NIMBYs and YIMBYs

The Daily Post is digging into the state senate candidates views with some panache -- or is it just cheeky reporting?  I like that they have sent out questionnaires to all five candidates and are writing articles based on the answers.  Jerry Hill's seat is an important one and we need a strong rep for the Peninsula to sit in it.  Here are two recent front page headlines

Stopping Scott Weiner's progressive fascist fantasy called SB50 is a top priority.  Per the Post article, Lieber and Masur "were more accepting of SB50 than the other three, but would have some amendments".  Masur has two "amendments" regarding some grace period for cities and getting rid of the sub-600,000 county population exemption.  The latter should be obvious to anyone.  Why exempt the counties with the cheapest land costs and hence the cheapest cost to build?  Duh.

The other three, Annie Oliva of Millbrae, Michael Brownrigg of dear ole Burlingame and Josh Becker of Menlo Park apparently were less supportive of SB50 in their answers to the Post.  They were also pretty clear in their answers to the last question in the survey, "Simply -- do you identify as a YIMBY or a NIMBY?"  Again, Leiber and Masur owned up to being YIMBY's while the other three walked down the middle line.  So in my view this is a three horse race--the YIMBY's should run in SF since things are working so well up there.

A letter writer from Palo Alto took the Post to task for asking "such a reductive question that encourages lazy, black and white thinking about complex issues".  I can sympathize a little with his concern, but we did get a clear "yes" on the YIMBY question, so we learned which candidates to give a clear "no" on.  Thus the question had some value.  Kudos to the Post for digging in.  We have a couple of months to go before election day, so keep it up! Correction: Just VIsiting caught me confusing the timing of the Council race with the State Senate race.  Primary in March, election next November (see his comments for good insight).

Comments

[resident]

I read that guy's letter and he made a very important point about the so-called YIMBYs. He made it clear that whatever they think is their backyard is also everyone else's backyard since we are all crammed into the Bay Area together. It's just a marketing ploy to call yourself a YIMBY since blowing out your backyard blows out everyone else's also.

[Isabella Chu]

On the contrary. YIMBYs believe people should be able to do as they like with their plot assuming it doesn’t hurt anyone. By that I mean munitions plant or tannery. Not a building my neighbor doesn’t love. The fascism (if we are going to use that word) comes from NIMBYs who want to dictate every aspect of what others can build on their *own* land.

[Just Visiting]

A lot of black and white thinking here...always productive when solving real world problems.

Primary is in March, yes? Then top two go to the general in November 2020. Question is whether two of the five Dems will qualify for November, or whether the likely one Republican on the ticket is #2 in total votes (as often happens; the math is unsurprising: five candidates split 75% of the vote, one candidate takes the other 25%). If the Republican takes the #2 spot, whomever wins the Democratic primary is a virtual certainty in November.

The bigger question is if you don't believe in more housing, presumably you don't believe in more jobs, i.e. economic growth? That's a stunning position for anyone to take. And does that also mean down-zoning all commercial property on the Peninsula to preclude new commercial buildings, taking away private property owners' economic bundle of rights?

Or is this problem more complicated than new building or no new building?

[resident]

YIMBY \yim-bee\ n (ca. 2015) 1. A virtue-signaller who proclaims to want development in his own backyard but has no backyard. 2. An advocate for socialist housing policies that diminish actual housing availability and values.

[Joe]

The Post is reporting that Scott Weiner has endorsed Shelly Masur. The article also notes that while Masur has been on the RWC (8 years), the city council has approved 4,000 units of housing. Having been down in downtown RWC multiple times over the last few months, I can tell you that it looks like Soviet block housing.......