if you paint people unsympathetically and call them segregationists and parasites, you can talk yourself out of sympathy. it’s not a great habit though. 1/

how about a young couple who scraped together a $200k down payment on a $1.6M Bay Area home which is now there only 8x levered asset? 2/

is it understandable that couple might be extremely conservative about changes to the character of the neighborhood that might affect the value of nearby housing? 3/

how about a long-time resident who actively participated in getting landscaping done on the medians and benches placed just so in what has become, with the work of people like her, an ever more charming place? should she have no special voice? 4/

i’m not saying she *should* be able to exclude the world. i’m saying these calls are often harder than YIMBYs give themselves license to pretend. /fin