I'm not saying I'm favor of NIMBY - it depends on what's actually going on - but I would expect that there might be a lobby of constructors, rather than citizens looking to lower house prices, behind such an effort.

It's actually about people not wanting the largest investment of their life to change in ways they don't like.

Casting shadow on their backyard. Bringing noise to their street. Ultimately, lowering the value of their property.

The key problem of US housing is that a house is seen as an investment vehicle, which should appreciate, or at least appreciate no slower than inflation. Keeping prices high and rising can't but go hand in hand with keeping supply scarce.

It should really be called NIYBY-ism.

Literal NIMBY-ism, where the backyard is one's own property, is just straightforward property rights. They want to control other people's property and tell them what they can and can't do with it. That's basically communism.

YIYBY is the concept of wanting it nearby to your residence but not having to suffer any of the direct consequences - imo it's a good thing to acknowledge but generally indistinguishable from NIMBYism. You want the benefits but aren't willing to pay the costs.

I think the back yard in all of these initialism is not limited to the person’s private back yard property.

NIMBY seeks to prevent the development of nearby properties to preserve some sort of “neighborhood character,” so the “back yard” is actually the whole neighborhood (and I think part of the negative connotation of that phrase is that they are treating shared spaces like their own personal yard). Then, YIMBY seeks to allow their neighborhoods to be developed.

If we’re going to extend it to “YIYBY” and “NIYBY,” we should apply the same logic, right?

Rather, I think YIYBY mostly doesn’t make sense because YIMBY people are trying to convince people that they should allow development in their neighborhood. Zoning rules… I mean, they have difference policies for changing them, but YIMBY activists aren’t usually manually and unilaterally changing them for other people.

Ultimately the decision making process is probably (depending on local regulation of course) “yes or no in our back yards,” when you get down to the details.

Nice! Any thoughts on this matter, as in does it get you outraged as a free speech absolutist?

THat's basically my activity on HN. 10% arguing why I like pancakes, and 90% replying to the stream of people accusing me of hating waffles.

For this to be anything like "so you hate waffles" there would have to somebody going around declaring to all that "all breakfast foods are good and can not be criticized" and them only showing up to defend pancakes on the basis of "all breakfast foods" but then deafening silence when waffles or bacon or scrambled eggs get trampled on in a far more prevalant manner.

Even the one reply to me from a self-proclaimed absolutist didn't bother to defend the political speech and petition of government, just said that they were present!

No, this is not the phenomenon that post is referring to.

No, your comment is an example of "argument by joke" and "false equivalency".

The bad faith free speech argument that somehow applies to only some people, to only one side of the political divide, but never to the other was prevalent mainstream argument for years now. Some peoples free speech was sacred and if you criticized or opposed them, the criticism and opposition themselves did not counted as free speech - even if it in fact consisted of speech only.

So like, kicking at those people is entirely fair. Because they actively damaged "free speech". Not that they care or ever cared.

I mean, also not in my back yard if the people who don't own the land vote for a bunch of micro managerial laws that make it illegal to do things without jumping through hoops that are so expensive as to be a non-starter.

Nobody is gonna go through the "everything else" approval process that strip clubs and heavy industry have to go through just to expand their business parking or do $10k of environmental impact assessment to drop off a $1k garden shed. (literal examples from my town).

These evil people can't make things illegal outright so they make the process so expensive almost nobody can do it and it takes decades for someone to come along with a lucrative enough development that's worth expensively challenging it inn court over.

They are telling communities that they have no part of how to manage themselves.

Rancho Palos Verdes should not be required to comply with the request of some random activist who probably has never even stepped foot in the town.

The use of "back yard" refers to the local area, not the literal extent of one's property. This usage is not unique to NIMBY and it's derivatives. YIMBY sentiment also clearly extends beyond developers themselves and simple libertine principles. Many people want development to occur around them, in their back-yard so to speak, because they prefer it occurs. The semantic change you're arguing for erases this concept just to sidestep the notion of local community. It's a needlessly aggravating approach when the simple answer is just that both NIMBY and YIMBY advocates can support their cause beyond their own area because they believe their cohort is right and deserves it.

That's a very theoretical argument, and there's nothing stopping people in region Y from building all the housing they could possibly need in region Y. If it's such a great idea, region Y will thrive and reap the rewards of this policy.

And my point is that there are limits on the impact region X has on region Y based on their proximity. Should someone in downtown LA be able to compel someone in Palo Alto to upzone based on this "impact"? What about someone in Kansas or Florida?

I can say their interests don't meet a threshold of significance.

As an extreme example, I can say that hurricane victims have an interest in butterfly wing flaps across the world because there is some indirect causation.

Housing expansion advocates consistently describe the simplest of supply-demand mechanisms, whereas housing demand is heavily driven by local and national economic conditions as well. Gary IN doesn't have a housing shortage.

> More housing in region X will result in lower housing prices in region Y.

Or higher prices in Y, because X will be both more crowded and with on average poorer people than before the supply increase, and people who prefer a less crowded area and less poor people (either directly because they are poor, or because of other demographic traits that correlate with wealth in the broader society, like race in the USA) around them will have an even higher relative preference for living in Y than before.

> The interests of people from region Y are valid.

They exist, validity is...at best, not a case you have made. Existence of a material interest does not imply validitym

My county eliminated code compliance checks (and building plan review) 2 decades ago for owner-builders and it's made things so much cheaper and easier to build. It is the only way I was able to afford a house.

We were warned by nay-sayers the county would burn down but that never came to fruition and meanwhile I've seen so many code-Nazi places in California burn down from wildfires.

It's hilarious watching the systematic destruction of the counter points when people tell me about the horrors

(1) "You wouldn't want to live in such a house, it would burn down." I already do, and have been.

(2) Your neighborhood would catch fire. I live in such a neighborhood, it didn't.

(3) Just wait long enough! It will happen eventually. Eventually you'll have bad luck! This has been going on for 20+ years.

Here's where I come out and maybe others end up in the same scenario.

I think it's definitely a good thing to build up more high density housing. I've got no complaints there.

However, a major problem we are having locally is that while that local housing is being built like gangbusters, the infrastructure to support that housing, such as the roads and public transport, hasn't been upgraded in tandem. 10 years ago, I could drive to work in 20 minutes. Today during rush hour it's a 40 to 60 minute affair. It's start/stop traffic through the neighborhood because there's no buses, interstate, etc to service the area where all the growth is happening.

It also doesn't help that promised projects, like new parks, have been stuck in limbo for the last 15 years with more than a few proposals to try and turn that land into new housing developments.

What I'm saying is housing is important and nice, but we actually need public utilities to be upgraded and to grow with the housing increase. It's untenable to add 10,000 housing units into an area originally designed to service 1000.

Why don't we let people who like living in dense housing build and live in dense housing? And leave those who don't in peace? Right now we only do the second one but make the first one illegal.

I agree from a personal perspective, but sprawl is also terrible in its own way. The real problem is too many people.

In any case, it shouldn’t be illegal to build either dense or sparse housing.

Unless you're the only one who thinks that, you'd think there would be some centralized advocacy for your position, is what I'm saying.

> It drives up costs.

How?

Upkeep is arguably more expensive for a detached house, and suburbs make cars almost mandatory.

I always find this 'character' argument disingenuous.

The character of the neighbourhood is only invoked for perceived negative externalities. No one complains when the cracked sidewalks get repaved, or fiber internet lines replace slow copper, when increasing affluence mean that houses are better maintained, when a new sewer line allows people to remove septic tanks. That all changes the character of a neighbourhood, but never gets fought.

Go ahead and commit to the bit, lock in on the character in ALL ways: make sure you fight any alteration to any building, any change in the shade of paint should be fought! Your neighbour replacing their front door? Denied! Replacing a concrete driveway with pavers? unacceptable? Replacing incandescent bulbs with LED? Uncharacteristic! Increasing home values changing who can afford to live there? Not acceptable, gotta sell your home for what you paid to maintain the character!

> If someone moves into an area that is zoned for particular types of properties, then new zoning is imposed by outside fiat (not a vote of the people who live there) is not appropriate.

How small are we going to allow the "area" to be defined? Is it one vote per property owner, or one vote per resident? Can we call a block an area? Who decides the arbitrary boundaries? Do people living on the boundary line get to vote for projects in adjacent properties in adjacent jurisdictions?

Just call NIMBYism what it is, selfish justification for control of other people's property. Your position is - explicitly - that other people and property owners should be made less well off for your comfort.

How do you measure?

I can't really think of a way to measure it that would come out how you said.

Welcome to the sound of spring/summer/fall in the suburbs. 7am to 6pm, 6 days a week. BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

Most landscaping teams have 2-3 dedicated guys who do nothing but leaf blow the entire time they are at a house. Towns have been largely unsuccessful in curbing this, mostly because demand for landscaping services is so high.

Or why cities should be able to ignore state laws, for that matter.