I know YIMBYs love to imagine there is nothing sympathetic about NIMBYism, it’s some cabal of bloodless but bloodthirsty financial parasites, but what local governments are responding to is largely the intense preferences of their most enfranchised constituents, homeowners, yes, neighbors. 1/

Sure, there are wrinkles. Prop 13 reinforces at the local government level the already intense preferences of homeowners. That sucks! But people highly levered into places they carefully chose and committed themselves to really do work to “protect” — meaning largely to “conserve” — them. /fin