable, the county has already approved plans accounting for more than half of its housing needs for the next two decades. No zoning changes needed. The county could provide for the balance of the units based on existing zoning. That would be bad for the environment and costly, so I support upzoning near transit, but only if it's accompanied by other changes that disincentivize developers sitting on approved plans for years to correct for the market structure.

The “Thrive Montgomery” paper relies on the Planning Department’s 2019 “trends” report (using 2017 estimates and extrapolating) where it over estimated 2020 population by over 37,000 people. They were also completely wrong by a significant amount on their population growth rate estimate. They estimated that the county currently has a growth rate of 0.7% that would decline to 0.48% from 2035 to 2045.
https://montgomeryplanning.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/MP_TrendsReport_final.pdf

However, in the Planning Department’s April 2021 report to the redistricting committee (which is where they need to be accurate because it affects their bosses), they noted that the current population growth rate decelerated consistently and rapidly over the last half decade was was 0.2% last year.
https://www.montgomerycountymd.gov/COUNCIL/Resources/Files/BCC/redistricting/materials/DemographicsPresentation04282021.pdf

You could make the case that we need to build more housing to attract more people to keep our economy vibrant. But the estimates you are citing are inaccurate and it’s disappointing that the Plannimg Department would allow its credibility to be used like this. But then again maybe Mr. Anderson is hoping for a future in politics.

Just to add that the “crisis” isn’t housing, it’s declining population. In any event, I fully agree with you that zoning is not the problem. I disagree with your solution. This county is going to completely screw up Millennials. We didn’t have enough apartments when they needed them but then we started producing an over abundance as demand is decreasing. Now we refuse to produce single family homes to satisfy Millennial demand despite actually have their space and ability to do so. Idiots in charge and always 10 years behind.

[Anonymous]

Demand isn't decreasing, the constricted supply is making things more expensive relative to current salaries.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Demand isn't decreasing, the constricted supply is making things more expensive relative to current salaries.

The main growth demographic in the county is 35-44. These are folks that desperately want SFHs. There are even infill sections of this county where many SFH can be built (WMAL Towers). Also lots of already approved SFH developments upcounty. County leaders through higher impact taxes (thanks Riemer!) want to prevent what would be “affordable” homes from being built. In the mean time, we have developers turning approved in-fill apartments into old folks homes. MoCo has a really stupid government, which makes sense because it’s effectively controlled by Takoma Park which explains a lot.

[Anonymous]

When YIMBYs have backyard to say yes to, and can’t cut and run when they’re lease is up, or when their lobby actually lives the quadplex or height life style they preach, actually taking the bus to all their meetings, then they get to say “Yes”.

[Anonymous]

What "the people" want are sfh or duplexes with some room around them (lawn, play area). That's literally what people are clamoring for. For apartments, they want larger apartments. Some of the rabbit warrens on Wisconsin and Connecticut could probably be overdue for conversions/retrofitting to three bedrooms and more community space amenities. That's "what the people want". Not tiny holes/boxes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What "the people" want are sfh or duplexes with some room around them (lawn, play area). That's literally what people are clamoring for. For apartments, they want larger apartments. Some of the rabbit warrens on Wisconsin and Connecticut could probably be overdue for conversions/retrofitting to three bedrooms and more community space amenities. That's "what the people want". Not tiny holes/boxes.

This is exactly right! So why is Hans Riemer and his fellow YIMBY nuts intent on preventing the county from being able to offer people what they want? I literally saw a presentation from the Planning Department that argued that townhouses were bad and that “stacked” four-plexes were a preferred housing type. I would love someone to explain to me who wants to drag a stroller and groceries and everything else up four flights of stairs? There’s a reason the traditional walk-up has always been considered typical tenement housing. There’s a reason it’s associated with slums, it’s not clear why they don’t seem capable of learning from history and are intent on turning our county into a slum. If we don’t offer the market what it wants, people will get it elsewhere and we’re going to be left with slums and poverty. The situation is totally insane.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What "the people" want are sfh or duplexes with some room around them (lawn, play area). That's literally what people are clamoring for. For apartments, they want larger apartments. Some of the rabbit warrens on Wisconsin and Connecticut could probably be overdue for conversions/retrofitting to three bedrooms and more community space amenities. That's "what the people want". Not tiny holes/boxes.

This is exactly right! So why is Hans Riemer and his fellow YIMBY nuts intent on preventing the county from being able to offer people what they want? I literally saw a presentation from the Planning Department that argued that townhouses were bad and that “stacked” four-plexes were a preferred housing type. I would love someone to explain to me who wants to drag a stroller and groceries and everything else up four flights of stairs? There’s a reason the traditional walk-up has always been considered typical tenement housing. There’s a reason it’s associated with slums, it’s not clear why they don’t seem capable of learning from history and are intent on turning our county into a slum. If we don’t offer the market what it wants, people will get it elsewhere and we’re going to be left with slums and poverty. The situation is totally insane.

Planning’s main clientele is deep-pocketed developers who only do big projects. They don’t seem to have an interest in enabling development that competes with spacious two-bedrooms in glass towers. The glass towers use land more efficiently, but there’s a lot of land not suitable for the glass towers, and we could post big housing gains if the county made it easy to build duplexes or triples in those places. Planning was lukewarm when one councilmember suggested doing just that and also wanted to saddle these small projects with a lot of red tape that would not apply to building a single family home. The whole approach is incoherent if you want more housing but makes sense if you just want to maximize profits for big developers.

[Anonymous]

All these YIMBYs who are so loud and bubbly with each other online, could at least pretend to live what they preach, but literally every single one lives in a SFH themselves.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:All these YIMBYs who are so loud and bubbly with each other online, could at least pretend to live what they preach, but literally every single one lives in a SFH themselves.

What’s even more hypocritical is that the most prominent live in SFHs in historically protected areas.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What "the people" want are sfh or duplexes with some room around them (lawn, play area). That's literally what people are clamoring for. For apartments, they want larger apartments. Some of the rabbit warrens on Wisconsin and Connecticut could probably be overdue for conversions/retrofitting to three bedrooms and more community space amenities. That's "what the people want". Not tiny holes/boxes.

This is exactly right! So why is Hans Riemer and his fellow YIMBY nuts intent on preventing the county from being able to offer people what they want? I literally saw a presentation from the Planning Department that argued that townhouses were bad and that “stacked” four-plexes were a preferred housing type. I would love someone to explain to me who wants to drag a stroller and groceries and everything else up four flights of stairs? There’s a reason the traditional walk-up has always been considered typical tenement housing. There’s a reason it’s associated with slums, it’s not clear why they don’t seem capable of learning from history and are intent on turning our county into a slum. If we don’t offer the market what it wants, people will get it elsewhere and we’re going to be left with slums and poverty. The situation is totally insane.

Planning’s main clientele is deep-pocketed developers who only do big projects. They don’t seem to have an interest in enabling development that competes with spacious two-bedrooms in glass towers. The glass towers use land more efficiently, but there’s a lot of land not suitable for the glass towers, and we could post big housing gains if the county made it easy to build duplexes or triples in those places. Planning was lukewarm when one councilmember suggested doing just that and also wanted to saddle these small projects with a lot of red tape that would not apply to building a single family home. The whole approach is incoherent if you want more housing but makes sense if you just want to maximize profits for big developers.

What riles me about Planning is basically how much they lie by omission or in highly ridiculous presentations of proposals or data.

A favorite image they like to show is a gradual reduction in building size and mass from large to small. However that is not consistent with how the sector plans and zoning works. The promote this sense of aesthetically pleasing order that is easy to agree with, however that is not the effect of the policy they support. In addition, I cannot get over their “missing middle” presentation. They present pictures of “options” for parking with nice hardscrape when there is nothing to enforce that and we all know the outcome will be asphalt with painted lines. There is a presumption that they promote that this housing will be condo when it is just as or more likely to be apartments. They also don’t account for basic things like where the trash receptacles will go. For people familiar with college towns and know this type of housing, what happens is that they will be apartments with dumpster out front.

Townhouses are a regional housing type that people are comfortable with that can add “infill”. EYA is building townhouses all over Bethesda and no one is complaining. I am not sure why people want to promote tri-plexes or four-plexes or anything else when it’s clear what the market wants and there is any easy way to provide it. The “problem” is that the townhomes sell for over a million, but by the YIMBY logic this should not be a problem because we desperately need more units which will lead to overall price eventually falling for less desirable housing or whatever (less desirable housing is already cheap).

Anyway, I don’t understand the thinking behind any of it. The fact that through whatever corruption and ideology prevents them from providing the market what it wants for the common good feels very Soviet for people that fancy themselves liberals. It honestly depresses me.

Get ready for the next fiasco of incompetent Montgomery County Soviet central planning when the Purple Line doesn’t get finished in years, but the developments get delivered anyway leading to massive congestion. Riemer will say “wait for the Purple Line” and then it comes and it will be an empty train that no one takes because why the hell would they think to plan county development around transit when transit ridership has been consistently falling for a decade and these locations are far from freeways? Instead they should follow Fairfax’s lead and center development around Rockledge and Montgomery Mall. Hundreds of millions in sunk cost in infrastructure improvements are going to waste.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All these YIMBYs who are so loud and bubbly with each other online, could at least pretend to live what they preach, but literally every single one lives in a SFH themselves.

What’s even more hypocritical is that the most prominent live in SFHs in historically protected areas.

The most hypocritical are hired Trump-Manafort political operatives, like the guy who runs Ward 3 Vision, who use progressive-sounding woke language to obtain zoning changes for developers to realize windfall profit opportunities in DC.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:All these YIMBYs who are so loud and bubbly with each other online, could at least pretend to live what they preach, but literally every single one lives in a SFH themselves.

The new chair of the Woodley-Cleveland Park ANC is a loud-mouthed "Density Bro," very involved with GGW and Ward 3 Vision. He supports high density development in the neighborhood while favoring zoning changes to hollow out SFH zoning where it exists. Yet while he rents a pied a Terre in the in his ANC district to nominally keep a DC address, he lives most of the time at his principal residence, a single family home he owns in Calvert County, Maryland. Talk about shameless hypocricy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All these YIMBYs who are so loud and bubbly with each other online, could at least pretend to live what they preach, but literally every single one lives in a SFH themselves.

What’s even more hypocritical is that the most prominent live in SFHs in historically protected areas.

The most hypocritical are hired Trump-Manafort political operatives, like the guy who runs Ward 3 Vision, who use progressive-sounding woke language to obtain zoning changes for developers to realize windfall profit opportunities in DC.

No that’s Democrats. Nancy Skinner is a State Senator from Berkeley, led the charge on a transit density bill over there, while demanding her Berkeley Neighborhood be exempt and designated a historic district. But really I could have listed several Democrats up and down the coast, on many issues, from where they grew up, where they live, to where their children go to school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All these YIMBYs who are so loud and bubbly with each other online, could at least pretend to live what they preach, but literally every single one lives in a SFH themselves.

The new chair of the Woodley-Cleveland Park ANC is a loud-mouthed "Density Bro," very involved with GGW and Ward 3 Vision. He supports high density development in the neighborhood while favoring zoning changes to hollow out SFH zoning where it exists. Yet while he rents a pied a Terre in the in his ANC district to nominally keep a DC address, he lives most of the time at his principal residence, a single family home he owns in Calvert County, Maryland. Talk about shameless hypocricy.

Not shameless. Just like all of the rich liberal urbanites, talk about density, and then the pandemic strikes, they fall back to their parents suburban home where most of their stuff is anyway.

But you should live this lifestyle!!!!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All these YIMBYs who are so loud and bubbly with each other online, could at least pretend to live what they preach, but literally every single one lives in a SFH themselves.

The new chair of the Woodley-Cleveland Park ANC is a loud-mouthed "Density Bro," very involved with GGW and Ward 3 Vision. He supports high density development in the neighborhood while favoring zoning changes to hollow out SFH zoning where it exists. Yet while he rents a pied a Terre in the in his ANC district to nominally keep a DC address, he lives most of the time at his principal residence, a single family home he owns in Calvert County, Maryland. Talk about shameless hypocricy.

Not shameless. Just like all of the rich liberal urbanites, talk about density, and then the pandemic strikes, they fall back to their parents suburban home where most of their stuff is anyway.

But you should live this lifestyle!!!!

It’s not the limousine liberal mindset. It’s always, always for someone else.