LMFAO.
You could lose your house in a natural disaster and NIMBYs would still show up to oppose housing for you because it might “change the neighborhood character.”
The funniest part is the city basically admitted they were forced to approve it because California state law overrides local NIMBY politics now.
Parking spots are expensive. The last study I saw mentioned $30k-80k per spot in California, and that was 2019 dollars.
So whenever I see people clamoring for "affordable" housing near transit, I wonder why we're not doing more to clarify the costs of private parking to the public. If 2 parking spots are making a $650k unit $150k more expensive than it would be otherwise, why not let people know that?
So
What if we simply require developers to submit a second initial proposal for development near transit that details the median cost per unit for whatever they could build if they built 0 parking spots on their development?
Does anyone live somewhere that does something like this?
I live in Spartanburg County, SC. It's nothing special, just your average cheap Sunbelt county with lots of jobs and cheap land and thus lots of development as well.
For years I have said that, although we're not as urban and groovy as Greenville County next door, at least we're not NIMBYs like them! Greenville County always had fireworks at their county council meetings where the NIMBYs opposed every proposed subdivision. It wasn't that way here in Spartanburg County.
I recall reading through the county council minutes in amazement. Entire large subdivisions (think hundreds of homes) being approved with nary a public comment in opposition. We always had NIMBYs, but they were mostly content with screaming into the Facebook echo chamber and not coming to council meetings.
But then came along data centers. For whatever combination of reasons, this is exactly what the local NIMBYs needed to get off their couch, stop screaming into Facebook, and start screaming at county council meetings. (Like seriously, the council actually had cops on hand to escort out geriatric hecklers when needed.)
I keep hoping that now that they've defeated the local data center proposal, they'll go back home and chill, but unfortunately, they appear primed to win seats in our upcoming primaries. I'm now anticipating that the data center snowball will roll into years of NIMBY ascendency in our local politics.
Anybody else got this going on in your town/county/area?
YIMBYs, we are winning the cultural war
Accessory Dwelling Units, or ADUs, are small, fully-functional secondary homes located on the same property as a main home (usually in the backyard) that serve as carriage houses or "granny flats." But as wildfires have displaced residents in the West, ADUs have filled a vital need where housing has proved scant or expensive. Correspondent Lee Cowan looks at the practical and legal challenges to making ADUs available.