https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8N8Lbme/

NYC is short 500,00 homes they say. Yet somehow leaders think the bleeding is cut by agreeing to 80,000 homes? Thats not even a quarter of 500,000 homes

I was wondering if anyone has calculated the number of housing units that need to be built to adequately satisfy the housing needs of a city/region.

For a myriad of reasons, YIMBYism in big blue cities seems critical for the national Democratic party. Yet I don’t see any cities that seem ready to change.

Are there any cities emerging path to change?

Genuinely asking. I’m all for building more housing, but isn’t income restricted housing as harmful as rent control? You’re locking some folks in at a great price but what about the next folks? What happens if you get a raise?

I see the difference that you’re still building so that’s positive, but naively it seems that to fix housing you should just build more…period?

I could even see the argument that building “luxury housing” could be helpful in that it would devalue the older, existing inventory in an area.

Am I just totally wrong here? Asking to learn more.

Was at a heated city council meeting where there was public comment about a solid upzoning plan. I went to speak but were were no joke out numbered 40-5 or so. Nearly all of them in the boomer age. Most were relatively respectful but I got called a developer shill and another YIMBY was called a liar to her face.

The old keep complaining about lack of transparency but this plan has been in discussion for years. It's no one's fault but your own that the only reason you heard about it was because of a misinformation flyer created by our local arch-nimby.

Venting aside I'm finding it increasingly difficult to not hate elderly people. I'm tired of subsidizing their livelihoods through my SSI taxes while they work to screw everyone else over. How do y'all find a way to temper that?

Hi, I was wondering what are all the things a cottage court should have. I am new to the idea and very curious. I am a land developer, so I am looking for real ideas. Thanks.

There's a new act to be debated in the house named the Yes In My Back Yard Act, contact your representative immediately to try and get bipartisan support for the bill. It addresses some extremely important issues including zoning, housing, and funding for new housing projects.

YIMBY Act of 2023

Locally, we just started a regional YIMBY chapter. We’ve had one meeting in my city thus far, and I felt confused about the chapter’s overall mission. My understanding of YIMBY is that it promotes and advocates for primarily infill development, whether it be removing parking mandates, updating development requirements to allow for middle-housing, etc. Basically anything to increase density and reduce urban/suburban sprawl. This topic has been a big issue for my city, and it’s been a heated discussion point amongst city council members. My city can’t afford sprawl, as we can barely afford our existing footprint, and we’re fairly geographically limited by watersheds and natural preserves. However, the local chapter (at least those at our meeting) were primarily all developers. And our city council majority (4:3) keeps approving these projects and annexing roads out in the boonies because we have a housing crisis. Two of those 4 council members attended our one YIMBY meeting and spoke out about needing to increase development, but didn’t specify infill or sprawl. I understand that it’s a very complicated issue, and I don’t claim to know all the answers, but I want to better understand what it means to support YIMBY and whether my chapter is doing this correctly.

TL;DR: Does YIMBY advocate for sprawl?

"common story in Massachusetts, which has one of the nation’s highest levels of net domestic outmigration — more people moving out of the state than into it."

"The Globe interviewed more than 30 people who have left Greater Boston and relocated across the country since the pandemic. As they moved into houses they never could have afforded in Massachusetts or basked in year-round balmy climates, this diaspora is also acutely aware of what they’ve left behind: Top-rated health care. Walkable neighborhoods and robust — if maddening — public transit. Green space and cultural hotspots. Progressive politics. Their lists go on." They moved out of Massachusetts. This is what they miss the most.

With not enough housing in Boston, prices have sky-rocketed.

California has a serious housing problem, a lot of homeless, incredibly expensive cost of living, all the while having some of the highest income taxes in the USA.

How is this even possible?

And why is it so difficult to get approved for building new housing?

I could be wrong, but California is super, super pro-property. There is a direct, obvious transfer of wealth from the "working class," (and I mean everyone who rents and works) to landowners. It's actually stunning to see.

California has low property taxes, but they're only the 19th lowest in the USA.

Prop 13 is the real killer deal here. Property owners get subsidized to own property. There is no longer a downside to owning an incredibly expensive property, so property prices are bound to rise astronomically.

What this implies is that, as time passes, workers subsidize more and more of the state's income relative to property owners, who stand to benefit the most from tax dollar expenditure.

The idea that building more housing will solve this issue seems like an extremely effective political red herring. If you want to build more housing, you need to make owning a single-family luxury house with an expansive yard 5 minutes from the central business district as expensive as it should be.

It makes no sense to keep fighting this uphill battle, if people want to protect their property value and don't want a new high rise in their proverbial backyard, they need to pay their fair share. The end goal is a land value tax, but neither California nor the USA seems ready for that.

TL;DR: If you want to build more housing, make owning extremely inefficient low-density housing in highly-in-demand areas as expensive as it should be. Land value tax is the fairest tax, property tax is the second best, income tax is among the least fair, if not the worst tax. "Building more housing" is often used as a red herring to distract from the root cause behind the difficulty to have permits approved.

I could of course be wrong in this entire post, but I just got pissed off reading about California, so I thought I'd vent here and ask you folks for thoughts. I'm pretty new to the yimby movement, and I don't even live in California, but I absolutely loved it when I was there, so I want it to become as great as it can be.