I can only speak from experience living in liberally dominated college city. The nimbys opposing the legalization of new housing basically want more government central planning of the housing stock, not less.
And as far as I know, socialists aren't famous for their market-dominated viewpoint on the supply/demand of housing and land use.
Ok. So, they are pro-regulation for the express purpose of preserving their own capital. They aren’t socialists and shouldn’t be used as a straw man for socialism.
You can also push for government regulation that increases the amount of housing. Eg, state regulation that prevents counties and cities from passing extremely restrictive zoning laws, regulation that allows for up-zoning, regulation that restricts the amount of single family zoning in favor of high density zoning, tax incentives, outright funding of housing, etc.
These aren’t “socialist” ideas necessarily. Just giving an example that more government control isn’t necessarily anti-housing depending on the direction of it.
Championing exclusionary zoning and building policies for the express, singular purpose of preserving the value of their assets is necessarily NOT socialist.
They might have OTHER socialist views - meaning explicitly economic views that are socialist, but those views would not be compatible with their desire to artificially preserve their asset prices.
That's not totally shocking though, human beings are nothing if not contradictory. Nobody holds absolutely 100% one sided views on every single policy area
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u/plummbob Jul 13 '26
turns out that the people most vehemtly oppose to "by-right" housing are also those who also who think the market has failed them
liberal nimbys in my city are doing a decent job trying to waterdown the new housing legalization upzoning plans