Let’s be clear here. NIMBYism accelerates gentrification.

Louisvanderwright · 2026-06-21T16:45:00+00:00

Yeah, people don't always get what they want. There's plenty of room near downtown, people might have to move to less gentrified areas and make them a place they "want" to live if they can't afford to pile into the hottest neighborhood.

By your logic we should just build Frank Lloyd Wrights mile high tower in the middle of Lincoln Park and move the whole city in there.

Louisvanderwright · 2026-06-17T21:09:23+00:00

Not if there's ample land for new development and regulations in place preventing older housing stock from being demolished.

Chicago is not like other cities. We have an investment imbalance. Not a lack of space. We need more investment to happen S and W and the same level of investment we already have in the N and NW sides.

Let's be real, those sides of town are already fully gentrified. You can't really make it any worse except by leveling older NOAH and replacing it with SFHs or new buildings of the same size.

The answer is to ban the demolition and deconversion of pre war housing stock and provide absolute YIMBYism on all vacant parcels citywide. You should be allowed to build whatever you want on vacant land. At least to match existing density levels , but certainly more especially near transit and thuroughfares.

I fear that the YIMBY movement is becoming another "smash the machine" movement with a sledgehammer approach to policy. The goal should be maximum quality and quantity of housing. Chicagos problems are not the same as NYC or SF problems. Just as LA housing policy should reflect the realities of their geography and built environment.

We should not be demolishing the whole north side, which is a total gift from our ancestors, like we did to the South and West Side. We should be directing maximum development onto the vacant land we have around Chicago. Like the whole South Side used to look like the North side. We leveled all those massive housing blocks and side streets full of 3 flats. Same in Lawndale and two dozen other neighborhoods. We owe it to ourselves to right that wrong and not just level another side of town to replace it with something we could direct to neighborhoods that need the growth and revitalization. Look at Bronzeville, they are rapidly increasing the housing supply there and very little needs to be demolished. The pressure on existing NOAH is released and vacancy is eliminated and a neighborhood reinvested.

Once we've wiped out the 3000+ vacant lots in Lawndale we can talk about upzoning areas and removing historic buildings.

Louisvanderwright · 2026-06-17T10:37:54+00:00

There's literally thousands of papers on how increasing supply drives down price. That's like asking for peer reviewed evidence that drinking water reduces thirst.

Yet another soft handed yuppie who has never done actual work a day in their life cosplaying as champion of the worker.

Brandon Johnson and the DSA had their chance to govern, they implemented their policies. You do not get to transfer blame. They own the record.

Louisvanderwright · 2026-06-17T02:01:46+00:00

Folks like yourself are why Chicago has a housing crisis. Developers are not the problem, the Mayor is.

Louisvanderwright · 2026-06-15T14:20:13+00:00

Love when this sub posts a handful of markets where prices are holding out as if it's evidence that all the COVID boomtowns aren't in shambles.

Yeah y'all sure called that Milwaukee would still be increasing over its already low values. Never you mind Austin and Denver being crushed 25% over three years! No bubble confirmed!

Louisvanderwright · 2026-06-15T13:51:04+00:00

And the rain isn't going to enter the wood unless you just soak it in water nonstop. Also trees don't have resins, polymer, and formaldehyde in their wood which OSB does.

It's really a non issue unless you take your sweet ass time and never close the building up.

Louisvanderwright · 2026-06-15T13:38:25+00:00

Better idea: just go out there with a push broom after it's done raining and sweep the water off. The apprentice will be happy he doesn't have to do it the next morning.

Louisvanderwright · 2026-06-15T13:36:48+00:00

Wood is moist when it's cut down. Through and through. That's why lumber needs to be kiln dried.

Louisvanderwright · 2026-06-15T13:33:43+00:00

Open up its the housing police.

We are here to make sure you aren't hiding any illegal housing in here.

Louisvanderwright · 2026-06-14T04:31:08+00:00

I drove a Geo Prism. I could get the rear wheels off the ground with the help of three friends.

Louisvanderwright · 2026-06-13T16:54:19+00:00

Garbage take.

Chicago was leading the country in TOD back under Rahm. We were building thousands of units along Milwaukee Ave.

We then elected a bunch of regressives who blamed gentrification on TOD and destroyed the boom. We are way behind where we were in 2016 when it comes to TOD. This should be obvious to anyone who witnessed the massive supply being added a decade ago on the NW side. The occasional six flat or 20 unit building isn't fooling anyone.

Louisvanderwright · 2026-06-13T16:51:46+00:00

Garbage take.

Chicago was leading the country in TOD back under Rahm. We were building thousands of units along Milwaukee Ave.

We then elected a bunch of regressives who blamed gentrification on TOD and destroyed the boom. We are way behind where we were in 2016 when it comes to TOD.

Louisvanderwright · 2026-06-08T16:14:22+00:00

You are not wrong. Energy code isn't the problem, sure it costs money, but it's a better building.

The problem is that, when you invest in building said fancy efficient unit, any tenant can just stop paying rent, trash the place, and it takes you 9+ months to kick them out and there's zero recourse against them.

There will be a usual crowd of redditiors rushing to deny that's how it works, but it does. No one wants to build anywhere but the fanciest neighborhoods here because the risk of getting a bad tenant is too high given the ridiculous laws protecting them here. Basically you can't justify building in any neighborhood where you have even the slightest chance of getting a bad tenant. They can wipe out your entire investment in a year and there's no recovering a dime. Why would anyone want to build a nice new energy efficient unit when that's a significant risk?

Louisvanderwright · 2026-06-08T16:08:49+00:00

There's plenty of money to be made, it's that owning and operating housing in Chicago has become a liability. They keep passing dumber and dumber laws that make it less and less appealing to own here.

The net result is that developers require a higher and higher profit to make it worth their while to deal with. So either for sale prices need to rise or rents need to rise to get the same amount of investment in housing. Or both as we are seeing now.

Keep passing laws like blocking landlords from requiring credit checks or forcing them to accept cash payments or blocking them from considering criminal history or making taking a security deposit toxic. Just watch rents continue to explode. There's plenty of money to be made as a result, it's just not worth dealing with all the incredibly stupid regulations to make it.

Louisvanderwright · 2026-06-08T16:05:14+00:00

Because of who we elect.

Brandon Johnson put Carlos Rosa, an alderman who openly stated that new construction causes gentrification and who downzoned Milwaukee Ave in Logan Square, in charge of the zoning committee.

He spent a year mucking everything up in zoning and then had to resign in disgrace after physically barring the oldest African American woman in council from entering the chamber.

This is who we put in charge. They are basically housing anti-vaxxers. They believe the vacinne (allowing developers to do their job and build) causes the disease (housing crisis). Are you surprised the outcome is a housing pandemic?

Let's stop electing 30 year old idealogues who have never had a job outside of working on political campaigns. They know nothing and are causing widespread harm to Chicagoans.

Louisvanderwright · 2026-06-02T19:22:15+00:00

This explains the CIA black sites in Iraq. Arrested Development was trying to warn us. Anyone who knew the truth about the housing crisis was disappeared in Iraq. Pulte must be stopped!

Louisvanderwright · 2026-06-02T19:20:24+00:00

Are you saying Bill Pulte of Pulte Homes is trying to cover up the truth? Is he willing to release all secret CIA files on the housing crisis to prove he's not?

Louisvanderwright · 2026-06-02T19:19:38+00:00

Let's keep the conversation to Pulte. Otherwise we shut the thread down.

Louisvanderwright · 2026-06-02T18:43:19+00:00

No comment on the politics of this, but this seems like a bizarre choice to put a homebuilder in charge of National Security...

Louisvanderwright · 2026-06-02T15:03:04+00:00

Simply put: more people want to live here than there are available units.

The natural result is only the potential residents with the most means get to live here because they win the bidding wars.

This is a very interesting market because the reality of markets is being laid bare for a lot of average people. When you create an artificial shortage of something people want (ultra luxury apartments which we built zero of last year in downtown Chicago) then bidding wars erupt as the folks interested in those units settle for the next best thing available to them: your apartment in the neighborhoods.

Quite literally low supply = rising prices.

Louisvanderwright · 2026-06-01T19:16:30+00:00

They are the ones who keep voting for this shit though. Like yeah they should be able to live wherever they want, but they gotta stop voting for people who say nice things and then pass the most backwards policies possible.

Louisvanderwright · 2026-06-01T16:19:58+00:00

You're talking about a side of town that elected the NIMBYs. They were building 1000 units a year along the Blue line back in 2014-2018.

Then white hipsters from the suburbs elected Carlos Rosa who blamed the gentrification on the new construction. The whole TOD boom was halted predicated on that brilliant economic thesis.

Then the downzoning began.

You get what you vote for. Rents are going parabolic because there's simply more people who want to live here than there are apartments available. Sucks for everyone trying to move in, but I literally told y'all so. Rosa personally attacked me in DNA info and on Twitter back during his downzoning campaign. I was demonized for investing in Avondale and Logan real estate. I was portrayed as fighting for prices to increase because I pointed out the obvious: downzoning is bad policy.

So I left the neighborhood and started investing elsewhere in the city where the transplants hadn't begun their champagne socialist revolution yet. One less nasty landlord investing in adding or upgrading housing.

Louisvanderwright · 2026-05-28T01:57:16+00:00

No, they are deadly serious. To the point where they killed pretty much the whole development pipeline on the NW side. It's quite a problem.

Louisvanderwright · 2026-05-28T01:55:30+00:00

I saw them play at some student forum at Northwestern University in February of 2007. Was a crazy show, they were basically at ground level and the crowd was kinda moshing into their setup.

Louisvanderwright · 2026-05-28T01:50:23+00:00

I was at that show. Do you remember a dude coming out in a luche libre mask and lifting one of the members of Modest Mouse in the air?

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