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Comment by TulliusCicero | Hacker News Reader

> dividing communities over how to rein in housing costs.

Have they tried letting people, y'know, make more housing?

Almost invariably, the answer is no.

> When it comes to building more housing, residents have mounted opposition to some efforts over concerns about everything from traffic congestion to wildlife migration patterns.

...and there it is.

> “Yes, we need affordable housing, no question,” Engelken said. “It needs to be smaller to start with”

Jesus Christ. "Yes we need more housing, but how about not that much more housing? Does that work?"

NIMBY mentality in the US is a disease.

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This. It didn't start with the pandemic or WFH - in the two decades I spent in Colorado, I heard similar stories from just about everyone I met who lived (or more often, used to live) in the various ski towns.

I loved living in Colorado, but during the pandemic took the opportunity to sell and move out - it was clear to me that things weren't going to get better any time soon. And for folks talking about a "crash" or "correction" - that happened to some extent after 2008; it mostly just resulted in big investors snapping up a lot of property at a discount and holding onto it until they could sell at a profit - didn't really help at all for the most housing-constrained areas.

Everyone has a bit of NIMBY in them. I don't think it's a useful or constructive pejorative at this point.

No doubt we need more housing, but not every growth plan is a good one and perhaps we'd get closer if we stopped the name calling.

No. A huge part of the problem is that people act like it's just normal to fight new housing in a housing crisis, that you're simply entitled to stop people from building houses in the city where you live.

Obviously not every development is good -- I don't want to be tearing up delicate wetlands for condos -- but if the problem is just "there'll be more traffic" or "we need more infrastructure", then we need to be asking how to support more people, not if we should support more people.

Normalizing NIMBYism is what got us into this situation into the first place.

We have the same problem here in Canada. There should be a higher-level authority deciding how much municipalities should zone since housing is now a national problem.

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