NIMBYs Aren't Just Shutting Down Housing

> they don’t even think we should be allowed to argue for more housing. They don’t think we are even entitled to a fair hearing. We should all recognize that silencing your political rivals is beyond the pale and that complaints like this one, even if they end up going nowhere, can have a chilling effect on activists and ordinary people who want to exercise their rights.

Don't worry, there are sooo many free speech absolutists that will come out of the woodwork to protect this dastardly attempt to stifle speech through abuse of legal procedures.

No? Where did all those absolutists go?

This “practicing without a license” tactic has been used before. This case where a city fined someone for making a mathematical model of traffic lights. [ij](https://ij.org/press-release/oregon-engineer-wins-traffic-li...) This will keep happening unless there are consequences for those in government that abuse their authority.

>one of them filed a complaint with the California State Bar, saying that I was practicing law without a license.

This sounds suspiciously similar to what happened to Chuck Marohn from StrongTowns.

This is probably the one issue that has the biggest online/offline divide. Online, I hear nothing but YIMBY-ism. Is there any centralized online NIMBY advocacy?

> After finding out that the city council was considering a housing element that would have bowed to NIMBY pressure, we sent two letters to the city, reminding it of its legal obligations under state law to approve the upzoning — and that a failure to do so would open the city up to a lawsuit.

This seems entirely reasonable to me, and I'm grateful that a group like this exists.

But I'm a YIMBY, so of course. If lobbyists were influencing my municipality from afar on the basis of laws that I disagreed with, I can imagine feeling frustrated, conspiratorial, or disenfranchised.

Maintaining a consistent commitment to liberal democracy, the legal system and due process is one of life's great challenges!

> one of them filed a complaint with the California State Bar, saying that I was practicing law without a license. They said because I’m not an attorney (which is true), I was offering “legal analysis,” which only licensed attorneys are allowed to do.

Do lawyers still really believe they can just throw some legal jargon at laypeople and we will just get confused and back down? Like not only do we have every single law and legal precedent on a device in our pocket, we also have AI's that can instantly answer questions. I am sure shit like that might have worked before 2010 when you would have to scramble to figure out if what they were saying was true or not, but it just seems antiquated to attempt it nowadays.

I'm so NIMBY that I moved my backyard from a county with 4,000 to 1 people per square mile. A big attraction was the dark nights for amateur astronomy. Then the state decided that this was the perfect place to build 100 megawatts of 630 foot tall wind turbines with a blinking red beacon on top of each one.

My best bet now may be to move to orbit like S.R. Hadden. But it'll have to be high orbit, away from the satellite constellations.

Isn't there a first mover advantage? Whoever breaks the strike would be sitting on gold? Think if a low density city in California said "OK we are zoning up" and everyone there could sell out for $$$. It's only useful while the prices are high. Seems like a good idea anyway

They’re not just x. They’re y.

> They want to shut down our right to be heard in the first place.

there's no such right, never been. Just because one has a right to speak, doesn't make it an obligation for others to listen

Yimby vs Nimby is yet another divisive jingoism - simply putting tags on things and then using them as if significant.

The situation is more complex. The forces about housing right now are incredibly destructive. Rich people want to make more money by building expensive homes. In this case NIMBY is the correct solution. In other cases Rich People want to prevent affordable housing. In this case YIMBY is the correct solution. But blindly applying these terms provides a cover for a complicated situation. We have cults of personality, and now we have cults of Jargonism. Neither helps us.

Being outraged because lawyers don't want you to speak is great. The issues legal and housing issues are far more complex and important.

The author needs to rename their organization to YIYBY (yes in your backyard).

The nationalization of every policy on earth needs to stop.

Rancho Palos Verdes is a small established hillside community with equestrian 1 - 5 acre lots. The absurdity of adding 650 homes to this area is astounding. Right next door is Hawthorne which has plenty of space for such housing. Activists like this person, lobbying a city they have no relation to, to enforce an overreaching state law, are part of what is making people and companies leave California.

It's this really YIMBY or actually YIYBY ? It's difficult to tell checking the whole website.

Edit to be more explicit: are the people that sent/asked to send the 2 letters to the City Council residents of Rancho Palos Verdes?

Going around to municipalities that you are not a resident of and saying "we will sue you into obeying state law" is basically being a tattletale. Nobody likes that. I'm sympathetic to more housing, and I think state laws should be followed, but I'm not sympathetic to the author.

Also, I just dislike activism in general, which seems like it generally is trying to force people to do things they don't want to do through passing laws. I get that there is sometimes a need raise attention. But generally it seems like activists are very one-sided, agenda/ideologically driven. It also feels like they are trying to find meaning in activism (yeah, we forced other people to do what we think is Right), instead of healthier, more traditional forms of meaning.