Comment by 10111001
11 hours ago
> Ultimately I think this particular problem is a diseased outgrowth from the cancer that is "homes as an investment vehicle." Is it so much that people don't want change or is more that they (correctly) identify a house and the land it sits upon as the only thing in their life that appreciates in value, consistently? It represents stability, a future to be handed down to one's children, that sort of thing.
There's no one cause. Even if homes weren't "an investment vehicle," I don't think it would change much. Few people in a neighborhood of single family homes would want a 20-story apartment tower getting built next door.
> Few people in a neighborhood of single family homes would want a 20-story apartment tower getting built next door.
Only this is just a thing that really doesn't happen much at all. Very few developers are putting up 20 story apartment buildings in the middle of an existing SFH community in the suburbs somewhere. Most of those such fights are people fighting the 5 over 1 development built greenfield just outside the current SFH neighborhood in question. And for those such people? They should have zero say.
If they are doing so, it's typically in very dense city cores that support the density and thus investment. If someone wants to put up a 20 story building next to me in my Chicago neighborhood, sounds good to me! I am upset there are not more of them and that zoning has effectively made them illegal to build here, as I'm roughly 500 feet away from a rapid transit station and two arterial roads with high frequency bus routes. It's a crime that they are illegal to build.
I'd be an asshole if I bought a house in such an area and wanted my little conclave to be protected at the expense of everyone else in the city. I should rightly be overruled and told to pound sand and move the hell out if I don't like it.
Instead, laws have enabled such people to effectively veto such buildings. Or even simply stuff like 12 unit 4 floor apartment buildings that already exist due to predating zoning on my block.
Many areas of the US are effectively retirement communities by zoning. People who moved in 20-30 years ago who demand zero change and have captured nearly all political power.
Perhaps it's a failure of my ability to empathize then. I have owned a home for 8 years, I have never once been concerned with anything going on nearby. Buildings being built of any sort, of any height, at all. And I genuinely struggle to enter the mind of someone for whom this is top priority, something they put time into.
> Perhaps it's a failure of my ability to empathize then. I have owned a home for 8 years, I have never once been concerned with anything going on nearby. Buildings being built of any sort, of any height, at all.
You don't really have to empathize all that much. Can't you imagine anything you wouldn't like built near your home?
> And I genuinely struggle to enter the mind of someone for whom this is top priority, something they put time into.
OK how about this: you live in a quiet neighborhood, where kids are safe playing in the street. Your house gets a nice amount of sun in the afternoon. You like it.
Then someone builds a couple of 20 story apartment blocks, just south of you. The sun is blocked, traffic increases. The neighborhood isn't quiet anymore.