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I don't live in San Francisco, and our local YIMBY group is getting things done, thank you very much. We helped nudge our local representatives towards passing HB2001 in Oregon, which will add to the supply of more affordable homes. We've helped get apartments built locally. We speak regularly with our city councilors.

It takes a lot more than being 'highly online' and YIMBY groups are doing that work.

Now that duplexes are allowed, how long does it take to get one approved?

Still too long. The bill has not been fully implemented as cities have a few years to adapt it into their code.

But you just keep pushing where you can.

I don’t even understand this comment at all. So the solution to NIMBY activists controlling local government is to do... nothing? You know YIMBY is itself an activist movement right? Activist isn’t a code word for “crazy left wing people I don’t like”, it just means people who are hyper politically active (moreover N/Y IMBY is not clearly demarcated on political lines IMO).

All you have done is said the person you are replying to is an idiot for YIMBY but the only argument is that they support Breed. That’s definitely part of the problem but in SF the board of supervisors also hold a lot of power and those are more important. Also, Breed is supported as a least-worst candidate.

If you don't understand the comment "at all," I suspect replying to you won't resolve the issue.

>All you have done is said the person you are replying to is an idiot for YIMBY but the only argument is that they support Breed.

That's not all I've said. Read slower.

"Read slower"

Write clearer

More clearly?

Since you understand politics so well you understand Mayor Breed can't unilaterally write housing policy. She has to work with the Board of Supervisors. The Board is dominated by a group of politicians that aren't really YIMBY supported as far as I know.

Since your reading comprehension is so high, you'll agree then that supporting yimby groups won't be sufficient to generate the credible threat that the original comment suggests will be sufficient to dissuade investors

Since yours is, you'll see that the original comment didn't say it would be sufficient. Those were two separate sentences.

This is one sentence: "Support groups like https://yimbyaction.org/ if you want to 'stick it to the investors'."

I'm done here. Feel free to defend bad activism or advance whatever incorrect semantic interpretation you have of our exchange.

Do you have any ideas to propose then, as actionable advice for activists to improve their effectiveness?

Yes. Do better than this: "If there's a credible threat to build plenty of housing, they'll move on."

What's needed is a mainstream, national name-n'-shame strategy that identifies specific officials and offices that are causing the block in housing. Make the target highly specific and concrete, and ensure the messaging is big tent -- don't make it anti-municipal government. Make it anti-zoning.

It's a waste of political bandwidth that most Americans know the name of at least one random House Rep that represents their partisan opponent either because Fox News or MSNBC, but none of us has any idea about the bureaucrats who are making terrible anti-housing policy decisions every day and driving up the cost of owning shelter.

Read this article and tell me how the amount of pro-YIMBY energy hasn't yet turned this into a major, populist outcry against specific people and specific government agencies: https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/place/article/The-quest-...

Maybe it's because people disagree with you--people who like where they live and don't prefer radical changes and ideas. Maybe you should go talk to some of them and learn about what they want and why they prefer stable policies.

What you call "anti-housing" others call "pro-stability."

I think this assumes that diversity of opinion among an electorate is what's responsible for one movement's ineptitude. The movement to change zoning can improve AND reasonable people can disagree about it's outcome. If your only point is that there are pro-zoning people who disagree with me -- that point is obvious and does not conflict with anything I've said.