Comment by wronglebowski
4 months ago
“Local opposition” and NIMBYism is the primary reason we have a housing shortage, it’s a rampant problem across the US. The few grumpy old folks that show up to local planning meetings shouldn’t hold us back as a nation. Until we can find a way to get over that hump I’m not sure how we'll move forward in many aspects.
Except at least housing provides benefits to the local community.
A data centre provides almost no jobs (except during construction), and draws a significant amount of resources (electricity, water, noise pollution).
Why should any community want something that only enriches Amazon taking up vast swaths of land in their backyard?
> significant amount of resources
Most importantly, location!
Location is not fungible, and at least in my local area, data center developers seem to want to place their datacenters in up-and-coming areas, where they would block the development of higher-quality structures.
There's no reason the datacenters can't be built in the middle of nowhere, far from people, especially as they don't provide any jobs to the community.
A great solution to this is a land value tax. How do you actually determine if the data center is not the best use for a parcel? If it can compete with other uses of land based on the land value. A land value tax makes the data center, or any other use, pay the community for exactly what it's taking away from the community.
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Housing doesn’t benefit the local community(from most NIMBY perspectives). It makes housing more affordable lowering their property values, creates the need for more infrastructure and creates change in their environment.
The motto seems to be, “Neighborhoods full, I like things the way they are. No more change please.” Doesn’t matter if it’s a data center, housing, or any type of development.
It benefits local business by having more customers and benefits local government by having a wider tax base.
Maybe it doesn’t benefit some individuals, but the community improves.
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At the same time, the most densely populated large cities are also among the most expensive.
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It is not just "grumpy old folks", almost everyone who own property, no matter the age fights development.
Seems the only people that do not actively fight development are the working poor. That is because either they work multiple jobs or have travel issues.
Statistically speaking, the homeowners in the US are not young.
Statistically speaking, Americans are not young.
The “YIMBY” movement is completely dominated by 20-40yo middle class professionals in my experience.
Who own nothing and are renting everything. They also think they don’t pay property taxes hence they vote for every tax increase
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Every time I read about a purported "housing shortage" I'm reminded that there are about 140 million housing units in the US[0], with an average of 5.5 rooms per unit[1], or about 700 million rooms, all that for 350 million of population, or about 2 rooms per person.
This doesn't look like "we have a housing shortage". What we do have is a shortage of affordable housing in the megacities, and "it’s a rampant problem" in all the megacities.
[0] https://www.census.gov/data/datasets/time-series/demo/popest...
[1] https://www.census.gov/acs/www/about/why-we-ask-each-questio...
Sorry, are you suggesting that the solution to housing shortage is to move into an existing building with strangers?
If I'm reading myself right, I'm suggesting that there's no need to "the solution to housing shortage," since -- with more than 2 rooms per person on average -- it's not a problem to begin with. The problem frequently called "the housing shortage" is a problem of "housing affordability in the megacities," and we should call it by its real name.
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Surely most people can recognize the difference between NIMBY of a noisy wasteful cover for Bitcoin mining operation compared to the NIMBY of not wanting "the poors" nearby or the ability to retain high rent charges on hoarded housing. Housing shortage NIMBY and "don't put an industrial facility in my backyard" are really very different things.
most ycombinator folks can't seem to distinguish things outside the software realm. Maybe if all these super ultra mega smart engineers and developers could focus on utilizing existing hardware more efficient we wouldn't need to constantly build these energy sinks.
Where you see a housing shortage, I see too many people in too little an area.
Megacities are a problem everywhere. We have not yet found a scalable way to improve the economy without resorting to unnatural concentrations of people. Still, hope must be kept high, and the battle must go on.
> Where you see a housing shortage, I see too many people in too little an area.
Huh? There are housing shortages in plenty of low-density places.