Waiting for NIMBY

The logical contortions NIMBYs will go through to justify what is at bottom almost always aesthetic opposition to new housing construction can be pretty astounding:

1)The most politically influential arm of “real estate capital” isn’t DEVELOPERS, it’s incumbent homeowners. Opposing private housing construction gives them a massive windfall that hardens their general opposition to new housing, and the idea that this opposition won’t apply to public housing with even more force is absolutely delusional.

2)In the United States, “we should not build new housing” and “we should not build new housing until housing can be fully socialized” are positions with no material difference.

3)If NIMBYism could magically create mass support for all-public housing construction and destroy the opposition, it already would have happened in the many jurisdictions that make constructing new housing extremely-difficult-to-impossible. Needless to say, this has not happened and will not happen on any foreseeable time horizon.

Lowering housing prices requires more construction of dense housing, period, and none of the opposition to this can be defended from any serious left perspective.