The NIMBYs Were Right in Many Ways…But Not ALL: How SEO-Optimized Online Media Polemics and Hobby Activism are Preventing Forward Movement on EVERYTHING.

In the fall of 2019, I had a call with famed YIMBY journalist Conor Dougherty of the The New York Times. This was the first time I’d spoken to Conor, though we’d exchanged messages and ran in similar circles since I’ve long-been associated with the YIMBY politics — build more units being his cri de guerre.

On the call, I outlined five or six real-estate and business stories that — to this media expert’s opinion — would have been groundbreaking. NYC’s CRE and residential markets were collapsing. There was a full-scale retreat of big capital from the global cities that had just been built up. Investors and developers seemed content to let multi-billion dollar projects like Hudson Yards flounder because they already laundered enough cash to make the project worth their while.

I happened to be featured heavily in some, but not all, of the stories. I was bringing attention to the “system’s” (i.e. private banking and capital market investors, mostly) indifference to the plight of, well, humans. I was using my illustrious network — many of whom were also Conor’s network (see below for examples) — to call out the Neros lounging in Scarsdale and South Beach, watching the world’s global cities they built up and profited from burn down.

Conor was not particularly interested in me or my stories. In the midst of multiple, unprecedented market meltdowns, on the line with a guy (me) with a shit-ton of deep insights into the roots of these meltdowns — what was Conor interested in? His book tour.

He had the tour and he said he was shifting to economics writing at the Times. I guess he fixed housing.

On the conversation, I detected something in Conor’s voice and tone that I detected of many of his generation:

1. Conor cares more about memes than facts or people. He has a brand and a cause. He immortalized it in a book, apparently. When people have a fixed story, it leads them to preclude information that creates dissonance with that story, because revisions. Conor postures like he’s the YIMBY punk rocker who stands for more units for the real people! To be clear, the contention that housing regulation in the U.S. (and California, especially) is FUBAR is 100% correct. In California, you have millionaires paying fewer property taxes than middle class folks due to arcane and ruinous tax laws. But Conor’s “more of any units” salve is so fucking stupid. There needs to be a thorough discussion about what type of units are built and and where. Due to the hyper-regionalism of housing economics, one city’s —or even one neighborhood’s — housing situation can exist as its own little universe. A New York developer will use YIMBY-extrapolated market dynamics from SoMa or Tokyo to build Extell’s One Manhattan Plaza on the Lower East Side, one of Manhattan’s last bastions for neighborhood continuity and affordability. Jackasses like Ben Carlos Thypig of Open New York use Conor’s logic to celebrate these abominations as victories for the people. We need to find out how many units are out there that are unused because global wealth — which has been locking up millions of units across global cities for investment purposes — has skewed profoundly skewed the numbers.
2. Conor doesn’t know jack shit about climate. I unfortunately have a heavy-hand in inspiring the “car-free” greenfield abomination that is Culdesac (since it’s in Tempe, “dun-field” is probably a more apt name). I knew one of their founders, Phil Levin, long before the venture started (we actually watched the 2016 elections together at the Embassy Network in SF). I was apparently responsible for the introduction to the project’s architect. Conor later writes a glowing piece [of dung] on Culdesac car free real estate car free housing 15 minute city Arizona [Editor’s note: SEO optimized activism] about the project and used the “car free” aspect of Culdesac as a proxy for its eco-cred. He neglected to mention that nearby Phoenix had 144 days over 100 degrees in 2019; that heat and drought are only expected to continue [July 2021 update, they have]. He doesn’t write about the embodied energy of that project or any of the other “new units” he promotes (NB: I am not anti-new-development!!!!). He’s not talking about the schlocky, over-priced cookie-cutter as-of-right multifamily buildings that are getting built as the result of his reportage. He’s not writing about so many things, one might conclude that he is either woefully ignorant, has an agenda (probably to sell books and do shots of NIMBY tears rather than being outright bribed by developers), or some combination thereof.
3. Conor’s brand of ignorant-polarizing ire has resulted in no effective policy changes, and may have worked against them. Polemics like his are a microcosm of national bipartisan, click-bate-politics where each side is goaded to pull harder on their side, while the opposite side does exactly the same. I had interactions with Laura Foote in the YIMBY Action HQ back in 2016, and the loquacious activist made it clear she was principally interested in stoking ire, and impressing unimpressive men. Finger wagging and shock politics are a lot easier to engage in than results. The only winners from all this ire-rest — for some time now — are a handful of (mostly) old, rich, white people with addresses in New York, Napa, and Palm Beach but are funded with Delaware corps (NB: I have Delaware corp. But I’m relatively young). This polarized message keeps things from agreement and hence effective reform. This polarized message is what I hear every-time I see Scott Wiener wagging his long pious finger after failing to get yet another State Bill (e.g. 827 and 50) into the books. California has only started to budge on its legitimate housing crises, but mostly from the fallout of COVID, not any political deftness. It’s likely a case of too little, too late.

It’s now July, 2021. I wrote the above as a draft a couple months ago, stopping because I didn’t have a conclusion. I’m not publishing it now because I have one conclusion, but I’ll plant some seeds about what this could all mean:

1. Don’t trust the media, straight up. We’re living in a world that can contort reality so profoundly, there’s almost no reason to trust major media sources.
2. Be weary of commodified, institutionalized, hashtagged movements. The professional activist lives to engage in petty fights, not fight and win big ones. Because many are coddled, privileged millennials suffering from low self-esteem, they write an out-sized part for the benevolent institution that supports their Environmental Science, Social Work, etc. secondary degree. So far as I know, no one trademarked “The Civil Rights Movement” or “Workers’ Movement” and substantive change occurred. YIMBY-NIMBY antagonism, just like its archetypal model, bipartisan Dem-GOP discourse, is a recipe for more discord and less conversation. Knock it off!
3. Maybe is a great answer. There’s power in embracing inquiry and uncertainty. It’ll make you look smart like me. Try it on before spewing your (likely perverted, paid-for, uninformed) opinion.
4. No will be the answer to most questions in a post-climate reality.
5. Use the eyes, ears, nose, brain, gut, and brain — subjecting it to as many inputs and data sources as possible — to come to your own conclusions. Climate and economic crises don’t need the reportage they once did. They need leadership. As always, I’m around for that part. And a good time, ;-).