The Collective Action Problem. Locals have a concentrated interest in preventing development. The broader public's interest in there being housing outweighs that, but it's diffuse. You see the same thing play out over and over again in cities around the world: it's so much easier to organize opposition to housing than support that no housing gets built.
Just take this a step further, bring "local" all the way down to "the person who owns the land". Let the locals decide what to do on the land they own. If they want an apartment, or a store, or a giant mansion in the middle of 20 acres, as long as they own the land let them do it! They're the most local individual, right?
In any HN discussion on housing there is inevitably a couple of people acting like you’re trying to build a krushchevka on their lawn. It’s like if we pretended all detached housing was like the infamous “groverhaus”[0]. The user you’re replying to appears to be getting a kick out of trolling as a NIMBY, slightly odd but it takes all sorts I suppose.
I mean, I spend a lot of time discussing this stuff with actual local development opponents, so arguments like these in the abstract just aren't that aggravating. I'm often happy for people to mount the most superficial arguments against things I believe in; might as well lay the flimsiness of the opposition out clearly.
This is my flavor of activism. FWIW, I've participated in activism to stop destruction of green space and nature preserves from commercial interests. Stopping the expansion of urban sprawl, mcdonalds and walmart, and destruction of greenery (whether it be housing or a self storage business) is something I'm passionate about.
If you don't want an apartment block on your lot, you don't have to build one! But if your neighbor wants to build one, what moral right do you have to stop them?
Developer: "Hi neighbor, would you like me to build a house so that someone can live in it? Do keep in mind that it would increase housing supply in your area, thus increasing supply and putting downward pressure on your property's value. That okay?"
Because "local issues" aren't just local issues, as much as NIMBYs hope to frame it that way for persuasion purposes. There are larger global effects. In this case, a crippling housing crisis, leading to disenfranchisement and alienation of large swathes of the populace, leading to human suffering, inequality, and political extremism.
Nothing, so long as their decisions don't abridge other fundamental rights. I can't speak to Ireland, but we've pretty clearly in the U.S. created a regime that fundamentally violates foundational principles of private property.
This seems like an unwarranted assumption. Some people are going to want to keep others out, other people will have a different attitude. Why would you assume the incentives run the same way for everyone?
When the phenomenon locks out development in an entire municipality, we can stop discussing it as a benign consumer/resident preference, and start discussing it as the public policy problem it is. That's where we're at now.
In the US, I look at it this way: once you get your own school system, you surrender the moral authority to erect barriers to entry for new residents.
They don't, but empirically the overwhelming majority of people who are property owners in some area will either do nothing or actively oppose new housing being built in their area.
The problem is which locals end up being those that dominate the deciding.
What we've seen happen over the decades is that those with the most amount of time and money available end up drowning out the voices of others, as they have more time to devote.
So inevitably older, wealthy, established interests end up dominating the discussion as younger, marginalized, working class people are too busy just trying to get by to engage in local planning.
Accordingly the local consultative process ends up favouring the older wealthy and established land owning locals and not the marginalized working renter class locals.
