NIMBYs: Well, no elected official will pass such a law. If they do, we won't re-elect them.
You: I'll find enough YIMBYs to elect someone who will make you pay up.
NIMBYs: You'll find nasty greedy developers who want to bulldoze neighborhoods and kick Grandma out of her home? Go for it. We'll let the neighbors know all about it.
(edit: to be clear, I am a YIMBY and I agree with you in principle. But NIMBY rhetoric wins big in local politics, and I don't know enough effective YIMBY rhetoric to counter it.)
I've seen an interesting solution to the rhetoric you rightly point out that embeds the GP's solution into intensification: the NIMBY's are offered not just a unit that replaces their home, but an additional unit besides (perhaps a square meter-for-square meter exchange, rounded up to the nearest residence unit) for rental income, and are put up in a new temporary residence that the development costs cover (and thus the new residents pay for). As for local politics, YIMBYs always outnumber NIMBYs on a project-per-project basis, so instead of an all-encompassing ruling, I posit the YIMBYs put up each individual project's area for vote by the general population, possibly even as a slate of projects, by the general vote instead of representative vote. Taxing jurisdiction (municipality, county, state, *etc.) tells everyone: continue to let projects like this pass, and we can hold down taxes flat to the rate of inflation for the next N decades; let it fail, and they will double within X years (due to infrastructure costs increasing as the square of the distance from the city center).
Which is why, imho, "developers should be made to pay off the neighbors who will be negatively impacted by the intensification" is better than the above plan. It would turn the ambivalent into YIMBY and leave NIMBYism to the fringe curmudgeons.
But a land value tax as a partial replacement for property tax is also good.
NIMBYs: No.
You: There should be a law.
NIMBYs: Well, no elected official will pass such a law. If they do, we won't re-elect them.
You: I'll find enough YIMBYs to elect someone who will make you pay up.
NIMBYs: You'll find nasty greedy developers who want to bulldoze neighborhoods and kick Grandma out of her home? Go for it. We'll let the neighbors know all about it.
(edit: to be clear, I am a YIMBY and I agree with you in principle. But NIMBY rhetoric wins big in local politics, and I don't know enough effective YIMBY rhetoric to counter it.)