Comment by OptionOfT
10 hours ago
But isn't it understandable? You work your whole life to buy a piece of property. But not just a piece of property anywhere. It's a specific one, in a specific neighborhood, in a specific zone. All of these things tie into the $ that you paid for that property. Regardless of the change in value, a change there impacts how you perceive living there.
If all of the sudden the neighborhood behind you gets rezoned to industrial and you get a datacenter nearby, everybody understands you're up in arms.
If at the same time the neighborhood behind you gets converted from 200 single-family homes to 200 8-plexes, complaining is NIMBY. Even though it has the same dramatic impact on the quality of life you bought into. Way more noise, way more street parking, cars racing late at night etc.
Why should society value stability of your quality of life (which is a pretty nebulous bundle of your preferences and environment—neither of which we can bet on being stable in any event) over the interests of all those people who want to live on land that can readily support them—and without putting any true undue burden on your ability to do the same on your land?
Because you would be upset if a developer bought every house on your block and converted them to eight-plexes and rented them out to Section 8 tenants, and we should provide some level of protection against that from happening.
I can be upset, but why should I expect the government to “protect” me from that feeling? It’s a free country.
We’re not talking about a sewage treatment plant or even a data center, we’re talking about fellow members of our community living in code-compliant housing.
I wouldn't be upset, actually.
So the fact that we're ladder pulling entire generations of young people is both understandable and natural...