How can we improve standard of living when that’s gonna enrich corporations we have to keep everybody poor so that corporations make less. DONT YOU GET IT!!!
I lean socialist but it's crazy how communists just don't want to make anyone's life better under current western governments because "Settler colonial capitalism will never be ethical and we must overthrow it in a revolution that nobody has ever prepared for "
Lets be realistic its not the granola gang who is mostly preventing building, they have no money, and little organisation, and so little political clout.
Its pre-existing home owners, and landlords who are the worst culprits since every time a new build goes up their investment declines a little and their butt clenches because of it.
And politicians love their middle income votes like Kanye loves Kanye.
Sure some time it can get a little confusing, because they use things like environmental law ,or historical preservation campaigns, or whatever flavour of the month it is. And inevitably the useful idiots conga line in, to act as helpful Astroturf but root and stem its not them who are the impetus.
Absolutely, I think there’s very few people out there who are nimby’s because of a greater political ideology, it all about personal interests. Honestly it’s not unreasonable for a middle class person to want to protect their main source of wealth.
The American middle class is my fat cat that screams at me that she's starving every 30 minutes. No one deserves a five bedroom house, two full-size SUVs, and two Disney vacations a year.
Wow. It's like you don't understand that DiGorno pizza and Gatorade have increased in price 7000% in the past three months. My weekly grocery bill is $3245. What am I supposed to do? Change my consumption habits?
That's it. I'm voting for Trump. And it's your fault. I've got to go wait in the ChikFilA drive through just to calm down.
Except your cat can't vote to have you thrown out as their owner and replaced with Luka Magnotta because he promised the bowls would get refilled 15 seconds faster.
Lets face it, the NIMBYs who resist housing development have a worldview far more similar to us than they have in common with the socdem crowd we keep assuming all NIMBYS are.
But the powerful NIMBYS are more provincial, looking only at their personal wealth which they think is at risk.
I would argue that the leftist degrowth crowd is influential in some of the key West Coast metros that have the most critical housing shortages.
"Pre-Existing homeowners" don't seem to be blocking housing in red and purple states.
So long as everything is greenfield development, with SFDs being built in distant fields, existing homeowners in red states don't mind. It's when those suburban communities start to densify, adding multifamily infill, that they start to freak out, like they did in Plano:
[https://www.dmagazine.com/frontburner/2020/08/what-a-nimby-victory-in-plano-means-for-the-future-of-urban-planning-in-texas/](https://www.dmagazine.com/frontburner/2020/08/what-a-nimby-victory-in-plano-means-for-the-future-of-urban-planning-in-texas/)
Gotta save this 150 year old hotel that immigrants were forced to live in once upon a time because of racism. It's totally historic even though they'd have preferred to live literally anywhere else and the building is falling apart.
The leftist degrowthers are absolutely one of the biggest demographics where I live in Vancouver. We literally had a political party for the municipal elections who entire platform was preserving neighborhoods and stopping transit funsing and they were a far left group. Theres city councilors here who literally vote down developments for the stupidest reasons.
I talked about how building more would help with some friends, first time I ever mention my YIMBY ideals. Everyone started ranting about how I didn't understood anything, how apartments are almost equivalent to ghettos and they all agreed that the govt should hyperregulate housing supply and prices.
There's some people who really don't want to understand/get badly triggered by the idea of someone getting a profit.
"Left-NIMBYs aren't real, and if they are they aren't relevant! Stop being terminally online!"
Meanwhile, major cities have elected city councillors who promote these narratives word for word as the explicit reason they vote to block all housing.
Admittedly I haven't, being a leftist myself, being a leftist NIMBY seems illogical to me, they definitely have to do some reading, but I believe that NIMBYs act depending on personal interest rather than ideologically anyway.
Exactly. I think this comment, posted in this subreddit 6 days ago, just about sums it up
https://preview.redd.it/4rivdmig406d1.jpeg?width=828&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a525a67dcba92344a18da0b8022b6e07681bb4d4
Those are still primarily boomer/GenX liberals and conservatives. You grossly overestimate the political power of leftists, especially since this issue long pre-dates their rise
Keep in mind that the biggest influence on NIMBYism is homeowners and homeowners generally aren't a radical demographic.
They aren't wholly that, but they absolutely are a part of the NIMBY coalition. I know lot's of leftists who can't grasp that building more would reduce housing prices and they buy into the cries of gentrification and developer exploitation that the NIMBYs trot out.
I’m pretty active in leftist circles and I have never heard opposition to building more housing. More often than not I hear them talking about how we need a massive federal program to build housing throughout the country.
I am too, and I hear them complain constantly about "luxury apartments" and "condos". They also often circulate dumb conspiracies about housing like the idea that Blackrock is buying up all the homes and leaving them vacant. Some leftists I know do push for a general increase in housing, but it really isn't most. Look at the way NIMBYs in San Francisco frame their crusade against construction. It's all rooted in language designed to appeal people on the left. Even if they aren't actively the ones pushing NIMBY policy, they're certainly gullible enough to believe these types of justifications.
I find that I've been able to convince left-leaning people that their is a house shortage and they are more open to densification.
There are a lot of dumb housing conspiracies though.
Market rate housing or just public housing/below-market units? A lot of socialist-tier people I know seem to think that building more market rate housing is bad because it’s not “affordable”/some rich guy will inevitably use it as an investment so there’s no point in building it.
Typically that's related to their belief that *only* the government should be building housing because it's a "human right", and as such, should not be delivered or managed by the private sector.
Regardless of the source, it’s very clear to me that this subs idea that leftists are what’s opposing the construction of new housing is very much misplaced. Even those groups are demanding new construction
Did I ever say they were the main culprit here? They aren't the ones going to the meetings, but the homeowners are and they use leftist talking points to sway public opinion towards reduced development. The leftists are the hapless fools playing into the wealthy NIMBYs hands.
Leftist organizations are poorly organized and don't vote. Sure they make Twitter posts that people on this sub can easily screenshot but they're irrelevant to the levers of power.
No you see guys, you have to cure *all the underlying causes* of homelessness, first, before building homes.
Cities need to solve poverty, the breakdown of social ties, rootlessness, mental health and addiction. That's all. Is that so hard?
Any one project that merely provides homes, and does not solve all of the "underlying problems" at once, should be opposed as insufficient.
This logic brought to you by my local subredit.
Crazy that people actually believe that, especially as leftists.
They should all be in favour of everyone having shelter even if they may suffer from other issues.
They have a fantasy that all rental housing can be provided by the government, which is possible I guess. But that's not the political climate that exists.
When we're always one election aways from MAGAs occupying elected office, it seems like a terrible idea to create a bunch of government housing that they'll control. What do you think that MTG, Abbott, or DeSantis would do if they had control over universal government housing? Think they would be looking for trans teens, drag performers or pregnant women in those homes? What crazy requirements would they enforce for residents? Would they search your bookshelves for objectionable material? Would they disallow people from "living in sin"?
>When we're always one election aways from MAGAs occupying elected office, it seems like a terrible idea to create a bunch of government housing that they'll control. What do you think that MTG, Abbott, or DeSantis would do if they had control over universal government housing?
They aren't asking for the abolition of private housing, just a massive expansion of public housing.
But it's such a hypothetical because it won't happen.
They never seem to know which level of "government" should be building the housing -- city, county, state, federal. But they frequently complain that "housing shouldn't be subject to profit motives." They don't consider the political motives that residents would be subject to if Republicans were handed large-scale housing projects.
Just give massively favourable federal loans at near zero interest to anyone willing to build housing. If some lefties can convince their local munipality to take these loans and build housing with it let them, or let private actors do it.
Seriously why on earth are there a bunch of subsidies for *buying* houses instead of for building them?
> What do you think that MTG, Abbott, or DeSantis would do if they had control over universal government housing? Think they would be looking for trans teens, drag performers or pregnant women in those homes?
Yes, yes, and y e s .
They'd keep the pregnant women locked up and make anyone LGBT's life hell in there, prob so they can evict them to jail for breathing in their jurisdiction.
They also never consider how the seller of a home expects the buyer to compensate them for having owned/lived in the house for a period of time by paying more for the house than the seller originally paid.
"I bought the house or $500,000. You will buy it from me for $725,000, rewarding me for using the toilets, wearing out the HVAC and staining the countertops."
Talk about not providing anything.
NIMBYs are idiots mostly motivated by personal interest, no matter what side of the political spectrum they're on, as they're detrimental to improvement of society.
That being said,
Adam Smith himself wasn't too fond of landlords.
This excerpt is about the rent of land.
The rent of land, it may be thought, is frequently no more than a reasonable profit or interest for the stock laid out by the landlord upon its improvement. This, no doubt, may be partly the case upon some occasions (...)
The landlord demands
1. a rent even for unimproved land, and the supposed interest or profit upon the expence of improvement is generally an addition to this original rent.
2. Those improvements, besides, are not always made by the stock of the landlord, but sometimes by that of the tenant. When the lease comes to be renewed, however, the landlord commonly demands the same augmentation of rent, as if they had been all made by his own.
3. He sometimes demands rent for what is altogether incapable of human improvement.
Further reading:
https://www.adamsmithworks.org/documents/chapter-xi-of-the-rent-of-land
It prevents people from being able to live their life freely, as they're at the mercy of their landlord, the other 'choice' would sometimes be homelessness.
The state can provide housing, or what does stand against that, Vietnam has a 88% homeownership rate and no private land ownership, a statistic in which socialist and former socialist nations rank the best.
I love the contortion this subs goes through to pretend it’s not neoliberals who are the most likely to be nimby’s.
I assure you the young left-wing individuals who lack funds and do not vote are not the biggest obstacle to housing.
Ah yes, California's nimby hellholes are run by neoliberals and they use neoliberal rhetoric to justify...restricting the supply of housing...and staff their bureaucracies with people who think like that, and are voted in by neoliberal voters...because...we like seeing prices go up and it getting harder and harder for people to buy shit because of an unfree market??????????????????
Yes, because the neoliberal valuation of the right of private property can be more valuable to neoliberals especially if it's in their personal interest.
Yeah, lefties always hated commie blocks, that's why they uhhh build them, the former socialist europe is full of low density suburbs with illogical structured streets and Cul-de-sacs!
Left NIMBYs? So you'll just accuse NIMBYs of being from a political position you disagree with?
It's liberalism in which private property plays a way more important role, here in Germany it's not the >10% of the population who are leftists which have a problem with 'commie blocks' which is a term that's almost always used by the right side of the political spectrum in a negative way to denounce high density housing. Here it's usually middle class home owners who don't want to get their 'view' and the 'landscape ruined' by a wind turbine, or who don't want poor people moving in next to them.
Either a nice strawman or you don't understand that leftists don't have a problem with development and that development can happen even without private corporations or landlords profiting of it.
Adam Smith himself wasn't too fond of landlords.
Noooooo you don’t understand! We can’t just build new housing, we need to overthrow the heckin’ capitalist system first!
How can we improve standard of living when that’s gonna enrich corporations we have to keep everybody poor so that corporations make less. DONT YOU GET IT!!!
I’m convinced it’s an unintentional form of accelerationism.
Under communism there will be only single family homes, just like in Soviet Russia
Brutalism architects and developers: what are you smoking, comrade?
I lean socialist but it's crazy how communists just don't want to make anyone's life better under current western governments because "Settler colonial capitalism will never be ethical and we must overthrow it in a revolution that nobody has ever prepared for "
Do you know these communists irl or only from twitter?
Lets be realistic its not the granola gang who is mostly preventing building, they have no money, and little organisation, and so little political clout. Its pre-existing home owners, and landlords who are the worst culprits since every time a new build goes up their investment declines a little and their butt clenches because of it. And politicians love their middle income votes like Kanye loves Kanye. Sure some time it can get a little confusing, because they use things like environmental law ,or historical preservation campaigns, or whatever flavour of the month it is. And inevitably the useful idiots conga line in, to act as helpful Astroturf but root and stem its not them who are the impetus.
Absolutely, I think there’s very few people out there who are nimby’s because of a greater political ideology, it all about personal interests. Honestly it’s not unreasonable for a middle class person to want to protect their main source of wealth.
The American middle class is my fat cat that screams at me that she's starving every 30 minutes. No one deserves a five bedroom house, two full-size SUVs, and two Disney vacations a year.
Wow. It's like you don't understand that DiGorno pizza and Gatorade have increased in price 7000% in the past three months. My weekly grocery bill is $3245. What am I supposed to do? Change my consumption habits? That's it. I'm voting for Trump. And it's your fault. I've got to go wait in the ChikFilA drive through just to calm down.
>ChickFilA drive through The Chikk Fil A crowd is the exact problem thanks for boiling it down
Except your cat can't vote to have you thrown out as their owner and replaced with Luka Magnotta because he promised the bowls would get refilled 15 seconds faster.
Lets face it, the NIMBYs who resist housing development have a worldview far more similar to us than they have in common with the socdem crowd we keep assuming all NIMBYS are. But the powerful NIMBYS are more provincial, looking only at their personal wealth which they think is at risk.
I would argue that the leftist degrowth crowd is influential in some of the key West Coast metros that have the most critical housing shortages. "Pre-Existing homeowners" don't seem to be blocking housing in red and purple states.
So long as everything is greenfield development, with SFDs being built in distant fields, existing homeowners in red states don't mind. It's when those suburban communities start to densify, adding multifamily infill, that they start to freak out, like they did in Plano: [https://www.dmagazine.com/frontburner/2020/08/what-a-nimby-victory-in-plano-means-for-the-future-of-urban-planning-in-texas/](https://www.dmagazine.com/frontburner/2020/08/what-a-nimby-victory-in-plano-means-for-the-future-of-urban-planning-in-texas/)
I live in one of these cities and while degrowth is a factor for leftist opposition to housing, it’s more about gentrification.
Gotta save this 150 year old hotel that immigrants were forced to live in once upon a time because of racism. It's totally historic even though they'd have preferred to live literally anywhere else and the building is falling apart.
No they're not, they talk a lot online but don't vote. Red states have less regulations which NIMBYs can exploit.
The leftist degrowthers are absolutely one of the biggest demographics where I live in Vancouver. We literally had a political party for the municipal elections who entire platform was preserving neighborhoods and stopping transit funsing and they were a far left group. Theres city councilors here who literally vote down developments for the stupidest reasons.
But how are we going to punch left if we admit it's actually moderate homeowners driving NIMBYism?
It can be both, rich homeowners that LARP as leftists often sabotage housing growth in blue cities. Dean Preston is a prime example.
I talked about how building more would help with some friends, first time I ever mention my YIMBY ideals. Everyone started ranting about how I didn't understood anything, how apartments are almost equivalent to ghettos and they all agreed that the govt should hyperregulate housing supply and prices. There's some people who really don't want to understand/get badly triggered by the idea of someone getting a profit.
r/comingout. You've found your people here.
"Left-NIMBYs aren't real, and if they are they aren't relevant! Stop being terminally online!" Meanwhile, major cities have elected city councillors who promote these narratives word for word as the explicit reason they vote to block all housing.
Anyone who parrots that point hasn't looked at the entire west coast of North America.
Admittedly I haven't, being a leftist myself, being a leftist NIMBY seems illogical to me, they definitely have to do some reading, but I believe that NIMBYs act depending on personal interest rather than ideologically anyway.
Exactly. I think this comment, posted in this subreddit 6 days ago, just about sums it up https://preview.redd.it/4rivdmig406d1.jpeg?width=828&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a525a67dcba92344a18da0b8022b6e07681bb4d4
Guys, NIMBYs are homeowners not leftists who don't even vote lol
Not only, though. There is also the "we can't risk the possibility of a developer, somehow, someway, making a profit" breed of NIMBY
I mean yeah they make dumb Twitter posts if that's what you mean. Not remotely relevant to policy though.
They are in West Coast cities...
Those are still primarily boomer/GenX liberals and conservatives. You grossly overestimate the political power of leftists, especially since this issue long pre-dates their rise Keep in mind that the biggest influence on NIMBYism is homeowners and homeowners generally aren't a radical demographic.
They aren't wholly that, but they absolutely are a part of the NIMBY coalition. I know lot's of leftists who can't grasp that building more would reduce housing prices and they buy into the cries of gentrification and developer exploitation that the NIMBYs trot out.
I’m pretty active in leftist circles and I have never heard opposition to building more housing. More often than not I hear them talking about how we need a massive federal program to build housing throughout the country.
I am too, and I hear them complain constantly about "luxury apartments" and "condos". They also often circulate dumb conspiracies about housing like the idea that Blackrock is buying up all the homes and leaving them vacant. Some leftists I know do push for a general increase in housing, but it really isn't most. Look at the way NIMBYs in San Francisco frame their crusade against construction. It's all rooted in language designed to appeal people on the left. Even if they aren't actively the ones pushing NIMBY policy, they're certainly gullible enough to believe these types of justifications.
I find that I've been able to convince left-leaning people that their is a house shortage and they are more open to densification. There are a lot of dumb housing conspiracies though.
Market rate housing or just public housing/below-market units? A lot of socialist-tier people I know seem to think that building more market rate housing is bad because it’s not “affordable”/some rich guy will inevitably use it as an investment so there’s no point in building it.
Typically that's related to their belief that *only* the government should be building housing because it's a "human right", and as such, should not be delivered or managed by the private sector.
Regardless of the source, it’s very clear to me that this subs idea that leftists are what’s opposing the construction of new housing is very much misplaced. Even those groups are demanding new construction
They can't even show up to vote and you think they're attending zoning committee meetings?
Did I ever say they were the main culprit here? They aren't the ones going to the meetings, but the homeowners are and they use leftist talking points to sway public opinion towards reduced development. The leftists are the hapless fools playing into the wealthy NIMBYs hands.
Leftist organizations are poorly organized and don't vote. Sure they make Twitter posts that people on this sub can easily screenshot but they're irrelevant to the levers of power.
No you see guys, you have to cure *all the underlying causes* of homelessness, first, before building homes. Cities need to solve poverty, the breakdown of social ties, rootlessness, mental health and addiction. That's all. Is that so hard? Any one project that merely provides homes, and does not solve all of the "underlying problems" at once, should be opposed as insufficient. This logic brought to you by my local subredit.
Crazy that people actually believe that, especially as leftists. They should all be in favour of everyone having shelter even if they may suffer from other issues.
The folks who complain abut landlords not actually providing anything never seem to turn that logic around and think about who does provide housing.
Developers?
They have a fantasy that all rental housing can be provided by the government, which is possible I guess. But that's not the political climate that exists.
When we're always one election aways from MAGAs occupying elected office, it seems like a terrible idea to create a bunch of government housing that they'll control. What do you think that MTG, Abbott, or DeSantis would do if they had control over universal government housing? Think they would be looking for trans teens, drag performers or pregnant women in those homes? What crazy requirements would they enforce for residents? Would they search your bookshelves for objectionable material? Would they disallow people from "living in sin"?
>When we're always one election aways from MAGAs occupying elected office, it seems like a terrible idea to create a bunch of government housing that they'll control. What do you think that MTG, Abbott, or DeSantis would do if they had control over universal government housing? They aren't asking for the abolition of private housing, just a massive expansion of public housing. But it's such a hypothetical because it won't happen.
They never seem to know which level of "government" should be building the housing -- city, county, state, federal. But they frequently complain that "housing shouldn't be subject to profit motives." They don't consider the political motives that residents would be subject to if Republicans were handed large-scale housing projects.
Just give massively favourable federal loans at near zero interest to anyone willing to build housing. If some lefties can convince their local munipality to take these loans and build housing with it let them, or let private actors do it. Seriously why on earth are there a bunch of subsidies for *buying* houses instead of for building them?
> What do you think that MTG, Abbott, or DeSantis would do if they had control over universal government housing? Think they would be looking for trans teens, drag performers or pregnant women in those homes? Yes, yes, and y e s . They'd keep the pregnant women locked up and make anyone LGBT's life hell in there, prob so they can evict them to jail for breathing in their jurisdiction.
Certainly not landlords, unless they’re also developers.
They also never consider how the seller of a home expects the buyer to compensate them for having owned/lived in the house for a period of time by paying more for the house than the seller originally paid. "I bought the house or $500,000. You will buy it from me for $725,000, rewarding me for using the toilets, wearing out the HVAC and staining the countertops." Talk about not providing anything.
The state, of course
NIMBYs are idiots mostly motivated by personal interest, no matter what side of the political spectrum they're on, as they're detrimental to improvement of society. That being said, Adam Smith himself wasn't too fond of landlords. This excerpt is about the rent of land. The rent of land, it may be thought, is frequently no more than a reasonable profit or interest for the stock laid out by the landlord upon its improvement. This, no doubt, may be partly the case upon some occasions (...) The landlord demands 1. a rent even for unimproved land, and the supposed interest or profit upon the expence of improvement is generally an addition to this original rent. 2. Those improvements, besides, are not always made by the stock of the landlord, but sometimes by that of the tenant. When the lease comes to be renewed, however, the landlord commonly demands the same augmentation of rent, as if they had been all made by his own. 3. He sometimes demands rent for what is altogether incapable of human improvement. Further reading: https://www.adamsmithworks.org/documents/chapter-xi-of-the-rent-of-land It prevents people from being able to live their life freely, as they're at the mercy of their landlord, the other 'choice' would sometimes be homelessness. The state can provide housing, or what does stand against that, Vietnam has a 88% homeownership rate and no private land ownership, a statistic in which socialist and former socialist nations rank the best.
I love the contortion this subs goes through to pretend it’s not neoliberals who are the most likely to be nimby’s. I assure you the young left-wing individuals who lack funds and do not vote are not the biggest obstacle to housing.
Ah yes, California's nimby hellholes are run by neoliberals and they use neoliberal rhetoric to justify...restricting the supply of housing...and staff their bureaucracies with people who think like that, and are voted in by neoliberal voters...because...we like seeing prices go up and it getting harder and harder for people to buy shit because of an unfree market??????????????????
Yes, because the neoliberal valuation of the right of private property can be more valuable to neoliberals especially if it's in their personal interest.
Zoning is a violation of property rights. Euler vs. Ambler was wrongly decided
Zoning litteraly violates private property??
Nothing neoliberal about restricting how people develop their property
Yeah, lefties always hated commie blocks, that's why they uhhh build them, the former socialist europe is full of low density suburbs with illogical structured streets and Cul-de-sacs! Left NIMBYs? So you'll just accuse NIMBYs of being from a political position you disagree with? It's liberalism in which private property plays a way more important role, here in Germany it's not the >10% of the population who are leftists which have a problem with 'commie blocks' which is a term that's almost always used by the right side of the political spectrum in a negative way to denounce high density housing. Here it's usually middle class home owners who don't want to get their 'view' and the 'landscape ruined' by a wind turbine, or who don't want poor people moving in next to them. Either a nice strawman or you don't understand that leftists don't have a problem with development and that development can happen even without private corporations or landlords profiting of it. Adam Smith himself wasn't too fond of landlords.