I am a YIMBY because I was poor, and I know very much what it means to worry about whether you’re gonna have enough to pay your rent at the end of month, every month. We need to build housing so no one has to go through what I did and what so many people do
I am a YIMBY because I was poor, and I know very much what it means to worry about whether you’re gonna have enough to pay your rent at the end of month, every month. We need to build housing so no one has to go through what I did and what so many people do
@ArmandDoma I do not doubt your good faith desire to help people who grew up like you, but the yimby movement is not likely to achieve that goal on its own. Public housing, rent control and increasing direct subsidy is the way to accomplish that.
@testingout206 @ArmandDoma I support the building of more state housing. I even agree that if a state pumps huge amounts of money and political will into housing, then that may be enough (e.g. Singapore) Most nations are not Singapore and need to have a functional housing market though.
@testingout206 @ArmandDoma Meanwhile, the only way to address a supply shortage is to increase supply. You can't price cap your way out of a supply shortage, nor can you avoid it by stimulating demand (giving people more money to spend on rent and mortgages). You have to build.
@wight1984 @ArmandDoma Yes, we need a massive increase in the amount of MR and public housing. The US does not have the capacity to provide housing abundance in its own, just as the market does not have the ability to provide affordable housing on its own.
@testingout206 @ArmandDoma More of both is definitely good (and I think most YIMBYs would agree?) Personally, I suspect the biggest changes that need to happen are planning/zoning reform, but I'll welcome any increases to housing supply.
@wight1984 @ArmandDoma Most yimbys don’t agree, and the biggest changes must be to the tax code to fund public housing, implementing cross subsidized housing, implemenntingbsmart rent control, and removing the laws like costa-Hawkins and the faircloth amendment amendment. Zoning is small potatoes.
@testingout206 @wight1984 I strongly disagree that those would be sufficient without significant changes to zoning. You can fund public housing as much as you want, but it still needs *to be legal to build it* for you to deploy that money, and that is just not true in the vast majority of the US
@ArmandDoma @wight1984 I agree they are not sufficient! Zoning must be a tool as well of course, but the recent meta study showed zoning reform is pretty useless on its own, and in high density, low income areas if you just implement zoning reform without rent stabilization it will lead to displacement
@ArmandDoma @wight1984 You will never catch me arguing against upzoning SFH areas across the country, but things like the 4plex bill in CA and WA just won’t affect real change, yimbys need to think bigger if they want to actually create affordability.