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Sounds very dystopian. Did not meet state's goals.



"Sounds very dystopian. Did not meet state's goals."

This is worth considering.

I find it despicable that otherwise liberal, progressive people are willing to immediately discard democratic results simply because they dislike them.

There is nothing unconstitutional (CA) or unlawful about "NIMBY policies". However you may feel about them, they are valid, lawful policy goals in a democracy.

If you don't like them, you should organize to defeat them democratically.


> If you don't like them, you should organize to defeat them democratically.

I spend my free time doing some advocacy in this space. Heres a few things you might not know.

1) Nimby's dont derive power from the ballot box, they derive power from distinctly undemocratic processes like courts and arbitrary middle of the day planning meetings. The biggest NIMBY tool is CEQA, the "california environmental quality act" which allows anyone to sue a project for "environmental" reasons. The reasons are spurious at best (project would increase traffic at an intersection). Nearly all CEQA law suits are filed by neighbors who want to kill the project, or by unions on projects that aren't using union labor. The law suits are rarely won by the plaintiff, but they are nearly always successful because they delay projects long enough to get them canceled. The second tool is the design review meeting, which often occurs around 2pm on some random mid week day, when most people are at work and unable to leave their job. A single project may go through 5 design review meetings where retired nimbys with nothing better to do with their time berate new developments for arbitrary reasons (make it smaller, its out of character etc). In this system, its not "one person one vote" but rather "your power in this process is proportional to how much time you can spend at city hall during normal working hours on a recurring basis and grind it out over months and months of meetings"

2) Nimby policies are being defeated democratically. Our elected officials are realizing the harm that these policies are causing and seeing that an anti-nimby constituency is forming. SB 827 is a democratic solution to this problem.

3) Hyperlocal control (aka, cities deciding their own land use policies) is undemocratic, and essentially feudal. It limits the voices heard in democracy to the people who are able to afford living in the city in question, but excludes the voices of those who stakeholders in the city in some other way, say by working in the city, or commuting through the city. Local control allows cities to capture outsized benefits of development while forcing other cities to absorb the negative externalities. For instance, cupertino built the new apple campus for 12k workers, but didn't build any new housing for them. Now the rest of the bay area needs to deal with the reality of these 12k new highly paid residents looking for housing. Another example is Atherton suing to block caltrain electrifiction within its city limits. A single city is blocking an expansion of public transit that serves 60k riders per day. Why is this city allowed to delay the project and create a negative impact on all of these commuters? Why are they not beholden to a larger set of stakeholders than just the people that live within their boarders?


"Nimby's dont derive power from the ballot box, they derive power from distinctly undemocratic processes like courts and arbitrary middle of the day planning meetings. The biggest NIMBY tool is CEQA, the "california environmental quality act" which allows anyone to sue a project for "environmental" reasons."

I agree that these things are annoying and selfish (and possibly mean-spirited) but they are not undemocratic. They adhere to the laws and regulations of our state. They are the (unfortunate) results of a democratic process.

I reiterate my objection to non-democratic solutions to these problems.

Further, as someone who lives in a design-reviewed community in a NIMBY county (Marin), my firsthand experience has shown me that these roadblocks and inefficiencies are applied equally to everyone ... it's not like there is some class of people who get streamlined approvals and fast-tracked homebuilding. Everyone has to deal with the same bullshit, as far as I can tell ...




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