There’s a growing movement of renters, working in conjunction with real estate developers, aiming to blockbust urban neighborhoods.
It’s called Yes In My Back Yard (YIMBY). It creates political support for developers in the name of “affordable housing.” It calls homeowners NIMBYs (for Not In My Back Yard) and denigrates their concerns. It’s a great way for developers to make money and it’s splitting cities apart.
If you’re renting this isn’t your backyard. Renters have no stake in the future of the places they rent. Owners do. Neighborhoods of renters are less stable than those where owners occupy houses. The owners of rental housing often resist repairs, and those who live in rental housing don’t take up that slack. It’s the difference between the chicken and the pig at breakfast time. A renter may be interested. An owner is committed.
Developers don’t care about neighborhoods. They care about building, about selling the resulting property, and moving on. They may give lip service to amenities, but those are costs they have no intention of paying. Young people putting their futures in the hands of developers are playing a dangerous game. It won’t end up well for them.
Affordability isn’t a local problem and it’s not fixed with increased density. Private equity has bought out the homes young people used to buy for themselves and made them unaffordable. If we want to change that we need to look at the tax laws that encourage capital to buy rental housing. Cut those incentives. Raise the incentives for building and for owning your own home.
The housing shortage is mostly artificial. There are local imbalances of supply and demand. But America’s population isn’t increasing rapidly and there’s no absolute housing shortage. We can use more density in urban centers because rural areas are being abandoned. But that doesn’t explain today’s housing crisis. That’s caused by landlords squeezing out tenants and tenants unable to find property they can buy.
Attacking a renter’s neighbors helps no one. Attack the incentives instead.
