In my middle- to upper-middle-class mill town there's a proposal to turn a disused historic mill building into luxury apartments and residents are fighting hard against it. The main stated reason is traffic, although it's unclear to me if having a bunch of apartments will generate noticeably more rush-hour traffic than when the mill was operational. I think some folks are also put off by the term "luxury apartment" too, as this area is becoming less affordable than it once was. So they counter-productively fight against increasing the housing supply, which would actually create downward pressure on rent, even for non-luxury places, as folks in more modest apartments might be tempted to move to these fancy new places, creating vacancies for others.
I think a lot of people just don't like change, so they fight it - they want their town/neighborhood/whatever to be just the way it was in the "good ol' days", which just isn't realistic. The mill jobs aren't coming back, but we do have white collar workers willing to pay for attractive places to live. Why not re-use the damn mill building?
Traffic from housing is generally fairly minimal. Traffic and parking are the big NIMBY fears and are generally unfounded.
"Luxury" apartments are, 9 times out of 10, just brand new apartments that happen to be in an expensive location.
It's kind of like cars - a brand new Toyota Corolla is not the cheapest car out there. A 20 year old used one is going to be a lot more affordable. But you don't get old ones unless you build and sell the new ones to people who have the money to buy new cars. If there are not enough new cars, those people will drive up the price of the used cars.
Indeed, this is exactly what happened during the pandemic.
As someone who lives in a former mill town myself, feel free to write if you're curious about organizing in favor of housing. It's a lot of fun!
> I think a lot of people just don't like change, so they fight it
This is it, hilariously. Locally the railroad started building a rail yard, and everyone got up in arms and the city and county was howling and a meeting was called and the rail company politely explained that they're regulated federally and are building a nice berm around the rail yard, but there's nothing you can do to stop it.
And everyone stopped complaining, the yard got built, and nobody cares.
We need more of the straight bribery that used to happen around nuke plants - if the plant is approved, everyone gets $1k off their property taxes for X years or whatever.
In my middle- to upper-middle-class mill town there's a proposal to turn a disused historic mill building into luxury apartments and residents are fighting hard against it. The main stated reason is traffic, although it's unclear to me if having a bunch of apartments will generate noticeably more rush-hour traffic than when the mill was operational. I think some folks are also put off by the term "luxury apartment" too, as this area is becoming less affordable than it once was. So they counter-productively fight against increasing the housing supply, which would actually create downward pressure on rent, even for non-luxury places, as folks in more modest apartments might be tempted to move to these fancy new places, creating vacancies for others.
I think a lot of people just don't like change, so they fight it - they want their town/neighborhood/whatever to be just the way it was in the "good ol' days", which just isn't realistic. The mill jobs aren't coming back, but we do have white collar workers willing to pay for attractive places to live. Why not re-use the damn mill building?