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Most people, even YIMBYs, support the right of a community to impose some restrictions on activities with large externalities. Only the most extremist libertarians think anyone has the right to build a fish cannery or paper mill in a residential area.
Why does this have to be an extreme libertarian position? The free market essentially solves the problem associated with this. Neighborhoods that stink of fish will be cheaper to live in and those who are not okay with that can pay for the privilege.
I live in a city that does indeed allow the unthinkable idea of fish canning (slaughterhouse) plants in the middle of the city, they just get surrounded by dirt-cheap housing and businesses (and people do live there). It's still cheaper overall to live in a place that doesn't smell like meat because not fucking with the markets really does wonders.
The issue of course, and I'm broadly on the YIMBY side, is that the moment that slughterhouse gets plopped down it imposes economic costs on some with diffuse benefits for all. The people who paid not cheap prices for their houses are out a significant portion of their largest asset and the diffuse beneficiaries will not compensate them.
Tough luck? Why do we have to be so soft on homeowners? It's not like a fish canning factory can just plop out of nowhere, large disruptive projects take years/decades to build and the intention to build as such is broadcasted well in advance.
We don't extend this level of hand-holding and thought about compensating business owners or owners of large amounts of stocks. Those things can rapidly lose their value as well and consist of a large part of individuals assets.
I think you'll find people quite unwilling to just eat huge unfair economic hits like this. They'll lobby whatever powers they can to prevent their loss and ultimately they will succeed, even if they have to go to extreme lengths. If you don't let them do it through cities they'll do it through some other scheme. You're talking about taking the equivalent of several years of work away from people's net worth, they'll bomb the construction if it comes to that.
The ONLY reason the middle class has jumped head first into real estate investment is because of the government consistently enacting zoning regulations to deliberately benefit homeowners at the expense of everyone else, which likewise benefits a community’s most consistent voters. Anyone else who borrowed an amount of money 3-4x their salary as part of a 30-year loan, wiped down the countertops, then cried crocodile tears when their “investment” didn’t make them millionaires, would rightly be told they were an irresponsible idiot.
If it didn't cost them half their take home salary they might be a little less defensive, but that's not the system we live in and no one is going to pretend they're already living in the system you propose while you wipe away a significant portion of their net worth, and for many many people this is not even an asset that appreciates all that much. For every person who has seen their house go from $300k to $2M over thirty years there are many more who saw their house go from $300k to $300k over the same time span. It's like social security, we can talk about how in principle it's a bad and wasteful system but people didn't get a choice to participate and it's already eaten huge portions of their income for decades, you're damn right they're not willing to bear the entire burden of reforming the system alone.
Go ahead, find a way to balance the diffused costs so that we can all be better off, but don't just steal my money, distributed it evenly and pretend you didn't. Because we'll take every god damned cent back by force.
Homeowners created the system we live in such that it directly benefits them. So I’m fresh out of sympathy when you play the “that’s just the way it is” card, as though homeowners are blameless victims of circumstance. Again, crocodile tears don’t move me.
Any other investment, caveat emptor is in full effect. But when it comes to real estate, oh no, suddenly we need RULES. After all, poor Real Estate Mogul Wannabe #1,298,745 needs to eat. It’s not his fault they opened a gas station across from the slums he purchased at auction.
I still remember when they opened a perfectly legal Royal Farms across the street from the entrance to my quiet suburban neighborhood. Of course, the high maintenance, self-serving losers in my neighborhood went ballistic. I also remember getting a flier on my mailbox that read, “GOOD CHICKEN MEANS BAD NEIGHBORS.” It’s been 5 years now, and all that happened was I got a very convenient gas stop on the way to work, while the property value has doubled. May the morons I share a neighborhood with get ass cancer.
Do you have anosmia? Royal Farms reek like the worst blend of gasoline and fried chicken.
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