Hacker News Reader

Comment by renewiltord | Hacker News Reader

[flagged]

I think opposing housing was a mistake, but just to add some context, the result of this was that the city purchased the land and made it a public park (https://www.denvergov.org/Government/Agencies-Departments-Of...).

* now is spending 70 million of public funds to make it a park https://denverite.com/2025/11/05/park-hill-park-bond-funding...

Well it is already open as a park, but yes they are spending a lot of money to make it nicer I guess.

To call it a park is a stretch. It's a dilapidated golf course, and last I checked it can't be open over night because of liability? Like I'm happy it's open, but I would say it's a far cry from being on the same level as Cheeseman or City :/

That whole situation was bad. I don't think anyone is happy with that situation. A developer was going to give us (some) affordable housing, and a "free" park. Instead now we're paying 70 million for the same park.

In a POSIWID sense, American socialism’s purpose is to prevent affordable housing and create parks. Indistinguishable from what rich neighbors of a plot of land would like, coincidentally.

The purpose of a system is what it does, but here you're saying that the purpose of [American socialism] is what [the Denver DSA] does.

Interestingly, many DSA chapters follow the same playbook so the Denver DSA is fairly representative of the DSA, which is the largest socialist organization in the US. So either the DSA is not socialist, not representative of American socialists, or is representative and American socialists are a device to stop affordable housing and create parks.

Which proposition or conclusion above do you disagree with and why?

I don't really know anything about the DSA so I can't agree or disagree with any of this. I guess I misread your comment, I interpreted it as "Based on the events described in this thread, American socialism's purpose is ...". It seems like your statement is actually based on a very broad context of the DSA's history and activities, which are not common knowledge, so it would have been nice to include some of that if you wanted to make such a sweeping statement.

You're also making another implicit claim here that DSA chapters have never had any impact other than stopping affordable housing and creating parks, which I think would be difficult to defend. After a minute of Wikipedia research, I see that at least nine members of Congress were active DSA members during their tenure, and obviously had other accomplishments. For example, I see that DSA member Major Owens was in Congress for 24 years and was a significant factor in passing the ADA.

I am certainly happy to amend it to "The DSA's primary purpose in America in the last twenty years is to oppose affordable housing and convert the sites of such housing to parks".

There is so much buildable land in denver it makes no sense to start burning the furniture to keep the place warm

That ‘golf course’ was unused land protected by a conservation easement. There were other options for housing development.

Why not the conserve the land outside of cities where people want to live?

Based on what I know about Denver, people there want to live outside the city, not in Denver itself. Everyone I know that moved to "Denver" actually moved somewhere like an hour's drive from downtown, and not because they couldn't afford something in the city. Here's a map of average housing prices in the area: https://www.arcgis.com/apps/dashboards/3e87d9f631dd470ab05ab.... There are some expensive neighborhoods in the city, but I think this map looks very different from most other American cities.

Really interesting. Thanks for sharing.

Boulder is surprisingly low. From my experience, it’s on the more expensive side for single family homes. I’m curious what’s driving the info in that dashboard.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com