Source: I show up at things like city council meetings to support housing as a YIMBY.
Saying that I agree that some people will just find any excuse possible to resist. But their opinions are just as valid as the next guys and this is why we need to find compromise. I support thoughtful development and in making the dense part of town more dense.
Towns that do not grow wilt away and die. There are absolutely towns that didn't grow across America. You can recognize them by their landmarks like the closed factory, the "fod lease" signs along Main Street, and so on.
>Not to come off wrong but people want to live next to people of a similar class and standing as their own. Renters (and landlords) don't have the same skin in the game as home owners.
This and your reference to "the dense part of town" tend to point to a different meaning of "don't have the same skin" than the initial read suggests. Even if that was not your intention, it's absolutely the practical effect of reinforcing old injustices by claiming the rich white areas should remain that way while the denser, inevitably more diverse areas have to absorb all change.
Source: I show up at the same meetings. And for the record, am agnostic on the [NY]-imby scale. I just wish the Y contingent wouldn't be so self-satisfied in their pretension that anytime someone questions the wisdom of latest pork barrel / snake oil proposal put forth by the development industry -- why, it's because they're a selfist, narcissistic you-know-what who just hates progress and loves to whine.
People need a place to live. It is driving so many problems in our society that they don't. Sprawl causes massive CO2 emissions. Homelessness. People forced to move away from where they grew up. Businesses that struggle to hire.
And "my" backyard is accurate: people being told by others what to do with their own property is a big part of the problem. If it is your backyard, no one is going to force you to build anything in it.
Clearly, not all new development is perfect and awesome all the time, but one thing we used to do is to allow it: and then, crucially, allow it to change and adapt over time into something better.
It's not snake oil because it's new. But because of the blatant lies (and occasionally more subtle distortions) in the developer's project proposal, staring everyone right in the face.
Nor is all new development bad, nor old development ipso facto good, by any stretch. We get the issues, and understand the tradeoffs.
And I, at least, don't demonize YIMBYists. I just wish they'd stop being so smug, and find a better way of supporting their position than simply responding to any expression of opposing viewpoint with facile generalizations and tired caricatures.
Oregon passed HB2001 a few years back, which re-legalizes up to 4-plexes anywhere single family units are allowed. Good stuff with bipartisan support!
And this lady was out there in the paper wailing about how we were going to see tricycles in yards https://ktvz.com/news/bend/2021/09/13/some-bend-residents-op...
And you see the unsatisfiable concerns over and over and over again. It's pretty rare to see a "yes, this project looks ok, but could we add this thing to it or do this other thing a bit differently?", where the asks are within reach and not impossible.
Anything less than a confirmed Yes vote (perhaps with caveats, but ultimately: a Yes vote) to whatever the developer proposes is, in the YIMBYist book, equivalent to the objections of that lady in Oregon.
Most public comments are simply unrealistic or "no!", though.
No project is going to be perfect, ever, and we're desperately in need of more homes, so yeah, let's build more!
The tricycle lady wasn't just some random person, either, she used to be on the planning commission, and helped kill a number of badly needed apartments in the 'nice' bit of town.