[HN Gopher] Marc Andreessen slams new multi-family affordable ho...
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       Marc Andreessen slams new multi-family affordable housing
        
       Author : DyslexicAtheist
       Score  : 45 points
       Date   : 2022-08-16 21:17 UTC (1 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (fortune.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (fortune.com)
        
       | 8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote:
       | Sadly, this is all very predictably Bay Area progressive. Yes,
       | I'll put up the BLM sign on my window, but no, you cannot build
       | anything for the riffraff near my Victorian, we wouldn't want to
       | endanger the historic character of this neighborhood.
        
       | Mimmy wrote:
       | Here's a link to the original Atlantic article revealing Marc
       | Andreessen's NIMBY-ism (also behind a paywall unfortunately):
       | 
       | https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/08/marc-andre...
        
       | ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
       | I have zero respect for this crypto grifter. Try enough number of
       | folks and eventually a few lucky ones like him emerge. Doesn't
       | mean he knows what he is talking about.
        
       | mushufasa wrote:
       | Aside from all the hypocrisy etc... isn't this concept just plain
       | wrong? Doesn't more housing + business increase the property
       | value of an area? I could see the first-order effects being a
       | reduction of surrounding property as supply increases, but the
       | second order effects of more people are almost always accretive.
       | The downtown area of a city is typically some of the most
       | expensive real estate.
        
       | themadturk wrote:
       | Boo-hoo-hoo, Marc.
        
       | helloworld11 wrote:
       | >"I am writing this letter to communicate our IMMENSE objection
       | to the creation of multifamily overlay zones in Atherton," wrote
       | Andreessen and his wife Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen in an email.
       | "Please IMMEDIATELY REMOVE all multifamily overlay zoning
       | projects from the Housing Element which will be submitted to the
       | state in July. They will MASSIVELY decrease our home values, the
       | quality of life of ourselves and our neighbors and IMMENSELY
       | increase the noise pollution and traffic." The comment, which was
       | originally reported by The Atlantic's Jerusalem Demsas, was also
       | reviewed by Fortune. Andreessen did not respond to either
       | outlet's request for comment. The other executives who opposed
       | the 58 housing units also did not respond to or declined
       | Fortune's request for comment. Andreessen's opposition seems to
       | represent a shift from his expressed views in an essay he publish
       | on his venture capital firm's website at the start of the
       | pandemic, titled "It's Time to Build." "We can't build nearly
       | enough housing in our cities with surging economic potential--
       | which results in crazily skyrocketing housing prices in places
       | like San Francisco, making it nearly impossible for regular
       | people to move in and take the jobs of the future," he wrote. In
       | the essay, Andreessen also noted that his perspective was
       | probably an uncommon one for someone of his ilk: "I expect this
       | essay to be the target of criticism."
       | 
       | The hypocrisy is delicious, and so typical of many ostensibly
       | progressive tech magnates in California (and elsewhere). NIMBYsm
       | at its peak.
        
         | jjulius wrote:
         | >They will MASSIVELY decrease our home values...
         | 
         | Your net worth is $1.7 billion, you can fuck off with your
         | concern about that one home of yours experiencing a dip in
         | value.
         | 
         | I realize this comment isn't in the typical spirit of an HN
         | comment, but that's just gross.
        
         | imapeopleperson wrote:
         | I don't understand why NIMBY hate is in vogue.
         | 
         | What's wrong with letting a nice town stay nice? We don't need
         | to turn everything to shit just to satiate socialist
         | schadenfreude.
         | 
         | Build it somewhere else
        
           | astrange wrote:
           | Socialist? Letting you build whatever you want on your own
           | property is the spirit of capitalism. NIMBYs are the ones who
           | want every town to be run by central planning.
        
           | echlebek wrote:
           | Guess you aren't a people person after all.
        
             | imapeopleperson wrote:
             | How so? Ruining a nice town hurts more people than it helps
        
               | AnonMessiah wrote:
               | How does more housing ruin a town?
        
           | t_mann wrote:
           | If that's how you think, then at least I hope you're not
           | writing massive essays asking (the rest of) _the entire the
           | nation_ to build more housing, even if it makes
           | neighbourhoods ugly.
        
             | golemotron wrote:
             | There's plenty of space in the US. Grow wide, not dense.
             | It's good policy.
        
           | standardUser wrote:
           | "Build it somewhere else"
           | 
           | Usually if the solution seems that simple, and you think
           | everyone else is an idiot for not realizing it, then they are
           | not the ones being idiots. It's a pattern we should all
           | consider when we "don't understand" a widely understood
           | concept.
        
           | VectorLock wrote:
           | >Build it somewhere else
           | 
           | Okay... _where_?
           | 
           | Thats the whole point of why NIMBY is reviled. Not In My Back
           | Yard.
        
           | lxgr wrote:
           | And I don't understand why the idea that the only way to keep
           | things nice is to never change anything, ever, is en vogue. I
           | find it incredibly uninspired and depressing.
        
           | armadsen wrote:
           | It's not socialist to allow private entities to build the
           | housing that the market demands on the land they own in order
           | to make money. It's much closer to "socialist" to have state
           | apparatus dictating that people not build housing.
           | 
           | I own and live in an 80-year old single family house. My
           | neighborhood -- one of the more desirable ones in my city --
           | has had a massive ongoing build out of 3-5 story apartment
           | buildings in the past 10 years. They don't bother me in the
           | least. It's either that or people can't afford to live here,
           | which seems bad.
        
           | helloworld11 wrote:
           | I have nowhere near the same problem with someone who claims
           | the things Andreesesen does in his angry rebuke of this
           | project, if that person doesn't at the same time preach for
           | elsewhere what they very visibly don't want to practice close
           | to home. Again, this is why NIMBYsm is so detested, not so
           | much because of its specific arguments but because of its
           | often overtly disgusting hypocrisy.
        
         | mstipetic wrote:
         | I really don't understand this mindset, shouldn't you stop
         | caring about money at a certain point? So what if one of your
         | houses decreases in value, you're set for life. Is it some
         | weird money obsession/disease?
        
           | VectorLock wrote:
           | Once you're in the tres commas club, the money disease is
           | fatal.
        
           | davidw wrote:
           | If you're fighting for market share with other companies...
           | IDK, fair enough. If you're trying to stop people with way
           | less money from having a place to live, that's just gross.
           | 
           | And it's false in any case according to some of the research
           | I've seen. It's housing. For people. Not a sewage facility.
        
       | throwayyy479087 wrote:
       | NIMBYism and it's consequences have been a disaster for the human
       | race
        
         | standardUser wrote:
         | And very specifically for California!
        
       | kieselguhr_kid wrote:
       | I hope he gets the opportunity to die mad about it.
        
       | anigbrowl wrote:
       | Well, he has just invested $350m in WeWork but for housing...
        
         | karamanolev wrote:
         | Probably way above median housing prices and also probably
         | above market rate for the size. Guessing backed by some smarts
         | / conveniences. Whoever _wants_ to afford those - good for
         | them. But we sorely lack affordable ones - no need to be fancy,
         | luxurious or new, just affordable.
        
         | lsllc wrote:
         | It's not exactly WeWork, it's Adam Neumann's new startup Flow:
         | 
         | https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/15/tech/adam-neumann-flow/index....
        
         | newaccount2021 wrote:
        
       | jwarden wrote:
       | I have always wondered my community (Park City, UT) is spending
       | money to build affordable housing rather then just paying
       | subsidies to make existing housing more affordable. The estimated
       | cost for the last development under consideration was something
       | like $600,000 dollars for one unit, and that was a few years ago.
       | I bought my market-rate condo at under $300,000 a few years
       | before.
       | 
       | There are plenty of lower-cost units available, and subsidizing
       | rent/purchase of these would allow a small benefit to be realized
       | by a large number of qualified people, rather than a huge benefit
       | to a small amount of lucky people who win the lottery that is
       | used to allocate the small number of inits that exist.
        
         | mrep wrote:
         | Prices are a little higher lately though. I paid $850k for my
         | 650 square foot condo back in march. How big those $600k units?
        
         | Macha wrote:
         | Because the population has grown more than supply in most of
         | the western world, leading the existing housing supply as a
         | shortfall situation versus demand that exists. Therefore by
         | subsidising purchases and thereby increasing the purchasing
         | power of each buyer, you just end up removing one limiting
         | factor on sellers increasing prices, and most of the subsidy
         | ends up pocketed by the sellers in the form of increased house
         | prices, which is both inflationary and not the policy goal of
         | these programs.
        
       | [deleted]
        
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       (page generated 2022-08-16 23:01 UTC)