Posted by toomuchtodo 10 hours ago
Why? Should be outed
30 minutes drive in no traffic, crossing half a dozen cities and the 405. There's reasons to inveigh against the YIMBYs (why are they celebrating densifying a coastal area that's actively falling into the pacific[1], nevermind it's inherent beauty) but let's not deny geography.
Also RPV doesn't have 1-5 acre lots, it just costs ~$4m for an house on a normal lot, rising to ~$20m as you get to the coast. You might be thin thinking of Rolling Hills, to the extent you're thinking of anything on the peninsula at all?
Let the free market decide whether it wants the homes or not.
If he tries to incorprate as "Yimby Law" he may hit a roadblock in some areas. Secretaries of State regulate business entity names and often bar or scrutinize words that imply a regulated profession (e.g., “bank,” “trust,” sometimes “law”) if you are not licensed or not forming the appropriate kind of professional corporation.
However he's free to send a letter, just not incorporate a business called "Yimby Law". He should change it to "Yimby Citizens Group" or "Yimby Institute" or something.
Lawyers don't own law. The law belongs to the public. So says this active attorney member of the State Bar of California, and I'll stand on any law firm's conference table in my boots and say that.
In that sense, it makes little sense to approve large amounts of office space without considering the housing capacity needed to support it. If the jobs-to-housing ratio grows too high, the costs are pushed onto workers and surrounding areas rather than being addressed directly.
This problem is compounded by limited public transit and inadequate road infrastructure. Framing the issue solely as NIMBY opposition misses the structural imbalance at the core of the problem.
Instead of treating symptoms or assigning blame, governments should focus on correcting the underlying mismatch between employment growth and housing supply.
The situation is more complex. The forces about housing right now are incredibly destructive. Rich people want to make more money by building expensive homes. In this case NIMBY is the correct solution. In other cases Rich People want to prevent affordable housing. In this case YIMBY is the correct solution. But blindly applying these terms provides a cover for a complicated situation. We have cults of personality, and now we have cults of Jargonism. Neither helps us.
Being outraged because lawyers don't want you to speak is great. The issues legal and housing issues are far more complex and important.
Rich people want to make more money by blocking homes from being built, thereby driving up their property values and making all housing in the area more expensive.
You present a very simplistic view that does not begin to capture the complexity of what's actually happening in practice:
> Rich people want to make more money by building expensive homes. In this case NIMBY is the correct solution.
Why would NIMBYism ever be the answer here? What values does it represent? Allowing rich people to build housing for rich people means that the rich in need of housing don't take away more affordable housing. And when rich people are forced to pay for more affordable hosuing, what used to be affordable becomes unaffordable.
Ensuring that rich people's money goes to new building that doesn't hurt less rich people is the correct solution, if one values keeping housing affordable. One should only block that rich housing if one wants the existing housing to become more expensive.
there's no such right, never been. Just because one has a right to speak, doesn't make it an obligation for others to listen
The nationalization of every policy on earth needs to stop.
They just want everyone to build what they want in their own backyard.
NIMBYs might more accurately be called NIYBYs.
Rancho Palos Verdes should not be required to comply with the request of some random activist who probably has never even stepped foot in the town.
Rancho Palos Verdes should comply with the law, or face the consequences of not being able continue that control of their land management.
A great value of democracy is that a "random activist" can petition the government to enforce the law, that's how we keep the whole thing in check. The idea that random activists could not be a check on illegal behavior of the government is a very, well, authoritarian idea that is not compatible with any of the values embodied in the US or California constitutions, our legal system, or the very character and culture of the US.
Yes, and my point is that continued trend of state and national laws overriding local jurisdiction over things like land use is not a positive one for residents of desirable areas (and arguably any land owner) and not something I agree with philosophically, not the litany of things you decided to rail about that have nothing to do with my comment.
If a city was allowing racial discrimination and no one within the city sued, would that make it ok?
Let’s remember, CA is in a housing CRISIS. I feel an immediate urgency to build as many houses as possible in this state so that my young children can feasibly afford to live here without being an AI engineer when they are adults
Your young children have no right to live in any specific location, and your usage of CRISIS to describe a lack of access to highly desirable housing is not compelling.
Strawman. I have a right to influence housing policy with my vote, which I’ve done and I’m pleased with the outcome.
Now, you nor any commenter nor any city official have the right to resist implementing this law, and the arguments against are not compelling.
Nobody is gonna go through the "everything else" approval process that strip clubs and heavy industry have to go through just to expand their business parking or do $10k of environmental impact assessment to drop off a $1k garden shed. (literal examples from my town).
These evil people can't make things illegal outright so they make the process so expensive almost nobody can do it and it takes decades for someone to come along with a lucrative enough development that's worth expensively challenging it inn court over.
You can accuse them of being hypocrites if they don't also support more housing in region Y but that's a pretty big if you have to prove there.
But you can't say their interests are invalid.
Or higher prices in Y, because X will be both more crowded and with on average poorer people than before the supply increase, and people who prefer a less crowded area and less poor people (either directly because they are poor, or because of other demographic traits that correlate with wealth in the broader society, like race in the USA) around them will have an even higher relative preference for living in Y than before.
> The interests of people from region Y are valid.
They exist, validity is...at best, not a case you have made. Existence of a material interest does not imply validitym
As an extreme example, I can say that hurricane victims have an interest in butterfly wing flaps across the world because there is some indirect causation.
Housing expansion advocates consistently describe the simplest of supply-demand mechanisms, whereas housing demand is heavily driven by local and national economic conditions as well. Gary IN doesn't have a housing shortage.
And my point is that there are limits on the impact region X has on region Y based on their proximity. Should someone in downtown LA be able to compel someone in Palo Alto to upzone based on this "impact"? What about someone in Kansas or Florida?
Putting that aside, no one is forcing region Y to upzone or not upzone in this scenario. They can make the choice they prefer, just like region X.
2. I take it you're done discussing the theoretical merits of this law?
Edit to be more explicit: are the people that sent/asked to send the 2 letters to the City Council residents of Rancho Palos Verdes?
NIMBY seeks to prevent the development of nearby properties to preserve some sort of “neighborhood character,” so the “back yard” is actually the whole neighborhood (and I think part of the negative connotation of that phrase is that they are treating shared spaces like their own personal yard). Then, YIMBY seeks to allow their neighborhoods to be developed.
If we’re going to extend it to “YIYBY” and “NIYBY,” we should apply the same logic, right?
Rather, I think YIYBY mostly doesn’t make sense because YIMBY people are trying to convince people that they should allow development in their neighborhood. Zoning rules… I mean, they have difference policies for changing them, but YIMBY activists aren’t usually manually and unilaterally changing them for other people.
Ultimately the decision making process is probably (depending on local regulation of course) “yes or no in our back yards,” when you get down to the details.
How does that work exactly?
I've never thought of the B in NIMBY as literally meaning backyard - it figuratively means "near enough to effect me" but people still want it within reach - so the ultimate NIMBY dream would likely be to live in an island of placid suburbia surround by a ring of vital services that are just far away enough that you don't need to see them every day.
(There's also, I think, a separate environmental NIMBYism but that's a really strange concept and usually more of a deliberate misinterpretation by people with an agenda to push - I'm more concerned with city service NIMBYism around public transit, food availability, hospitals, etc...)
The state wants your community to turn it into apartments, but obviously the community is icey about it.
Then activists from another city dozens of miles away, who have never cared for your town or really been to it, show up at Town Hall meetings and are scheduling meetings with town councilors to push for building the apartments.
Those out of town people jumping into your community to dictate change are the YIYBY people.
If the apartments are built, they'll put another feather in their cap while walking around the forest near their home.
It's more common for forests to be cut down because dense housing is illegal, so cities have to keep expanding outwards.
Who owns the forest and why do you think you get to say if people build on it or not?
If someone already owns the forest, then they should get to build on their land.
They are "forcing" in the same way billionaires "force" politicians to lower taxes on them.
I think the term you meant to use is "lobbying", which is in fact what these YIYBY groups would be doing. They are lobbying a random town that they are no part of to cut down their forest and build apartments.
Lobbying can’t force the town to sell the forest.
People who live in the community don't want unaffiliated outsiders lobbying their town leaders. Those people doing the lobbying would be "Yes In Your Backyard" people. They would be this because it is not their backyard they are lobbying for, but yours.
I cannot be more straightforward in explaining the term YIYBY than that, heh
If the voters did their job and elected good representatives, who respect the interest of the voters, then they have nothing to worry about: the forest will not be sold.
Voters could also try to establish a referendum system where public lands cannot be sold without a local vote, assuming this is not in conflict with state law.
Edit: The point I am trying to make:
- You said that the town owns the forest in your example. I presented points to explain why this is not an issue, as lobbyists cannot force the sale of public land.
- I wanted to clarify that YIMBYs cannot force property owners to build against their will, except in limited circumstances (eminent domain) that usually requires assent from local government.
- To be clear, I think that individual property rights should be respected. I can build on my land, I can’t force you to build (or not build) on your land unless you are voluntarily bound by some covenant.
For some reason you are trying to argue with me about the merits of YIYBY, when I never took a stance on it, just explained what it is and why people don't like it.
>> Who owns the forest and why do you think you get to say if people build on it or not?
You:
> The town, a democratic institution for which you are a tax paying constituent, owns the forest.
That’s what I was arguing about, primarily. The other points emerged after you deviated from that point further down.
I never said anything about outsiders forcing anything. They simply lobby and people get mad about it, those lobbyists are "YIYBY". Its the origin of a term.
You built a strawman about forcing a town to do something, and are really intent on attacking that strawman. But you built it, I never said anything to that effect. Of course they cannot force the town to do anything and of course the lobbyiest have first amendment rights. Never said anything to the contrary.
EDIT: Our convo is now rate limited, but I'm glad you live in a place where politicians work for voters and ignore lobbyists. Treasure it, most are not that lucky.
You are the one who said the town owns the land. If they own the land, it looks like the voters are safe—nothing should happen.
You are the one who built the strawman by inventing a public forest under threat from lobbyists. I was just showing that this strawman was an illusion.
I believe that NIMBYs often try to do a motte and bailey argument where they make it seem like someone is literally going to force property owners to build something, when in reality they are trying to prevent property owners from using their property as they want. That really gets my goat, because it’s dishonest.
* But muh republic -- spare me, the zoning fiasco shows the current constitutional limits on democracy doesn't stop it.
Which costs? Driving 30 miles in heavy traffic because density is not allowed close to you? Paying excessive taxes because of huge oceans of SFHs? Having to own a car because public transportation doesn't work in low density?
There is no free lunch, only which costs you're going to pay.
NIMBYism has always been about nosy people obstructing progress.
Literal NIMBY-ism, where the backyard is one's own property, is just straightforward property rights. They want to control other people's property and tell them what they can and can't do with it. That's basically communism.
The key problem of US housing is that a house is seen as an investment vehicle, which should appreciate, or at least appreciate no slower than inflation. Keeping prices high and rising can't but go hand in hand with keeping supply scarce.
Is this regularly true? IME, in Northern VA, land values have always increased with infill development. Thinking specifically of Arlington in the Courthouse/Ballston/Clarendon strip in the 90s and 00s. And now Reston.
Traffic and noise concerns might be legitimate, but I'm not buying the loss of value argument.