[HN Gopher] Lawsuits Block Thousands of Seattle Homes, $39M for ...
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Lawsuits Block Thousands of Seattle Homes, $39M for Affordable
Housing
Author : jseliger
Score : 77 points
Date : 2023-02-27 21:38 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theurbanist.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theurbanist.org)
| iForgotMyPW wrote:
| nimbys gonna nimby
| deanCommie wrote:
| Irrespective of any economic or legal incentives or factors here,
| this comes down fundamentally to a lack of social trust in north
| america.
|
| It doesn't happen the same way anywhere else in the world like it
| does in US&Canada.
|
| People don't care about other people. "I got mine, ** yours."
|
| It's a problem without an easy solution.
| conqrr wrote:
| This rings so true. Simplistic but can explain most things that
| are wrong in the US. For an immigrant I see this pattern
| everywhere from Corporates, Housing, Immigration, Homelessness
| making friends. Selfishness is in the fabric of society here.
| newaccount2021 wrote:
| [dead]
| Kharvok wrote:
| How can you build social trust when there is no commonality
| with your neighbor? Without some commonality of principles how
| can I trust that any social contract would be recognized or
| understood. How do people flourish in that environment?
| gameman144 wrote:
| I'm a big fan of the work some cities have done in zoning "urban
| villages", and as a homeowner who's also aware of the need for
| more housing, these strike a pretty reasonable compromise in my
| mind.
|
| Essentially, pick some areas that are in-demand, have reasonable
| transit amenities, and are underbuilt. Zone them to be able to
| build slightly more dense housing. Then as those villages grow
| more, expand the radius outward and allow _more_ density in the
| core areas.
|
| I think it's reasonable to not want a highrise next to your
| house, but a two-story apartment building is easier to digest.
| Likewise, if you buy a house in one of these urban villages,
| you're pricing in the reality that something big might be built
| right next to you.
|
| The radius-outward approach lets buyers put their money where
| their mouth is: if they _never_ want any increases in density
| near them, then they can pay to be far from these existing
| villages. If in the future different locations become desirable
| for density, the slow radial-out buildup of zoned villages lets
| homeowners adapt reasonably well.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| Urban villages are a nice concept and they offer a doable,
| gradual way to upzone American cities along existing arterials.
| I've been a big fan of them on paper. The problem is often the
| implementation. Urban village zoning can place tough
| restrictions on market-rate development (they usually have
| carve-outs for BMR or affordable housing with fewer
| requirements) which discourage development. Urban villages
| aren't immune from NIMBY pressure either, especially if they're
| being built in an area that was previously only zoned for
| commercial or light industrial uses.
|
| [1] talks about San Jose's urban villages which are often built
| in formerly light industrial zones and some of the issues with
| getting them off the ground. It's a shame because I feel like
| urban villages satisfy the need for upzoning in a way that
| doesn't completely jar the urban fabric of an area.
|
| [1]: https://www.mercurynews.com/2021/09/13/why-some-say-san-
| jose...
| jimbob45 wrote:
| Affordable housing is little better than the drinking fountains
| for colored people from years past. You don't build _affordable_
| housing. You build housing and then prices decrease from the
| increase in supply. If you 're feeling extra bold, you build
| _dense_ housing to massively increase the supply.
| cwkoss wrote:
| I think the idea is that the margins are better on luxury
| houses/apts/condos (less plumbing per sq ft, etc), so
| developers are incentivized to build at lower-density than is
| optimal for alleviating housing supply issues.
| hackerlight wrote:
| The concept of a "luxury apartment" is an oxymoron. It's a
| rhetorical tool used by NIMBYs. Those apartments that get
| labelled this way are barely sufficient to fit a family and
| cost less than the median house, yet the median house would
| never be labelled a "luxury house".
| noirbot wrote:
| How does that not make sense? It's totally possible to have
| an apartment that's luxurious. Luxury doesn't mean "large"
| - look at luxury cars, or watches. Most other major luxury
| products are almost defined by how expensive they are and
| how they're not meant for families. Luxury is defined by it
| being more expensive and presumably nicer to be in than the
| average thing it's competing with. A luxury apartment isn't
| trying to be a house, any more than a luxury house is
| trying to be a hotel.
|
| That's not to say that most "luxury" apartments would
| actually qualify as "luxury" in the sense of most other
| luxury goods, but they are generally nicer than other
| apartments in the area, or at least newer.
| eapressoandcats wrote:
| For the most part developers focus on luxury because they are
| limited in how much they can build and there is enough pent
| up demand willing to pay. Also they have rules like minimum
| sq ft in cities and minimum acreage in suburbs.
| tehlike wrote:
| This is kind of true, but misses an important point. Builders
| won't increase the supply if unit price is close to unit cost
| as their profit would be narrowed.
|
| This is to say, if materials, labor etc is expensive,
| affordable housing may not be affordable either.
| eapressoandcats wrote:
| Generally speaking, you'd expect newer housing to be on the
| higher end no matter what, because people with less money
| would tend to buy/rent older housing, in the same way that
| all but the cheapest new cars are mostly bought by the more
| well off.
| noirbot wrote:
| I'm not sure this is exactly true though. There's plenty of
| (common) ways to build intentionally expensive housing, whether
| that's large minimum square footage or fancy shared amenities
| that up the cost of living there.
|
| There's certainly demand for those things, and it's probably
| more profitable to saturate the most expensive "high rent"
| portions of the market first, but it's worth having incentives
| to also build smaller 1-bedroom places, or complexes without a
| pool, or without hardwood or stone floors.
| eapressoandcats wrote:
| The economics of this have been well observed in the car
| industry. Car makers prioritize luxury cars with higher
| margins when there is a restriction on how many cars they
| manufacture (due to supply or legal constraints), but if
| there is abundance, the lower end of the market is well
| served because there's just more overall volume there.
| [deleted]
| vel0city wrote:
| I'm reminded of a recent housing development that was planned in
| the city where I live. They wanted to build a few hundred near
| zero-lot-line single family homes and townhouses. It was on land
| that was previously zoned industrial, so it required a pretty
| lengthy approval process.
|
| The neighborhood next to it fought the proposed zoning changes.
| Too many houses near by, increasing traffic, too close to the
| creek, etc. Probably more likely they were worried about property
| valuations changing. Ultimately they got their way, and they
| never got past the planning stages for that neighborhood.
|
| However, it didn't stop development on the property from
| continuing. Since it was already industrial, they went ahead and
| started building an ugly. massive, tilt wall warehouse on the
| property. It didn't need many reviews and got approvals very
| quickly.
|
| So now instead of some nice houses, a park, and a few small
| retail spots to help increase the massively supply constrained
| housing stock in the area we're going to have a probably busy
| warehouse with large trucks coming and going constantly deep in
| the heart of what is otherwise a largely residential area. Nice
| going, NIMBYs. I bet that warehouse is going to help your
| property values quite a bit.
| panny wrote:
| Low income housing is associated with more crime, but
| warehouses are not. The residents were probably satisfied with
| the result.
| legitster wrote:
| So, the title here is a bit misleading. It sounds like the
| particular lawsuits in question are all being flatly thrown out -
| the delays are normal parts of the design review process or self-
| imposed.
|
| > He said Mayor Harrell and Councilmember Dan Strauss are
| awaiting those findings before introducing legislation that would
| reform the design review process, including exempting design
| review from affordable housing projects or projects that
| contribute to the MHA fund
|
| If the point of the design review process is to prevent
| architectural oversights or zoning mistakes, then surely it
| wouldn't matter if the building project payed into the city
| council's pet fund?
|
| They should either admit it's a dumb process that doesn't
| actually do anything and get rid of it for _all projects_ , or
| stop having zoning laws all together if following the letter of
| the law is still going to put you into a 4-year backseat driving
| session anyway.
| rcpt wrote:
| Why don't the people who care about their view simply build a
| taller tower?
| bobthepanda wrote:
| In Seattle if you want to put your money where your mouth is,
| you can legally purchase a parcel's unused "air rights" (the
| unused development capacity).
|
| It's most commonly used in single family areas, where homes buy
| them from other lots to preserve their views.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| This is no different than people in HOAs who try to block solar
| on the rooftops of their neighbors, or those blocking utility
| scale solar in their community on land they don't own, out of
| aesthetics or their feelings. You can't negotiate with them,
| you can only persevere (and hopefully you're resourced to do
| so).
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| Washington addressed this by passing a law that solar panels
| cannot be prevented by a HOA.
| nostromo wrote:
| You can't. Most cities have very restrictive hight limitations
| for all the reasons you can read about in this article --
| complaints about congestion, traffic, shadows, etc.
| yellow_postit wrote:
| During the South Lake building boom I recall seeing many
| "construct additional pylons" posters as a tongue in cheek
| advocacy for the condo buildings complaining about losing space
| needle views.
|
| As an alternative there's things like the protected views
| framework [1] which in London has enshrined which vantage
| points can see St Paul's leading to some of the odder skyline
| architecture like the Walkie Talkie building.
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_view
| yellow_postit wrote:
| Does any city have a well functioning design review process or
| are they all captured by incumbents to slow down development?
| DrewADesign wrote:
| The Boston setup works great. The folks on the Boston
| Redevelopment Authority make a ton of money on the DL.
|
| Oh did you mean work well for the _general public?_
| jfk13 wrote:
| Do you have evidence to support that accusation, or are you
| just cynically slinging mud?
| sokoloff wrote:
| From my limited exposure to Cambridge, MA's, it seems well
| balanced to me. As an abutter, I've gotten notices of a few
| different projects nearby and chosen to attend the meeting on
| each one (mostly to learn in case I wanted to go through the
| process for our property sometime; in each case, I went having
| submitted written comments in favor of whatever the neighbors
| were proposing to do, even in a case where I think what they
| chose is frankly pretty ugly).
|
| In the course of attending those, I usually got to sit through
| 3-5 others each time. All of the discussions seemed quite
| reasonable and almost all were approved as proposed or with
| only minor changes. When an abutter is making obviously
| nonsense arguments, they get to say their piece and then the
| project is approved; when there are genuine concerns about the
| proposed variance, the design board seems to help the applicant
| reach a state that balances their desire to use TJ's property
| and whatever the underlying reason for the rule they're seeking
| relief from is.
| MrFoof wrote:
| In the case of Cambridge, MA, a reasonable stance is _kind of
| required_ if the city is going to materially grow further.
| Without it, Cambridge would stagnate if progress was halted
| by quagmires of bickering. The only real thing of note is
| larger apartment buildings are largely put in the SE and NW
| ends of the city.
|
| For those who've never been, Cambridge is one of the densest
| cities in the entire US -- ~122,400 people over 6.4 square
| miles of land -- even though it's predominantly three story
| tenements throughout, and still maintains a 1950s Americana
| "Main Street USA" running through the core of the city.
|
| -- -----
|
| Though a fair number of the Boston "suburban cities" (save
| Brookline) have been re-reviewing their zoning and review
| processes. They all know they're landlocked and out of room
| with regulations that prevented further building what was
| already there. It's been nice to see that become increasingly
| relaxed to allow things to get done.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Design review in general is bad, if only because requiring
| individual approvals on projects is cumbersome to do for every
| single thing.
|
| For example, projects compliant with zoning in New York can be
| built as-of-right and all review processes are administrative
| (e.g. fire code compliance)
| BryantD wrote:
| Seattle has a particularly bad one. As far as I can tell it's a
| general problem -- our light rail expansion has been slowed
| down by the same tendency to wait until there's near-unanimous
| consent.
|
| Edit: I reminded myself elsewhere that SF is also pretty bad as
| this goes.
| nostromo wrote:
| Despite the all complaining you'll see on the Urbanist,
| Seattle's process is pretty good for a big city -- which is
| probably why it's been one of the fastest growing prior to the
| Covid exodus from downtown. Seattle has recently had more
| cranes deployed than any other metro in the US, despite being a
| much smaller city -- not exactly the bane of the YIMBY.
|
| Design review can slow things down, sure, but they eventually
| do get built.
|
| These buildings will be around for 100+ years, taking a year to
| get the design right for everyone isn't the end of the world.
|
| And there are a bunch of easy things we could do to get more
| housing made, with fewer drawbacks like rushing out massive
| towers, like allowing duplexes or fourplexes in single-family
| neighborhoods.
| WaxProlix wrote:
| > like allowing duplexes or fourplexes in single-family
| neighborhoods
|
| This is such a middle of the road, easy, low-drawback
| compromise that I can't believe it's not happened already.
| jackmott42 wrote:
| It is amazing how one person can have a view that developers
| have all the power and can never be stopped. Others have the
| view that NIMBY's have all the power and nothing can get
| developed.
|
| Yet somehow everything ends up paved over with a high rise on
| it eventually, like it or not.
| erulabs wrote:
| But that's _exactly_ the point - not everything ends up with
| a high rise on it. Clearly, not enough of a percent of
| "everything" has a high rise, or there would be no housing
| shortage! You feel there are too many, but if there was no
| desire _for_ high rises, no one would build them!
| myroon5 wrote:
| ~3/4 of Seattle land doesn't really allow new housing:
|
| https://www.seattletimes.com/business/real-estate/city-
| repor...
| [deleted]
| ryukafalz wrote:
| > Yet somehow everything ends up paved over with a high rise
| on it eventually, like it or not.
|
| I'd like to know what definition you're using for
| "everything" here because the vast majority of residential
| land is zoned exclusively for single-family homes and indeed
| that's mostly what gets built.
| jamestimmins wrote:
| This is patently untrue. Cities like LA and SF _should_ have
| high rises everywhere, but instead they have 1 story homes
| from 1955 selling for $2 million.
| zip1234 wrote:
| They don't even need high rises--change the 1 story 800sq
| foot bungalow into a 2 story 4 plex and all the units can
| have more living space than the original and 4x more people
| can live somewhere---but that is banned in most places even
| 88913527 wrote:
| Besides the financial district, SF seems like there'd be
| topographical complexities in some areas with large-scale
| projects. Perhaps pencil towers, like Billionaire's Row in
| New York, would work.
| jandrese wrote:
| LA and SF seem trapped by their design. Sure they need way
| higher density, but that would require transit that handles
| density better than cars on a road. But in order to build
| high capacity transit they want people to prove that it
| would be fully utilized and that won't be true if you're
| servicing areas that are currently all single family homes.
|
| So high density housing can't be build because there is no
| transit, and high capacity transit can't be built because
| there is no high density housing.
| jamestimmins wrote:
| Yes and no. That's certainly a factor, but outside of
| work, people also tend to stay pretty close to their
| neighborhoods (I've been able to walk to my grocery store
| in the last 3 neighborhoods I've lived in). There's also
| been substantial work to build new mass transit, but
| housing hasn't increased substantially around the transit
| stops.
|
| Edit: I'm referring to LA. My impression is SF is small
| enough that this isn't a big issue.
| screye wrote:
| At approximately 5x5 miles, SF is one of the smallest
| American cities while having among the worst housing
| crunch in the world.
|
| SF doesn't need high speed metro. Cheap options like BRT,
| trams & separated bike/scooter lanes solve most of its
| variable demand. In SF, the transit vs housing conundrum
| is trivial. Build transit, and remove height restrictions
| in a 1000-ft radius in each stops location.
|
| LA is harder to remedy. The city is so catastrophically
| designed, that any fix will bleed money before it ever
| stabilizes. At the same time, LA's housing isn't as
| expensive as SF. So, they could start with focusing on
| public transportation exclusively. (BRT + park-n-rides
| seem perfect for LA) and worrying about the zoning later.
| BryantD wrote:
| SF is trapped because there are well-organized community
| groups in the Western half of the city that will actively
| block density increase for the same sorts of reasons
| described here. You can get to higher density
| incrementally, but not if it's always stopped at the
| beginning.
| hackerlight wrote:
| Developers can bribe individual politicians but NIMBYs hold
| all the power. NIMBYs control the votes. Developers don't.
|
| > Yet somehow everything ends up paved over with a high rise
| on it eventually, like it or not.
|
| Also this is just false.
| __derek__ wrote:
| That's a contradiction in terms, AFAICT. I was excited to find
| this in the post:
|
| > Meanwhile, a bill moving forward in the legislature
| introduced by Representative Amy Walen (D-48, Bellevue) would
| ban design review for housing projects statewide.
|
| I have this bookmarked to contact my reps and senator to join
| as co-sponsors.[1]
|
| [1]:
| https://app.leg.wa.gov/billsummary?BillNumber=1026&Year=2023...
| nerdponx wrote:
| Two new apartment buildings recently went up where I live.
| Both have roughly the same number of units inside, and the
| units are of similar size. One is ugly, and the other blends
| nicely into the neighborhood, even incorporating some green
| space and planted trees. There's no reason why the ugly one
| couldn't have been nicer looking, other than that the
| developers didn't bother to make the place look more like the
| surrounding buildings, and nobody required them to do
| otherwise, even though it would have been a trivial extra
| cost.
|
| Dogwhistle for NIMBYs though it may be, something akin to
| "neighborhood character" is a legitimate thing that residents
| benefit from ( _including_ and perhaps especially lower-
| income residents who would otherwise be priced out), and its
| loss is absolutely an externalized cost in terms of qualify
| of day-to-day life. Green spaces, shade trees, etc. are
| nontrivial in their importance to residents, and the
| importance of deliberately preserving or expanding those
| features actually _increases_ as density increases, because
| otherwise they will be lost and possibly gone forever.
|
| So I don't think it makes sense to be an absolutist about
| design review. But there do need to be some checks in place
| to prevent abuse by incumbent property owners. I don't know
| what those would look like, but I also know that a treeless
| street walled in with apartment buildings and no local shops
| or other amenities makes for a sad shitty neighborhood.
| Housing equity needs to be about the complete lifestyle, not
| just about making more physical square feet that humans can
| theoretically inhabit. Otherwise we're just repeating a
| denser version of the same development mistakes that gave us
| stroads and suburban sprawl.
|
| Of course, "existing condo sues other condos" isn't quite the
| same thing. The loss of the view _is_ legitimately an
| externality, but here I think it comes down to a question of
| whether the current owners are entitled to their view, or if
| it was always a temporary benefit that would exist only until
| other condos were built.
| __derek__ wrote:
| Can you name a functioning example of design review,
| though? My experience with them is specific to Seattle, and
| the program absolutely does not work as your comment hopes.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| I think a common feature of places I have seen with reasonable
| construction processes is that they do not have control of
| construction approval at the city level.
| lvl102 wrote:
| I am just curious why we are allowing foreigners to buy homes in
| the US when we have a housing crisis. Here in New England,
| Chinese/Russians came in and started buying homes in the past two
| decades. Not only that, we end up educating their children for
| free in our public schools. Why? They don't even let our
| companies operate in their country.
|
| Edit: they should not be able to invest in real estate in the US
| if US citizens are not afforded the same rights in their county.
| Reciprocity. It's not asking for much.
| lbarrow wrote:
| I would simply avoid having a housing crisis by allowing people
| to build more housing. Seems pretty win-win to me.
| burnished wrote:
| You had me until you started complaining about educating
| children. Who cares where they come from? Feed 'em and learn
| 'em.
| lvl102 wrote:
| Public schools = public goods. That's all goodwill built over
| decades in many communities. Why are we just giving that away
| for free to people with interests against the US? Nope.
| hackerlight wrote:
| You could just choose to not have a housing crisis, you know?
| It's not the foreigners fault that you insist on outlawing
| construction.
| moomoo11 wrote:
| I'm against parking money in other countries that result in
| empty homes.
|
| Home ownership should be only for people who are permanent
| residents (they can own up to 10 years or until they receive
| citizenship, to cut down on loophole abusers) or citizens.
|
| Why should any country let mega rich people from other
| countries (let's be honest if you have money in 3rd world
| country you're most likely doing something sketchy..
| otherwise you'd move here to work as a swe or something) who
| have no intention of living here.
|
| Source: I'm a naturalized US citizen originally from 3rd
| world, grew up poor and I know income inequality there it's
| far worse than what exists in US. I'm against dirt bag tier
| rich people from taking advantage of our system. We have
| plenty people doing that here already lol.
| lvl102 wrote:
| I would not say anything if they allowed US citizens to do
| the same in their country.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| they don't pay taxes for the school systems?
| [deleted]
| GalenErso wrote:
| Related article. The build nothing country:
| https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/the-build-nothing-country
|
| "We no longer have the luxury of giving our people a shadow
| subsidy by freezing their neighborhoods and cities in amber.
| Spiraling housing costs in any city with real economic
| opportunity, a floundering energy transition, and the inexorable
| migration of manufacturing to more development-friendly countries
| have become so severe that we must dispense with our collective
| illusion that America will always look like it looked in 1975.
| Slashing the thicket of red tape that prevent development, and
| subordinating local interests to the needs of the nation itself,
| are no longer idle dreams -- they are immediate necessities. If
| we insist on continuing to be the Build-Nothing Country, our
| once-mighty middle class will sink into a genteel poverty, and
| someone else will build the future on the bones of our
| civilization."
|
| And the top comment in this Reddit thread:
| https://old.reddit.com/r/Economics/comments/11deckj/maybe_tr...
|
| "Consider how much of our modelling is based on the assumption of
| voluntary transactions. We say that all have a right to life and
| liberty, but is that really true?
|
| Every single space on planet Earth is owned by someone. In order
| to exist, one must occupy space. You can't exist outside the
| legal boundaries that those owners have every interest in
| upholding. As recently as a century ago, you could and two
| centuries ago it was actively encouraged. Any land you could
| occupy was yours to claim (risky as it may be).
|
| But now... From the very moment of birth you must find a landlord
| who is willing to let you exist. If that landlord demands a
| lifetime of labor in exchange, what choice do you really have? If
| no landlord voluntarily chooses, despite incentives to the
| contrary, to charge much less, what are you but a slave? There
| isn't an easy solution, we all share this world and it is
| impossible to live truly independently...
|
| But the solution is certainly not to demand a lifetime of toil at
| the whim of a handful of owning families in exchange for the
| right to exist. All the while creating profits that help them
| sustain their power over you."
| Dig1t wrote:
| >Every single space on planet Earth is owned by someone.
|
| I mean technically yes, but also not really. There are so many
| places in the US that are insanely cheap to live. You can buy a
| whole house in many small American cities and live the dream on
| a McDonalds wage, you could even pay it off early if you were
| frugal. I can find you plenty of houses in the US for sale
| right now for < $20,000. You can get multiple acres of space in
| West TX for < $2000. There is a lot of land available for
| people who want to build a life for themselves.
|
| Your argument only applies to fancy coastal cities where there
| is a large pool of wealthy (most people working in CA are in
| the top 1-2% income of the world) people competing for the same
| space. This leads to obvious questions such as: does everyone
| have a right to live in the same space? Should property rights
| exist at all in places where many people want to live?
|
| IMO, it's not slavery if people are trying to live in a place
| by choice.
|
| We should, of course, do everything we can to build more
| housing and provide space for as many as we can.
| gretch wrote:
| I don't think this is true. The actual raw amount of land on
| plant earth is abundant, it's just that much of it is
| unattractive to modern humans due to not being hooked up to
| internet/electricity and not near interesting things like
| shopping or concerts.
|
| I did a quick search and found many articles where states are
| encouraging people to homestead in unoccupied land as a form of
| development. (I will grant that this article was last updated
| 2014 and probably some things have changed, but it's hard for
| me to believe that it went from 100% to 0% over that time.)
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/2010/11/16/7-Towns-Where-Land-is-Free.h...
|
| I think it's actually really easy to go out into the middle of
| nowhere, have no master and claim some land, but this isn't
| really attractive as a way to live (actually homeless people do
| it downtown and even then it's kind of tolerated). People from
| 200 years ago didn't have a problem with it though...
| erik_seaberg wrote:
| The solution to "landlord demands a lifetime of labor" is to
| fix the shortage. Permit more construction and landlords will
| have to compete for tenants. We could easily build a hell of a
| lot more housing than we have today:
| https://twitter.com/conradhackett/status/1594939920166141952
|
| Hell, there are cheap vacant houses out there right now, they
| just aren't in the healthy labor markets where the working
| class need to live.
| Kharvok wrote:
| This is an important check to developer greed. You have to be
| able to maintain quality of life with new development.
| doom2 wrote:
| Shouldn't Escala then be torn down for the very reasons they're
| arguing against the new construction?
| tersers wrote:
| This is a bad-faith argument. I have heard it throughout
| council hearings on housing in my city. NIMBYism itself is a
| prime example of greed and I don't see how it's any different.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > This is a bad-faith argument.
|
| You can't just declare this, you have to say why.
|
| > I have heard it throughout council hearings on housing in
| my city.
|
| The fact that you hear it all the time might mean that a lot
| of people actually believe it.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| > Arguing against the project, Escala's attorneys claimed that
| shadows from the new buildings would result in "cancers,
| cardiovascular disease, metabolic disorders and mental health
| [sic]."
|
| In a world with an ironic sense of justice the court would accept
| their argument and extend it to then requiring Escala's
| demolition so that _their_ neighbours would not be affected by
| shadows.
| nayuki wrote:
| > shadows result in cancers
|
| So all basement rental units are going to be banned, right? /s
| 8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote:
| Don't give SF NIMBYs any ideas.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _one of the most active opponents to these new apartment
| projects is the association of condominium owners at Escala_
|
| Sounds like a good target for peaceful extrajudicial activism.
| (Protests. Preferably loud.)
| steponlego wrote:
| Not everybody wants new tenements in their nice neighborhood.
| [deleted]
| idiotsecant wrote:
| Classy. At some point that 'nice neighborhood' was low-density
| farmland or widely spaced residential that no doubt didn't want
| to see new packed urban housing in their nice neighborhood. If
| you live in a city housing around you will steadily increase in
| density. You need to live with that, you own your property -
| you don't own everyone else's.
| steponlego wrote:
| These lawsuits are an excellent refutation of your premise. I
| don't want tenements anywhere near where I live. And I will
| work as hard as necessary to prevent their installation.
| imperfect_light wrote:
| Seattle notes:
|
| Escala condos were the model for the protagonist's apartment in
| 50 Shades of Grey
|
| https://www.mansionglobal.com/articles/fifty-shades-seattle-...
|
| Also across the street from Lola's, where Bezos often has
| breakfast.
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