NIMBYism has never been about preserving neighborhood characteristic, or noise and traffic concerns. Menlo Park is not Big Sur. Sure, some concerns are reasonable and should be investigated, but most of the time they're bureaucratic distractions that's been weaponized by people who want to delay progress and protect their investment.
For most Americans, A house is their primary savings account, retirement plan, and probably where they keep majority of their wealth. We don't build new housing in old neighborhoods because it would de-value the investment of too many people. Until we can solve this problem (where people are incentivized to pull the ladder up behind them), we will always have housing shortages. It's just too profitable.
Anecdotally, what we found in Austin was a combination of two factors:
First, awareness of the futility and selfishness of "growth elsewhere" as a solution is much higher in younger people — and by younger, I mean currently under fifty. Generational turnover in Austin had been eating away at the NIMBY majority, and conversations about housing in Austin have long been polarized more by age than by left/right political sentiment. There's a caricature, with a strong vein of truth, of the old Austin leftist who has Mao's little red book on their shelves and thinks apartment buildings are an abomination, and Austinites of that generation are experiencing mortality. At the same time, younger people are adopting more and more urbanist mindsets compared to their parents.
However, I think a much much bigger factor was the influx of younger people, especially young people with experience of larger cities, diluting the votes of the older NIMBYs. Austin has been shaped by growth for half a century, but its "discovery" in the 2000s and very brief status as a darling of coastal hipsters (remember that term?) has had a lasting effect on Austin's popularity and its demographics. It's been twenty years since it was the "it" place for Brooklynites to visit, but in that twenty years, it's had a lot of exposure for young urban dwellers, and some of them discovered they liked it and moved here, bringing their comfort with dense living and their appreciation that growth can bring a lot of positives.
Personally, every homeowner I know in Austin has seen their houses depreciate significantly this decade, and I don't think it changed a single person's mind about Austin's housing policy. People who opposed the reforms are bitter about the outcome, and people who supported the reforms say it sucks for us personally, but it's what we set out to accomplish, and we're glad that it worked.
People see lower property taxes as a silver lining for short-term swings in the market, but I don't know anybody who thinks this is a short-term swing that they can ride out.
Nobody is happy about their property values going down long term. It exposes them to the risk of a big loss if they're forced to sell because of events in their life.
> Austinites of that generation are experiencing mortality.
This is such a funny and novel way of saying "old people in Austin are dying" I just had to point it out.
Also, I like the way this comment is written in general. Felt easy to read for its length, and most importantly the tone stayed fun and personal while still being informative and on topic.
> For most Americans, A house is their primary savings account, retirement plan, and probably where they keep majority of their wealth.
If you allow for increases in density, that house (actually the land beneath it, but still.) becomes more valuable as it's redeveloped. So that American homeowner does benefit, by unlocking the upside of "evil gentrification" (or actually, density increase).
That can only happen if the higher density coincides with equal economic growth in the neighborhood. Otherwise, the higher density could result in a negative home valuation trend.
Given the above uncertainty, and higher density could result in more traffic, noise, crime, nymbys are likely taking the correction position for wealth preservation and quality of life.
"Traffic" doesn't come from higher density, it comes from zoning bans on mixed-use neighborhoods which force people to drive everywhere. The "crime" argument is especially silly: why assume that higher density only ever attracts criminals? Usually, having more people around is a positive.
You can assume higher density has "more crime" because the increase in people means if you want to keep the same absolute rate of crimes (which is the only thing people ever notice--every violent or sexual crime will be repeated in the news), you have to correspondingly increase the efficiency of crime-fighting, and American police aren't up to the task, even if they were motivated to do so.
A paper came out about this recently: The City as an Anti-
Growth Machine.
> Logan and Molotch's “urban growth machine” remains foundational in urban theory, describing how coalitions of landowners, developers, and politicians promote urban growth to raise land values. This paper argues that under financialized capitalism, the dynamics have inverted: asset appreciation now outweighs productive investment, and urban land is increasingly treated as a speculative asset.
I'm not sure why new housing devalues old housing. In my mind, higher density generally makes an area more desirable (e.g. because higher density enables more jobs, better infrastructure) and raises the value. Imagine as an extreme example and existing house in the middle of nowhere around which a metropolis is developed. Surely the value of the house, or at least the land it is built on, goes up, even though it loses its "cabin in the woods" appeal.
You think if there were modern highrises in Menlo Park a tiny 2BR shack next door would still sell for $2M? It’s a supply and demand issue, nothing more.
What is your mental model for this then? If the "2BR shack" can be built from scratch for 300k, and the value for the lot + shack is $3M, then the land value is $2.7M. Most expensive real estate is land value, not actual structure value.
I see what you're saying, my point is that the principle thing driving it's value isn't the land nor the shack, it's the regulatory framework of the area.
Yes, it would go way, way, way up because if there is a high rise next door someone wants to knock down the shack and put up another high rise, a commercial building, etc.
When regulations are reduced to allow more density, the value of the land goes up because its productivity increases. The land can do more now, e.g. hold 10 apartments vs 1 house. The same land generates more rent so developers are willing to pay more for that land.
Meanwhile, the value of housing units goes down due to increased competition among sellers/landlords.
Consider two zoning changes.
1) You are a homeowner and more units are allowed on your parcel, e.g. single-family -> duplex. That increases your land value.
2) You are a homeowner and there is more density around you, but not on your parcel, e.g. apartments are allowed nearby but not on your street. Your land value does not increase. Your home value decreases due to increased competition. (Of course, there may be long term effects like the increased density actually leading to economic windfalls in the area, increasing its desirability, and then increasing your home value.)
it's not that density per se drives down existing costs, but density almost always brings more housing stock to the market (unless they are simultanously tearing down housing elsewhere) and housing stock drives down the cost of housing, which is the point of the original article.
So if we take it as an assumption that density increases housing stock, there is lots of evidence that density drives down prices of existing land/home values.
Density is not going to drive down cost for the same kind of housing. A SFH is not the same as a smaller home on a denser plot, much less an apartment block in a high rise. So the SFH owner who pursues increased density does indeed benefit.
The article only talks about rent, not price of housing, which I think is an important data point.
Homeowners don't want housing prices to fall. Ever. They don't care about rent prices (at least, not directly). But renters care about both — obviously lower rent prices are good, but many want to be able to enter the housing market but it's prohibitively expensive.
Perhaps falling rent prices has a similar effect on home prices — the value of buying a home for the purposes of renting becomes less desirable due to lower rental revenue, so prices fall. Not sure, the macroeconomics of housing never made sense to me because it's never as simple as pure supply and demand.
As an example, my wife and I finally decided to buy a house in a fast-growing CA suburb (not in Bay Area). The house was constructed in 2021 and sold for $611k. Plenty of renovations have been done on the house, we'd estimate around $20k+ worth of renovations, and the neighborhood and surrounding area has only grown since then (more parks, housing, great schools, stores etc).
The house was listed for sale at $600k; even then we were able to underbid and get our offer accepted. Inspections turned out clean, just minor cosmetic issues.
I don't keep an eye on the rental market but we've lived at two different rental properties and both of those places went up in rent once each, so I can only assume that rent is going up everywhere in this area.
Point is, rent and real estate don't always go in lock step.
I think there are a big range of opinions people have. There are some hardcore housing resisters whose opinions get a lot of sway because of the way processes work (public consultations, activism, etc). Lots of people are a bit sceptical because of pretty legitimate reasons – noise, traffic, disruption, aesthetics.
I think there probably are balances where people could generally be happier with new construction and that opinion could be clear enough to overrule those who would never be happy with it. Things like:
- ways of having locals vote on new development with small enough constituencies that they can be paid off (ie some of the gains that would have gone to developers or other positive externalities can be captured by those who are more effected) with lower taxes or new roads or parks or whatever
- making residents vote instead of having consultations will lead to less bias in favour of the most obnoxious
- allowing apartment blocks to vote to accept offers of redevelopment (eg you get a newer apartment; more apartments are added to the block and sold to fund the redevelopment)
- having architectural standards that locals are happy with for new buildings
- allow streets to vote to upzone themselves (I don’t love this as it’s basically prisoners dilemma – if your street does it, land value increases and you gain; if every street does it land value only increases a bit but now you are upzoned)
I basically think that there are developments that can be broadly appealing and we are in a bad local minimum in lots of places of having bigger governments trying to push development on unwilling smaller governments/groups
Fundamentally as a society we need to stop treating housing as an investment. It is and should be a utility.
Suring property prices is a relatively new phenomenon (as in, post-WW2). The true origins of NIMBYism, at least in the US, is (you guessed it) racism. Long before segregation ended, and long after, there was economic segregation. Redlining [1], HOAs [2], the post-WW2 GI Bill [3], where highways were built [4][5], etc.
In fact this is a good rule of thumb: if you're ever confused why something is the way it is in the US, your first guess should pretty much always be "because racism".
Case in point: my parents. Built a house in 1988 and they still live there. Two people in 3500 square feet. Four bathrooms and five bedrooms. Meanwhile, you need a family income of 3x the median to rent a townhouse 1/3rd the size nearby.
This is beyond ridiculous and it’s totally unsustainable.
Hate to be the bearer of bad news here, but the boomers will never die. Gen X will become the new boomers, and then the millennials after them. Individual people die, but interests stay the same.
There’s a lot of truth here, but two countervailing points: first younger generations own homes than Boomers at equivalent ages; second Boomers are particularly blind to the effects of zoning and strongly oppose development due to see firsthand the effects of 1950s urban redevelopment. They also love cars.
Us younger generations will have seen firsthand the negative effects of zoning, we do not possess a visceral opposition to development, and there is much greater appreciation of walkable neighborhoods.
> If NIMBYs were primary motivated by making money the prudent thing to do would be to support unrestricted zoning and then develop or sell the lot.
That is highly dependent on what exactly is being built next to your home. Sure, if it's more luxury housing then it'll probably drive the value of your home up. If it's low-income housing then it probably won't. And what we need is more of the latter rather than the former.
> you can take out loans against the value of the equity but this isn’t particularly common.
It's because it's an investment, you're going to get the return once you finally sell your home. Only in a pinch if someone needs a large amount of money to start a business or pay for an emergency will they mortgage their house.
> And what we need is more of the latter rather than the former.
You just need to wait. The luxury housing that gets built today becomes low-income housing as it ages. There's no short-circuiting that process the way the incentives are set up, but you can drive down prices across the board by building more, even more luxury housing.
>For most Americans, A house is their primary savings account
This is true for California, where people (foolishly) rely on their home value as their retirement plan, which further incentivizes NIMBYism.
But in places like Texas (and other areas with affordable housing), the house is just treated as something you pay off to have a low housing cost in retirement. And your investments are your retirement+savings account.
I wasn’t trying to say one was better or not, just different. Californians wrap up a large amount of their retirement savings in their houses though, so keeping those home prices high is important to them and that’s a reason for stalling development.
I think Californians do, a lot of time, retire with a higher net worth. But most of them do that because they’re more relatively house-poor during their lives - they take out larger mortgages, and save more into their net worth.
As opposed to Texans, who have higher disposable income since they have smaller house payments. It’s less incentive to save so they may spend more.
So that’s a partial advantage to California - the expensive homes force a higher savings rate, naturally.
But, at retirement age, a lot of their net worth is tied up in their home. So to unlock a lot of those savings they need to move to a lower cost of living state like Arizona, Nevada, Florida, etc.
While the Texans can just stay in their paid-off house.
So yeah it’s just different.
Texans are just paying off their home throughout their life and staying in it. They have larger disposable income to go towards other stuff (kids, lifestyle) while Californians gotta pay that mortgage
It's not that they're "intuitively better" it's that prior generations of them have passes less insane state and local law and they're not at the tail end of a ~20yr industry boom so "pay down my house and cash out to somewhere cheaper" doesn't make sense as a retirement strategy for as many of them.
For most Americans, A house is their primary savings account, retirement plan, and probably where they keep majority of their wealth. We don't build new housing in old neighborhoods because it would de-value the investment of too many people. Until we can solve this problem (where people are incentivized to pull the ladder up behind them), we will always have housing shortages. It's just too profitable.