at a local level, lots of activists believe “we” don’t need more housing, new housing should be built elsewhere. and yeah, somw of those activists suggest even elsewhere no new housing is needed, after all fading Nebraska towns have plenty of vacancy. 1/

but that’s a group motivated fundamentally by “protecting” their locality from new housing. broadly, the policy community, across most spectrums, acknowledges that more housing is necessary if we mean to relieve the incredible stress housing now imposes on American lives. 2/

the claim that social housing requires land-use reform too is mostly a kind of misdirection. it might, but not the same land-use reform sought after to make it easier for private parties to build in settled neighborhoods over local opposition. 3/

one of the main reasons to promote social housing is to promote the development of new districts, neighborhoods, microcities, in places that are not already settled, established, desirable. 4/

that just involves an entirely different set of problems than disinheriting neighbors of their capacity to block development to which they object. 5/

the (yglesian) claim that social housing requires the same reforms as infill in sought after neighborhoods is both false and disingenuous, a way of pretending there is no alternative to existing (imho largely misguided) YIMBY tactics proponents of social housing can advocate. /fin

They are of a very different character. They would be overtly populist, many potential homeowners vs relatively few well-connected stakeholders. 1/

It'd depend upon how — you'd not want to Manhattanize the whole Presidio! But a neighborhood of homeowners is a different kind of opponent than some wealthy golfers, if you could organize things in those terms. /fin

Manhattanize Mare Island! They have a frigging ferry to Downtown SF!

(The Presidio is in the commute shed. Marin headlands are in the commute shed. Three giant golf course inside SF. Lots of open land south of SF. We get into arguments about wildfire susceptibility, but that can be a function of design, not everywhere has to be built like Paradise CA.)

I think the only way you will override NIMBYism is not by fighting people tooth and nail over their neighborhoods and highly leveraged financial assets, but by changing circumstances so they are no longer NIMBYs. You'll win not by fighting, but by rendering moot the fight. 1/

As always, I have to point out that YIMBYs have succeeded more than I thought they would, so take my judgment with a grain of salt. Builder's remedy is an extraordinary thing, if it actually manages to overcome other forms of sand in the gears. 2/

But for all the (often surprising to me!) YIMBY successes, the scale of success in the approach of powering over hostile incumbent homeowners I think has been and will continue to be an order of magnitude beneath the scale of the problem. /fin

To some degree. I mean, since time immemorial people have wanted to build something in an existing prosperous neighborhood and neighbors have objected, so sure. 1/

But I think that building in settled, existing prosperous neighborhoods has pretty much never been the source of bulk housing growth, and it won't be. It's the opposite of smart pragmatism, from my perspective, to try to make it so. /fin

Here we'll disagree. I think the choice to center housing abundance around infill over the preferences of existing homeowners in already sought after places is the quintessence of a bad, teeth-pulling decision. 1/

It was a kind of original sin that's distracted us from more fruitful approaches, which would involve more overt public risk-bearing by building on initially less-sought-after greenfields, and trying to turn those into new desirable places. 2/

The anti-NIMBY trench warfare approach to me has been a catastrophic enemy of the good. Because great places aren't inherently scarce, but the approach implicitly accepts existing scarcity (of neighborhoods and cities that are desirable) and has us fighting over control of those. /fin

Antitrust regulations might! The "landbanking" critique of big homebuilders is contentious, but there might be something to it. (I think! I think some of the rebuttals substitute a kind of glibness for critique.) Vacancy taxation might! 1/

Are antitrust and vacancy taxation "existing"? To a degree I think. Perhaps more importantly, a public option might. 2/

Public options, as @jwmason.bsky.social seminally wrote, are a very general mechanism that can be deployed when the private sector fails to provide or organizes to restrict, price elasticity. jwmason.org/slackwire/pu... 3/

Social housing, a public option, does, despite the Faircloth Amendment, exist to a degree! /fin

I agree! I'm not at all a just-let-the-market-do-its-magic kind of guy, but "inclusive zoning" is a form of sliding scale pricing, imposing certain social costs we should collectively cover on arbitrary others who happen to be adjacent. 1/

When we want to purchase social goods, the purchaser should be the we that we compose as a government, with the burden sharing we democratically enact via tax policy. 2/

The issue is, which doesn't fall cleanly left or right, is that lots of people like to hide the existence of burdens and any proper accounting of upon whom they fall. 3/

Inclusive zoning is palatable to people on the right, because it's not overtly building social housing. It's palatable to people on the left, because you get units of affordable housing for people. 4/

But it'd be better if the state just bought units of affordable housing, and regulated the marketplace to ensure the provision is competitive and price-elastic. 5/

(There are lots of parallel cases. The fact that most college students don't pay the full "sticker price" for tuition is a way to get wealthier parents to subsidize poorer students.) 6/

(But why should the burden of subsidizing poorer students be restricted to wealthy people who happen to have college age kids? Wealthy childless people should chip in at least as much!) 7/

(But a sliding scale "looks" progressive, and hides redistribution in prices and price discrimination rather than overtly enacting it in government. So we ubiquitously and unjustly resort to it.) /fin