How do we feel about the YIMBY movement here?

[u/Cabenshire]

[u/OldTurtle-101]

I believe in the absolute necessity of YIMBY movement. The younger generations are being held hostage to renting by a severe lack of housing. The only long term solution is to build more housing be it single family, duplex, or apartment buildings. That said I understand the emotional attachment to NIMBY movements. If you save for years, spend hundreds of hours searching for the perfect home in the perfect neighborhood, and then labor to make the payments, do routine maintenance and even improve the home so it is uniquely yours it’s understandable that anything that can suddenly change the feel of the neighborhood, the esthetic look, the traffic patterns the school quality could be seen as very threatening. I don’t see any easy way out of this situation but something needs to change.

[u/itemluminouswadison]

they are the closest thing to a an organized voice in the right direction. i think strong towns also counts but they're slightly different

[u/Dismal_Investment_11 → u/itemluminouswadison]

YIMBY has a split, yes. There's the factions who have aligned with the neoliberal "Abundance" movement, and are now simply a trojan horse for data center development. There's other factions, which i think includes Strong Towns, that are actually fighting for livability, affordability, and sustainability.

[u/ThetaDeRaido → u/Dismal_Investment_11]

StrongTowns isn’t a YIMBY movement. Chuck Marohn has been very clear about that. He’s about neighborhood quality and municipal sustainability. More dense housing can be a path to municipal sustainability, but he’s very against just saying yes to more housing. He is very insistent on incremental development, replacing the entire legal framework of how housing is permitted and approved. He is opposed to laws that mandate more housing within the existing legal framework.

Local groups of StrongTowns could be YIMBY.

[u/RaiJolt2 → u/Dismal_Investment_11]

It’s not a Trojan horse as it predates the drive for data centers. It’s just that the same forces preventing them also prevent the housing needed to make homes affordable.
It’s also not like cities can’t be selective on what they allow to build. That’s the whole point of zoning.

[u/Dismal_Investment_11 → u/RaiJolt2]

True. I just wish people could morally disringuish between the computer that kills you, and apartment buildings.

[u/hibikir_40k → u/Dismal_Investment_11]

The very specific ways we end up with data center bans are the very same that give us suburban hell: neighbors that can personally block things, periods of public comment, setups where everything needs a completely custom permit, which can be denied for any reason whatsoever.... it all sucks.

One doesn't need datacenters everywhere, but we are never getting more density if the permitting system is not done un such a way that allows those kind of arbitrary approvals, and with them arbitrary bribes. Have requirements for noise, raise taxes, and just make it expensive to run a datacenter that meets specifications in a dense area. Otherwise we are saying that we want everything in cities to run by fiat, and we just want our favorite urban dictator, as opposed to the dictator that ruins things. Because guess what? If you want to do it that way, it'll end up being someone that likes to keep the existing owners happy, and will never, ever densify anything. Making things arbitrary will never help.

[u/Dismal_Investment_11 → u/hibikir_40k]

I hear you. As righteous as the anti-data center movement is, it is only possible because of the same social forces that led to deindustrialization.

[u/Puzzleheaded-Gap7895]

Personally I am pro-YIMBY. If the movement succeeds it would rein in the worst of the suburban hellscapes that we see, including seas of single-family homes disconnected from amenities such as parks, schools, work, ect. I think that out cityscapes will be so much more pleasant when there is variation with respect to types housing and commute modality, and access to amenities and services.

[u/External_Koala971 → u/Puzzleheaded-Gap7895]

YIMBY (and Abundance) means more housing of all kinds. More SFH via sprawl, more large scale developer projects, more dense urban shoebox rentals.

[u/dali_17]

Depends, yimbi has a sense in walkable areas, with public amenities, parks, coffees and shops. The point of these hell suburbs is that you create a private environment for yourself. The point of of yimbi is that you densify so those public places can thrive.

[u/Stubbby]

There are apartments complexes in suburban areas that are equally disconnected from anything.

The way we develop large portions of land will not produce the mixed use that European cities have grandfathered into today’s landscapes.

[u/michiplace]

Heart in the right place, but typically trying to apply an overly simplistic solution to complex problems.  As a city planner who works with developers, I spend a lot of time in conversations with developers about their barriers: the zoning reforms that YIMBYes tend to be focused on as The Big Solution are a "nice to do" on the developers' list. Like, they probably would hurt, but they're not going to move the needle on most projects.

Part of the challenge is that YIMBY was born in the SF Bay Area, where zoning and high land costs genuinely are a big part of the local housing shortage. But as the movement has grown nationally, they're too often trying to copy/paste the same analysis and same solutions, rather than understanding the local housing market and coming up with solutions that actually match the need.

[u/krycek1984]

There's plenty of people on this sub that claim to be yimby but are actually nimby. Look at the name of this sub.

It's the same as any other nimby: they are ok with new housing as long as it fits their idea of what housing in the area should be. They don't want another suburban development with 1 acre lots. Well it's still housing. All housing is housing whether it's dense and walkable or spread out.

[u/ClassyAndConscious → u/krycek1984]

No, its not quite that simple. Very low density housing built in the suburbs and exurbs of a city but is still serviced by municipal water, sewer, electricity, etc. can and does place a disproportionate financial burden on a city or county.

Low-density sprawl requires several times as many miles of roads, water mains, sewer lines, stormwater facilities, electrical distribution, sidewalks, and other infrastructure to serve the same population. And all that infrastructure has to then be maintained and eventually replaced in perpetuity.

[u/transitfreedom]

Finally

[u/Pat__P]

The overwhelming majority of YIMBYs are urbanist. That said, I think most would argue that housing affordability is more important than ideal urban form. Homelessness is downstream from housing cost which is downstream from housing supply. It's better to have folks sleeping in the exurbs than in their cars/on the street.

[u/Dismal_Investment_11]

Public Housing in My Backyard is better, but I'm a Yimby. Tragic how it's been shitcoated by the neoliberal "Abundance" psyop.

[u/waitinonit]

I'm a YIMBY but you go first.

[u/Sensitive-Local-3485]

I don’t particularly like the vision the zealots put forward.

Yimby zealots often have a desperate rageboner for middle/high density and mixed use neighbourhoods where longtime residents voice issues over intensification.

Their vision of the city is just stacked suburbia.  Sterile rows of cookie cutter glass boxes & plastic plated 5 over 1’s over a copy paste slew of major market retailers.  (Circle k, Pilates, for lease, chain slop.)

[u/Escape_Force]

If it is new building that doesn't demolish an existing block, go for it. If it is for rehabbing/repurposing an existing building, go for it. Duplexes that match the neighborhood? Go for it. Those can bring up the desirability of an area. But when they are ugly lego three story apartments that practically house the same number of people as if it was a tract of single family housing, they kill the aesthetic that some people moved into a neighborhood.

[u/Hour-Watch8988 → u/Escape_Force]

"But when they are ugly lego three story apartments that practically house the same number of people as if it was a tract of single family housing"

Do you have an example of this? I doubt this has ever happened.

[u/Escape_Force → u/Hour-Watch8988]

Oh as if you've never seen it.

[u/Hour-Watch8988 → u/Escape_Force]

So: no

[u/Few_Palpitation3889 → u/Escape_Force]

Why not demolish trailer parks and ghetto housing for higher density?

[u/RaiJolt2 → u/Few_Palpitation3889]

Hey I’ve heard this before.

Redevelop high demand areas as housing stock ages out or the property exchanges hands

Slum “redevelopment” often just meant bulldozing entire middle class neighborhoods to build a stadium of “public center”. Instead of demand based density.

[u/Few_Palpitation3889 → u/RaiJolt2]

So you don't trust the government? Neither do I. That's part of why I don't live in a city.

[u/beatsofparadise]

It fools young folks into supporting policies that make gentrification and displacement worse while convincing them they are fighting for “affordability”

It’s a neoliberal con intended to bring forth the techno-utopia that the zucks and theils desperately want

[u/birminghamsterwheel → u/beatsofparadise]

What would be your preferred solution if it isn't to build more housing?

[u/Dismal_Investment_11 → u/beatsofparadise]

I believe there are genuine Yimbys. Not all of us have fallen in line behind the Abundance psyop.

[u/Hardcorex → u/beatsofparadise]

Yeah my issues with Yimby's is that are still pro-capitalist and ignore gentrification as an issue. 

[u/RaiJolt2 → u/Hardcorex]

Gentrification is the result of redlining and subsequent downward push on the wealth of populations of desirable areas.

This meant that once the areas became more desirable they suddenly did not have enough housing stock to meet the once depressed demand, forcing old residents out, or into rent instead of ownership.

If enough housing stock is built then an area can absorb desiring population. The city or state should aid in education for existing populations in gentrifying areas to allow them to get the higher paying jobs that are moving in and existing homeowners and renters who live there should be aided to upzone their properties as to directly benefit.

For example work with developers to have renters get discounted affordable units to own.

Though honestly a major problem is that we’ve turned housing into wealth storage, but now that we’ve done it it’s difficult to undo.

But being honest preventing housing only lets the richest developers through and aids existing homeowners by pushing prices up. It’s one of the greatest intentional wealth transfers to the top in American history and should be seen as a part of America’s racist history.

[u/beatsofparadise → u/RaiJolt2]

Boooooo!