I don’t know if it’s that much of a secret, but my fellow YIMBYs do get kind of ruffled when I call them out on it.
For example, we have a YIMBY advocacy organization up here which many of the Urbanist groups seem to blindly follow. When this organization vehemently opposed ADUs outside the UGB, I voiced my “concerns” with this inconsistency. How could we host all these presentations about diversity inclusion and the wrongs of red lining when we are continuing the process by moving those red lines outward?
Then they started to say things like “All the ADU will be converted to short term rentals and won’t help improve the housing situation” and “We are protecting the environment by cutting down on carbon emissions when we don’t allow people to live out where they would commute for so much longer.” Classic NIMBY arguments applied to sprawl. So which is it going to be out there: Vacation rentals or housing for working people? These seem contradictory and very Not-in-Their-Back-Yard (NITBY). This is when I realized that Urbanists may be both YIMBY and NITBY, whereas I prefer to be both YIMBY and YITBY. Why should rural folks let urban dwellers dictate what they can’t build?
Instead of being able to settle outside the UGB where it’s more affordable, these folks want to banish the working class even farther out of reach than where urban displacement currently puts them. And for those who deny this, I point out that it’s quite the gamble they are making if they bet that we will succeed in creating sufficient housing within the UGB for everyone before such a law goes into effect. Not only do we have the daunting task of catching up with current demand, we have to be on schedule to build enough for future demand. (“Future” is literally in the name of this organization.) And with our current track record, it doesn’t seem like upzoning is producing very much additional housing — let alone the explosion of housing needed — to warrant such bullishness.
Instead of resorting to the hamfisted approach to regulation which we oppose inside the UGB, why not pursue a more elegant solution?
Consumer demand for development (housing-and-other-amenities) is not the same as owner demand for development. If it were, upzoning would result in a surge in new housing and amenities WITHOUT the need for subsidies. The underlying problem is that consumer and owner incentives are not aligned.
So let’s align them.
Owners with the title to control desirable locations should pay a desirable location premium. This will be directly proportional to the number of people the title owner is effectively and continuously displacing, so it will not be a one-time payment. (We have thousands of people in the US who have a lot of practice calculating this, so as long as there are sufficient requirements for transparency and accountability, the math is well taken care of.) Government will collect such premiums on behalf of the displaced and provide rebates to the displaced.
This would cause two things to happen: (1) The holding cost of desirable locations would increase, which pushes owners to increase utilization of their locations or sell/abandon to those who would actually use them, causing prices to return to sustainable levels. (2) Those being displaced will have more available funds with which to buy or rent the now lower-priced locations, decreasing sprawl, increasing competition, and driving prices down for many things locally.
Why does this work? Individual owners cannot respond to an increase in holding costs by increasing prices if the availability of locations is increasing at the same time (see #1 in the previous paragraph). When holding costs are too low, we tend to see under-utilizing owners wait out the folks being displaced, keeping prices high. This inability of owners to shift location costs to consumers makes location premiums an efficent target. Economists across the political spectrum are in agreement on this point. It is also an effective target because locations cannot be moved or hidden, so collection of desirable location premiums could not be dodged without giving up ownership.
So let’s encourage our fellow YIMBYs — the true YIMBYs, not the NIMBYs with rural properties masquerading as YIMBYs — to get smart and advocate for effective Yes-in-Everyone’s-Back-Yard policies.
I don’t know if it’s that much of a secret, but my fellow YIMBYs do get kind of ruffled when I call them out on it.
For example, we have a YIMBY advocacy organization up here which many of the Urbanist groups seem to blindly follow. When this organization vehemently opposed ADUs outside the UGB, I voiced my “concerns” with this inconsistency. How could we host all these presentations about diversity inclusion and the wrongs of red lining when we are continuing the process by moving those red lines outward?
Then they started to say things like “All the ADU will be converted to short term rentals and won’t help improve the housing situation” and “We are protecting the environment by cutting down on carbon emissions when we don’t allow people to live out where they would commute for so much longer.” Classic NIMBY arguments applied to sprawl. So which is it going to be out there: Vacation rentals or housing for working people? These seem contradictory and very Not-in-Their-Back-Yard (NITBY). This is when I realized that Urbanists may be both YIMBY and NITBY, whereas I prefer to be both YIMBY and YITBY. Why should rural folks let urban dwellers dictate what they can’t build?
Instead of being able to settle outside the UGB where it’s more affordable, these folks want to banish the working class even farther out of reach than where urban displacement currently puts them. And for those who deny this, I point out that it’s quite the gamble they are making if they bet that we will succeed in creating sufficient housing within the UGB for everyone before such a law goes into effect. Not only do we have the daunting task of catching up with current demand, we have to be on schedule to build enough for future demand. (“Future” is literally in the name of this organization.) And with our current track record, it doesn’t seem like upzoning is producing very much additional housing — let alone the explosion of housing needed — to warrant such bullishness.
Instead of resorting to the hamfisted approach to regulation which we oppose inside the UGB, why not pursue a more elegant solution?
Consumer demand for development (housing-and-other-amenities) is not the same as owner demand for development. If it were, upzoning would result in a surge in new housing and amenities WITHOUT the need for subsidies. The underlying problem is that consumer and owner incentives are not aligned.
So let’s align them.
Owners with the title to control desirable locations should pay a desirable location premium. This will be directly proportional to the number of people the title owner is effectively and continuously displacing, so it will not be a one-time payment. (We have thousands of people in the US who have a lot of practice calculating this, so as long as there are sufficient requirements for transparency and accountability, the math is well taken care of.) Government will collect such premiums on behalf of the displaced and provide rebates to the displaced.
This would cause two things to happen: (1) The holding cost of desirable locations would increase, which pushes owners to increase utilization of their locations or sell/abandon to those who would actually use them, causing prices to return to sustainable levels. (2) Those being displaced will have more available funds with which to buy or rent the now lower-priced locations, decreasing sprawl, increasing competition, and driving prices down for many things locally.
Why does this work? Individual owners cannot respond to an increase in holding costs by increasing prices if the availability of locations is increasing at the same time (see #1 in the previous paragraph). When holding costs are too low, we tend to see under-utilizing owners wait out the folks being displaced, keeping prices high. This inability of owners to shift location costs to consumers makes location premiums an efficent target. Economists across the political spectrum are in agreement on this point. It is also an effective target because locations cannot be moved or hidden, so collection of desirable location premiums could not be dodged without giving up ownership.
So let’s encourage our fellow YIMBYs — the true YIMBYs, not the NIMBYs with rural properties masquerading as YIMBYs — to get smart and advocate for effective Yes-in-Everyone’s-Back-Yard policies.
Great discussion! Thanks. It sounds like you would support land-value taxes.
I would, indeed. Would you?
Yes.