#NIMBY

[typhlonectes]

[avalonishere]

La prototipa 😁 piddina,basta toccarli sul loro

[racefortheironthrone]

I'm a big fan of building commie blocks to ameliorate the US housing crisis -- and putting them in the public parks that were stolen from other communities to give colonisers some trees to look at -- but what policies should be enacted to get suburbanites into beautiful and efficient bedspace apartments with kitchens and washrooms shared by a floor?

As a good social democrat, I'm contractually obligated to prefer Red Vienna to your proper commie block. Short of a complete class revolution that completely upends the social hierarchy, a significant part of ensuring that social housing pulls off being "a living tapestry of a mixed community" is building it to middle-class standards (including aesthetic standards) so that people with the money to find alternatives don't all leave. Art Deco is a hell of a lot chic-er than the boring minimalist crap that luxury developers are getting away with these days.

Also, don't build them in parks: green space is not only important for environmental sustainability but also the health and mental health of working-class and poor communities who can't afford houses in the suburbs, and we should be encouraging in-fill development instead. (Build them on golf courses instead, because they are classist, invasive, artificial monocultures that do nothing for the environment.)

In terms of how to make suburbia more in synch with dense, sustainable social housing, there are a number of necessary changes:

Commuter rail: suburbs predate the car by a fair few decades, and originally sprung up along the routes of commuter rail lines. Well, it turns out that transit-oriented development and dense transit corridors go hand-in-hand: if you can build higher-density units near transit lines, people will use mass transit to commute, and if there are well-planned areas of higher density around major urban areas, the increased number of commuters can support more regular transit services.

Planning/zoning/ligitation revolution: as I mentioned in my student housing post, one of the major reasons why it's so hard to build affordable housing projects is that local NIMBY groups use every legal tool in the book to bury them. So there needs to be pretty comprehensive reforms of zoning regulations (banning single-family zoning, reducing set-backs and eliminating mandatory parking, getting rid of "unrelated persons" limitations, getting rid of building heights limits, etc.), standardization of the permitting and development approval process, streamlining of the public comment/hearing process and environmental review process for model projects, and extreme limits on litigation for model projects.

Financing reform: as I sort of imply in my Red Vienna section above, a big part of making social housing/public housing successful and avoiding replicating or increasing class and racial segregation is adhering to middle-class minimum standards. This has important knock-on implications:

you need to eliminate requirements for absolute lowest possible land costs (which restrict social housing to economically and socially isolated areas).

you need to raise allowable construction costs, so that you can achieve those aesthetic standards and avoid corner-cutting like smaller rooms and lower ceilings, single-thickness walls/floors/ceilings, no doors on cabinets or closets, cheap cladding and wiring and pipes and other building materials, low-quality insulation and HVAC, etc. Not only do middle-class folks notice this stuff and go elsewhere, but it's all penny-wise and pound-foolish, because cheap construction runs down faster which increases maintenance costs, and sometimes it just straight-up kills people.

you need to adequately finance maintenance, services, and amenities. This is crucial to keeping tenants with deeper pockets, but it's also another one of those things where penny-pinching is counter-productive in the long-run. The more you save on maintenance costs, the faster the buildings run down and the more expensive repairs you have to make. The more you save on services like superintendants and doormen, the more your tenants end up having to spend on handymen and the more you have to spend on police and repair costs. And so forth.

And there is a real potential here for all kinds of positive feedback loops: spending money on achieving higher standards of construction and operation means that you can hang onto and attract higher-income tenants, which means you can have sliding scale rents that cross-subsidize tenants and pay for higher construction and operating costs, and the poor and working class tenants who couldn't have paid for those higher costs and amenities on their own enjoy a "positive externality" for once.

[solar-sunnyside-up]

There are cruel and unjust things in this world but I will not allow them in my home.

By Home I mean everything btw, I mean my house I mean my workplace, my community, my neighborhood. If I see an act of cruelty anywhere near me, Im going to end it right where it was done.

[grits-galraisedinthesouth]

The Stench is REAL: Rotten Eggs + Reeking Weed Factory+ Bad Pipes = "It smells. Bad. VERY bad. VERY VERY bad."

The irony of bridezlla Rachel MEgain Markle kicking up a fuss over a one (1) hour "spectacle" inside the Queen’s "musty" chapel, only to acquire a 1st homebuyer loan for an odorous property.

"It smells like offal that has been rotting in the sun. It makes my stomach churn," a local from the Montecito area reportedly told The Mirror. "I’ve seen lots of homeowners closing their windows when it wafts over."

"According to the New York Post, the smell is wafting over from a nearby bird refuge (which is situated on a 42-acre stretch of saltwater marsh). Specifically, the refuge is the Andrée Clark Bird Refuge, which happens to be one of the largest wildlife refuges in the U.S. Cameron Benson, the City of Santa Barbara's clean water manager, told the Mirror that stagnant water can contribute to the smell, and that the “odor issues are sporadic and sometimes they are worse in some conditions."

"Last year, it was reported the Duke and Duchess of Sussex live just minutes from a legal weed factory base in Santa Barbara, California. 

The couple's mansion is just up the road from the 20 large greenhouses full of the plants - leaving the luxury suburb reeking. 

Neighbours made a string of complaints, sparking the company to install new “odour control systems”.

The Meghans, Dorito & Markus can get high just by standing outdoors as "...one resident complained that the stench was so bad that they had to pull over while driving along the road."

Imagine taking out a $14.65 million dollar loan on your VERY first home: a 9 bedroom, 16 bathroom mansion and you are CanNOT use your property for business purposes. No Spotify podcasts, NO staged Megflix/Netflix zoom calls, NO staged juggling acts outside the windows, NO book interviews, NO staged instant messages from Beyonce, NO Easter egg hunts, NO cooking shows, NO Variety photo shoots---- only 1 chicken coop interview with NOprah.

The 14,500sq ft, or 1,350sq m, main house sits on 7.4ac of grounds that include a pool, tennis court, tea house and children's cottage.

Money Pit : "The pair have paid a lot less for the property than a previous owner: in May 2009 it sold for more than $25 million. It was put on the market in 2015 for $34.5 million but failed to sell. It was relisted at the start of this year for $16.975 million, selling to the Sussexes for $2.325 million less than the asking price at $14.65 million."

From asks @the-cat-with-the-emerald-tiara-1 Royal Organic Weed "Harry's Choice"

Poll Error: The 4th answer "Money Pit of Montecito"

[porterdavis]

Poverty is a policy choice

The Atlantic has an unflinching look at how the US is such a bad actor when it comes to poverty, especially child poverty, compared to the rest of the developed world. President Biden's Extended Child Tax Credit passed in his first year in office lifted 40% of the families living in poverty out of poverty, a stunning result achieved at a relatively small cost. The Republicans killed it.

There are tremendous knock-on benefits to lifting people out of poverty - healthcare costs go down, crime goes down, tax bases are widened, welfare rolls are reduced, productivity goes up. All these are well known. So why does America fall so short? Here are a few points from the article to consider:

Housing is typically the largest expense for a household. “Municipal zoning ordinances, enacted through referenda pushed by citizens’ groups and homeowners’ associations, and which prohibit the construction of multifamily apartment complexes in upscale neighborhoods, is a case in point. These benign-sounding rules foster segregation, effectively preventing the poor ... from moving in. Such policies are one of the few issues that Americans in red and blue states seem to agree on."

So yes, the NIMBY effect of the 'rich' forces the poor to live out of sight, unable to benefit from the schools, parks, and appreciation in property values enjoyed by the wealthy.

The financial structure favours the wealthy in a variety of ways. "When the wealthy patronize shops and restaurants that offer low prices and fast service, their satisfaction comes at the expense of cashiers and dishwashers paid poverty wages. When we open free checking accounts that require maintaining a minimum balance, we benefit from the fact that banks can collect billions of dollars in overdraft fees from poor customers who struggle to meet these requirements—and who often end up gouged by check-cashing outlets and payday lenders."

The notion that the government subsidizes the poor while taxing the rich does not take into consideration the massive tax benefits homeowners have with the mortgage interest deduction and state and local tax write-offs. Indeed, "the average household in the top 20 percent income bracket receives $35,363 in annual tax breaks and other government benefits—40 percent more than the average household in the bottom 20 percent."

"What is “maddening,” Desmond writes, is “how utterly easy it is to find enough money to defeat poverty by closing nonsensical tax loopholes,” or by doing 20 or 30 smaller things to curtail just some of the subsidies of affluence."

His bleak conclusion:

"Getting affluent people to engage in rhetorical hand-wringing over inequality is easy enough. Persuading them to yield some of their entitlements is a lot harder."

[arcticdementor]

A couple of points of note…

…from rewatching a bunch of old 80s movies:

While the "evil developer" has been a regular Hollywood villain since the 30s and 40s, it really seemed to have peaked in the 80s.

Given various factors, I'm surprised it hasn't seen a resurgence (though this gets to that "modern villain" vs. "postmodern villain" distinction).

[coulsonlives]

Uytae Lee is on FIRE 🔥 🔥

[dethretina]

Surf n' Turf

Not at my BREAK , no WAVES for you! We have limited waves and you need GO HOME! THIS IS OUR SURF n' TURF!

[floralisolation]

is the neighborhood “sketchy” or are you just not used to seeing what little to no public infrastructure looks like?

Is the neighborhood “ghetto” or have you never lived in a community that’s government has failed them?

Is the neighborhood the “rough part of town” or have you never lived below or on the poverty line?

Are you scared to walk alone at night because you’ve actually been harassed or attacked in this neighborhood, or is it just dark and quiet?

Does that person look “suspicious” or are they just existing in public space in a way you don’t like?

anyways. tired of white people from the “nice neighborhoods” (read; caucasian suburbs) who don’t talk to their neighbors and scare their kids into thinking they’ll get murdered in the city.

[realcleverissues]

Two crazy data points:

The number of renters classified as "rent burdened" jumped 25% compared to 20 years ago. (Biggest jump is in people earning $45k-$75k, of whom only 21% were rent burdened 20 years ago, and now 41% are.)

The number of rentals under $1000 fell by around 20%~, while the number renting for over $1000 have basically doubled.

In short: Not enough homes -> Massive home price inflation

This has long hurt lower income earners, but some may have justified it as a reflection of being a low income earner (which is true, but doesn't solve the social problem and is also not the whole story). Now we see data showing clearly even upper-middle-income earners struggling as well. The housing crisis is real.

The housing crisis has lots of detrimental effects, such as home price inflation, which leads to general inflation, which also leads to homelessness, poverty, crime, and more. Just as complex as the outcomes are the causes, but certainly one of the biggest is single-family-zoning which forbids construction in *most* residential areas of not just giant apartment buildings, but even modest 3 story or duplex homes which are needed to alleviate the housing crisis.

NIMBYism is ruining society and literally killing people.

[racefortheironthrone]

you're zoning revolution sounds like it would be killed in the dirt by nimby's and homeowners who have no incentive at all to change the way things are. would it be completely necessary to build red vienna say in california for example or are there no loopholes or some such the state can use?

One of the potential pitfalls of political analysis, especially of a kind favored by the left, is assuming that the power of interest groups (especially that of capital owneers) is monolithic and unchanging. In reality, power is usually divided (homeowners do not have the same interests as developers, for example) and variable (it depends on voter turnout, the attitudes of the electorate, changing demographics, and a host of other factors).

Hence why in the last few years, we've seen single-family zoning (to take one example) outright banned in California, Oregon, and Washington - that is a huge L for NIMBYs. It doesn't mean the NIMBYs lost on every single housing reform bill, or that YIMBYs are now the hegemon, but it does show a changing balance of power.

So rather than having to look for loopholes, I think it's worth pushing forwards on a broad front, because I think NIMBYism can be beaten in a straight-up fight.

[nonsense-aesthetics]

NIMBY Mom