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If someone built a gigantic apartment complex next to your house it would mean that the demand for housing in your neighborhood was massive and restricted by zo

If someone built a gigantic apartment complex next to your house it would mean that the demand for housing in your neighborhood was massive and restricted by zoning. Your land value would skyrocket by allowing apartment buildings and you could take a huge pay day and move somewhere farther out from the city. You shouldn't get to halt US GDP growth in its tracks because you want to dictate what your neighbors do with their property.

throwaway984393 5y ago
In practice, people are pushed out of their homes because they can't afford to live in the neighborhood full of high rise apartments anymore, and they then struggle to make a living (much less find another place to live). It's funny that the GDP itself is prized over the people who are supposed to be the beneficiaries of an economy with a high GDP.
- Robotbeat 5y ago
  If such people are homeowners (after all, it is homeowners who are the one complaining about this on zoning boards), they’ll become fantastically wealthy in such a scenario. They have nothing really to complain about except a wealth tax (of course, by limiting property tax increases, California’s prop 13 is like a wealth SUBSIDY).
  - 8note 5y ago
    That's unless the government uses eminent domain to give your home to a developer as "slum clearance" Then, you're turned into a renter against your will, and also, everyone else needs to find new housing at the same time, so even before the new luxury units go up, the rent skyrockets. Poor people with expensive homes can't defend their ownership. That takes paying expensive lawyers
  - pessimizer 5y ago
    > they’ll become fantastically wealthy in such a scenario If they leave immediately, rather than struggling to pay their massively increased property taxes, then mortgaging their house to keep up... > by limiting property tax increases, California’s prop 13 is like a wealth SUBSIDY ...which apparently is a good outcome?
    - Robotbeat 5y ago
      More nominal wealth that reduces actual physical wealth (by slowing the improvement of land via adding denser housing) is not a good outcome. It’s just redistribution of wealth from newcomers or renters to existing homeowners.
- Aunche 5y ago
  >It's funny that the GDP itself is prized over the people who are supposed to be the beneficiaries of an economy with a high GDP. The GDP isn't a magical number that rises by making people suffer. It rises because NIMBYs are unable to force others to struggle by keeping them out of their economically advantageous land.
  - 8note 5y ago
    The economic advantage of that land is that the nimbys are there. Similar land is all over the place
- avianlyric 5y ago
  Out of interest what the mechanism that results in people being priced out of houses they own?
  - 8note 5y ago
    Everything else becoming more expensive, including taxes. Eminent domain is another. Why not worry about renters though? Are they not people?
    - avianlyric 5y ago
      I’m just asking about the mechanisms that force people out of their homes in US. Nothing more. Here in the U.K. taxes etc don’t increase with property value, and eminent domain isn’t frequently used. So I lack the context to understand why increasing property values mean people are forced to leave, especially when I look around London and see thousands of people who bought their council homes 50 years ago, and are now living in properties that are worth many orders of magnitude more than what they bought them for. Notably, none of them have been forced out. As for renters, well the mechanism is obvious, I don’t need someone to explain that to me.
- spothedog1 5y ago
  If the demand exists to build high rises then those people would already be pushed out at an ever faster rate. If you take a plot of land that previously had 4 units on it and turn it into a high rise with 100 units, then you can fit 96 higher income people onto that plot of land. In the scenario where you don't build that high rise, those 96 higher income people simply go into the existing housing stock and push those people out anyway. You can think of a high rise as a sponge soaking up demand. In our hypothetical with the high rise, the existing neighborhood's housing stock is in less demand (and cheaper) because all the wealthier people moved into the high rise.
  - throwaway984393 5y ago
    I think you might be missing the point, which is that the entire scenario should not be happening. If people are getting priced out of their houses, or people are building high-rises that inconvenience people, that needs to be solved, not ignored "because GDP". Making people's lives worse or uprooting them in service of general economic gain isn't a good strategy. I mean, we certainly have used that rationale in the past (genocide of the American Indian comes to mind) but it's probably not in the best interests of the nation.
    - spothedog1 5y ago
      High rises are built because people want to move to places with better opportunity. Should we simply not allow anyone to move to places with high opportunity? Are people who were born in rural areas or small towns not allowed to seek a better life in a big city because some people already live there? If you think people people should be allowed to move to places with better opportunity, then you need a solution on how to house a growing urban population, and that solution is building denser and taller high rises and housing of all types. You seem to view the people moving into the high rises as some sort of evil gentrifier trying to make other people lives hell, but they simple want to live in a more prosperous location. How is your argument any different than American anti-immigration people saying no one can immigrate to the US because "its full". Simply put, you need to build more housing in places where people want to live and unless you want endless urban sprawl of low density houses then you need to build high rises where demand supports it. I'm not trying to argue in bad faith, but I genuinely don't see a solution where you allow people to move to areas of high opportunity without building more high rises (or just denser housing in general).
ergocoder 5y ago
> Your land value would skyrocket by allowing apartment buildings That is too far away. That may or may not happen In the short term, the supply just increases significantly. Probably also the traffic and other infrastructure use. Not that I disagree or agree with nimby. Just pointing it out because you only point out one side.
- spothedog1 5y ago
  Imagine 2 empty parcels of land in downtown Manhattan, one can have a giant skyscraper of any height built on it and the other has to be a single family home. The parcel of land with no restrictions is going to be worth exponentially more because you can built a massively profitable structure on it, the other one is so regulated that it isn't worth any where near as much. The more profit you could derive from a parcel of land the more its worth. Now I used an extreme example just to get my point across but the same principle holds on a small scale. If your house was rezoned for apartment buildings and the demand existed, someone would come in and buy it off your hands for a huge premium. Since in our hypothetical someone had just built an apartment building next to your house, the value of the land is already high, simply allow your parcel of land to allow more structures would cause it to rise in value. On the infrastructure side, its a much better deal for you as well, the combined value of all the property taxes from the apartment buildings will be way more than if that lot had remained a house. Since the road, water, sewer and electric lines are already in place nothing new has to be built. You benefit from all those property taxes coming in from the apartment building while the liabilities to the government have barely increased. The local government can use this new surplus of taxes to build new amenities for you. For traffic, sure but that's why you want to build more pedestrian friendly neighborhoods and public transit so people don't have to drive everywhere. Once you have enough people in a place you could open small shops so they can hang out around the building rather than drive everywhere.
  - ergocoder 5y ago
    Let's not imagine an unlikely scenario. None of this is likely true for US' cities. > someone would come in and buy it off your hands for a huge premium. This is still a far future. > If your house was rezoned for apartment buildings and the demand existed It's still better for you that only demand exists, but not supply. To be honest, I doubt nimbyists are even interested to move. They just want their neighborhood to stay relatively the same (quiet, fewer people, safe, less crowded). Either way we look at it, this kind of points are likely cons, not pros. > sure but that's why you want to build more pedestrian friendly neighborhoods and public transit so people don't have to drive everywhere. I laughed a little, assuming this is a US city. Again, I don't own a house, so it's not that I agree or disagree with nimby. But I can understand why nimby hates new buildings next to their houses. It's just a lot more cons than pros.
zzzeek 5y ago
> If someone built a gigantic apartment complex next to your house it would mean that the demand for housing in your neighborhood was massive or it could mean a developer was very stupid to overbuild somewhere, or more likely it's a shell building used as a money laundering scheme for organized crime (See https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/nov/17/trump-ocean-club-panama-money-laundering-reports https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/nov/17/trump-ocean-... for one such building built by Trump; such buildings are also often structurally unsafe such as the building in Florida that collapsed which was also started as a money laundering front). I'm not down with this "the free market will make sure everything is OK" idea.
- spothedog1 5y ago
  If a developer is stupid to overbuild, then let them take that risk and that loss. We don't have to zone away risk. As for money laundering, you're using an example of one Trump Tower out of millions of apartments buildings to say it's "more likely" that every apartment building built is just used for money laundering. That's just silly. As for structural safety, no one is arguing to reduce building codes or safety regulations so that's just a straw man argument. If an apartment building is built unsafe then the government should have done a better job inspecting and enforcing/expanding their regulations, it's not really an argument to not build.
  - zzzeek 5y ago
    i meant "more likely" than a developer who is stupid. There's lots of buildings that are built for cynical, non-market related reasons.

throwaway984393 5y ago

In practice, people are pushed out of their homes because they can't afford to live in the neighborhood full of high rise apartments anymore, and they then struggle to make a living (much less find another place to live). It's funny that the GDP itself is prized over the people who are supposed to be the beneficiaries of an economy with a high GDP.

Robotbeat 5y ago
If such people are homeowners (after all, it is homeowners who are the one complaining about this on zoning boards), they’ll become fantastically wealthy in such a scenario. They have nothing really to complain about except a wealth tax (of course, by limiting property tax increases, California’s prop 13 is like a wealth SUBSIDY).
- 8note 5y ago
  That's unless the government uses eminent domain to give your home to a developer as "slum clearance" Then, you're turned into a renter against your will, and also, everyone else needs to find new housing at the same time, so even before the new luxury units go up, the rent skyrockets. Poor people with expensive homes can't defend their ownership. That takes paying expensive lawyers
- pessimizer 5y ago
  > they’ll become fantastically wealthy in such a scenario If they leave immediately, rather than struggling to pay their massively increased property taxes, then mortgaging their house to keep up... > by limiting property tax increases, California’s prop 13 is like a wealth SUBSIDY ...which apparently is a good outcome?
  - Robotbeat 5y ago
    More nominal wealth that reduces actual physical wealth (by slowing the improvement of land via adding denser housing) is not a good outcome. It’s just redistribution of wealth from newcomers or renters to existing homeowners.
Aunche 5y ago
>It's funny that the GDP itself is prized over the people who are supposed to be the beneficiaries of an economy with a high GDP. The GDP isn't a magical number that rises by making people suffer. It rises because NIMBYs are unable to force others to struggle by keeping them out of their economically advantageous land.
- 8note 5y ago
  The economic advantage of that land is that the nimbys are there. Similar land is all over the place
avianlyric 5y ago
Out of interest what the mechanism that results in people being priced out of houses they own?
- 8note 5y ago
  Everything else becoming more expensive, including taxes. Eminent domain is another. Why not worry about renters though? Are they not people?
  - avianlyric 5y ago
    I’m just asking about the mechanisms that force people out of their homes in US. Nothing more. Here in the U.K. taxes etc don’t increase with property value, and eminent domain isn’t frequently used. So I lack the context to understand why increasing property values mean people are forced to leave, especially when I look around London and see thousands of people who bought their council homes 50 years ago, and are now living in properties that are worth many orders of magnitude more than what they bought them for. Notably, none of them have been forced out. As for renters, well the mechanism is obvious, I don’t need someone to explain that to me.
spothedog1 5y ago
If the demand exists to build high rises then those people would already be pushed out at an ever faster rate. If you take a plot of land that previously had 4 units on it and turn it into a high rise with 100 units, then you can fit 96 higher income people onto that plot of land. In the scenario where you don't build that high rise, those 96 higher income people simply go into the existing housing stock and push those people out anyway. You can think of a high rise as a sponge soaking up demand. In our hypothetical with the high rise, the existing neighborhood's housing stock is in less demand (and cheaper) because all the wealthier people moved into the high rise.
- throwaway984393 5y ago
  I think you might be missing the point, which is that the entire scenario should not be happening. If people are getting priced out of their houses, or people are building high-rises that inconvenience people, that needs to be solved, not ignored "because GDP". Making people's lives worse or uprooting them in service of general economic gain isn't a good strategy. I mean, we certainly have used that rationale in the past (genocide of the American Indian comes to mind) but it's probably not in the best interests of the nation.
  - spothedog1 5y ago
    High rises are built because people want to move to places with better opportunity. Should we simply not allow anyone to move to places with high opportunity? Are people who were born in rural areas or small towns not allowed to seek a better life in a big city because some people already live there? If you think people people should be allowed to move to places with better opportunity, then you need a solution on how to house a growing urban population, and that solution is building denser and taller high rises and housing of all types. You seem to view the people moving into the high rises as some sort of evil gentrifier trying to make other people lives hell, but they simple want to live in a more prosperous location. How is your argument any different than American anti-immigration people saying no one can immigrate to the US because "its full". Simply put, you need to build more housing in places where people want to live and unless you want endless urban sprawl of low density houses then you need to build high rises where demand supports it. I'm not trying to argue in bad faith, but I genuinely don't see a solution where you allow people to move to areas of high opportunity without building more high rises (or just denser housing in general).

ergocoder 5y ago

> Your land value would skyrocket by allowing apartment buildings That is too far away. That may or may not happen In the short term, the supply just increases significantly. Probably also the traffic and other infrastructure use. Not that I disagree or agree with nimby. Just pointing it out because you only point out one side.

spothedog1 5y ago
Imagine 2 empty parcels of land in downtown Manhattan, one can have a giant skyscraper of any height built on it and the other has to be a single family home. The parcel of land with no restrictions is going to be worth exponentially more because you can built a massively profitable structure on it, the other one is so regulated that it isn't worth any where near as much. The more profit you could derive from a parcel of land the more its worth. Now I used an extreme example just to get my point across but the same principle holds on a small scale. If your house was rezoned for apartment buildings and the demand existed, someone would come in and buy it off your hands for a huge premium. Since in our hypothetical someone had just built an apartment building next to your house, the value of the land is already high, simply allow your parcel of land to allow more structures would cause it to rise in value. On the infrastructure side, its a much better deal for you as well, the combined value of all the property taxes from the apartment buildings will be way more than if that lot had remained a house. Since the road, water, sewer and electric lines are already in place nothing new has to be built. You benefit from all those property taxes coming in from the apartment building while the liabilities to the government have barely increased. The local government can use this new surplus of taxes to build new amenities for you. For traffic, sure but that's why you want to build more pedestrian friendly neighborhoods and public transit so people don't have to drive everywhere. Once you have enough people in a place you could open small shops so they can hang out around the building rather than drive everywhere.
- ergocoder 5y ago
  Let's not imagine an unlikely scenario. None of this is likely true for US' cities. > someone would come in and buy it off your hands for a huge premium. This is still a far future. > If your house was rezoned for apartment buildings and the demand existed It's still better for you that only demand exists, but not supply. To be honest, I doubt nimbyists are even interested to move. They just want their neighborhood to stay relatively the same (quiet, fewer people, safe, less crowded). Either way we look at it, this kind of points are likely cons, not pros. > sure but that's why you want to build more pedestrian friendly neighborhoods and public transit so people don't have to drive everywhere. I laughed a little, assuming this is a US city. Again, I don't own a house, so it's not that I agree or disagree with nimby. But I can understand why nimby hates new buildings next to their houses. It's just a lot more cons than pros.

zzzeek 5y ago

> If someone built a gigantic apartment complex next to your house it would mean that the demand for housing in your neighborhood was massive or it could mean a developer was very stupid to overbuild somewhere, or more likely it's a shell building used as a money laundering scheme for organized crime (See https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/nov/17/trump-ocean-club-panama-money-laundering-reports https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/nov/17/trump-ocean-... for one such building built by Trump; such buildings are also often structurally unsafe such as the building in Florida that collapsed which was also started as a money laundering front). I'm not down with this "the free market will make sure everything is OK" idea.

spothedog1 5y ago
If a developer is stupid to overbuild, then let them take that risk and that loss. We don't have to zone away risk. As for money laundering, you're using an example of one Trump Tower out of millions of apartments buildings to say it's "more likely" that every apartment building built is just used for money laundering. That's just silly. As for structural safety, no one is arguing to reduce building codes or safety regulations so that's just a straw man argument. If an apartment building is built unsafe then the government should have done a better job inspecting and enforcing/expanding their regulations, it's not really an argument to not build.
- zzzeek 5y ago
  i meant "more likely" than a developer who is stupid. There's lots of buildings that are built for cynical, non-market related reasons.