Hacker News Reader

Comment by lopmotr | Hacker News Reader

Isn't it strange that people always seem to complain about a city or town suffering some problem as if it was a person. If you can't afford to live there, then don't. If you benefit from high property prices, enjoy it. If you grew up there and feel sad that you can't afford to anymore, then recognize that property rights exist to give the owners priority access to land so anyone who doesn't obtain property ownership has to expect that one-day they'll be forced out. They can create a bohemian utopia somewhere else if they want that. Why should it be tied to some arbitrary geographical area?

View on HN

Housing and transportation politics are severely under-appreciated. Your local zoning and public transit authorities have far greater impact on your life than anything happening in Washington D.C., yet federal politics get all the airtime. Decisions about local government are made by very small groups. Until recently, the politics of development have been project-by-project skirmishes between the developer and a few opposing neighbors. The rest of us were not necessarily aware that this was happening, or how the pattern of outcomes in hundreds of these block-level skirmishes over decades could hurt us.

"Complaining," as you put it, gets people thinking and talking about the issue in a general way, and it doesn't necessarily take that many people doing so to create radical change in municipal governance. There's potentially a large constituency that's fine with seeing more multifamily structures and on board with supply-and-demand market dynamics, but doesn't necessarily know or care about their municipal regulatory regimes until the impact is explained. Activating these potential pro-growth voters is a worthwhile project. It worked on me.

> They can create a bohemian utopia somewhere else if they want that.

Anyone who has the means to create a bohemian utopia generally has no need to do so.

> If you grew up there and feel sad that you can't afford to anymore, then recognize that property rights exist to give the owners priority access to land so anyone who doesn't obtain property ownership has to expect that one-day they'll be forced out.

That's...kind of an oddly circular argument. "If you don't like the situation, recognize that the rules are set up to reenforce the situation."

Rent control created an disincentive to build new rentals, increasing the cost for new renters....laws against building made it worse.

People complain because they work low wage jobs in the city and need a place to live. If they don't have an affordable place to live they won't be able to do the work that needs to be done.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com