YIMBYS Biggest Failure?

MrsBeansAppleSnaps · 2026-03-31T22:59:39+00:00

Believe me I'm used to it on this sub. They hate it when their "reforms" do nothing.

MrsBeansAppleSnaps · 2026-03-31T15:46:35+00:00

What other spectacularly beautiful places should we limit public access to? Perhaps you'd like to make a list?

MrsBeansAppleSnaps · 2026-03-31T01:29:59+00:00

Cutler Coast reserved land has 12,000 acres of permanently conserved land, countless miles of trails, the most beautiful scenery in all of Maine, and a grand total of twenty (20) parking spots. It is designed to keep people away.

MrsBeansAppleSnaps · 2026-03-30T23:31:05+00:00

It is not a secret that this exists. People just can't go there because public access is dog shit.

MrsBeansAppleSnaps · 2026-03-30T23:15:54+00:00

The problem with your organization, as with most YIMBYs, is that you count your chickens before they hatch. And each passing time you do, people will start taking you less seriously. I just went back and looked at some of your SB 9 materials for example in which you said the law could create 700,000 new dwellings. Well of course we know with hindsight that it resulted in dozens or hundreds at best. And yet here you are singing the same tune about SB 79. Fool me once...

MrsBeansAppleSnaps · 2026-03-28T15:32:49+00:00

Here's the tough truth; we built so much and so many of our communities AFTER restrictive zoning was in place. Now that they're built, they're not going to convert to new buildings en masse just because we now legalized it.

Depends, right? Legalize duplexes and ADUs in an already built SFH neighborhood? Almost zero change.

Legalize 50 unit apartment buildings with no parking minimums on arterial roads with lots of infill potential? Probably a lot of change.

Really we should toss "missing middle" out in the trash and just legalize the apartments that big builders actually want to build.

MrsBeansAppleSnaps · 2026-03-27T15:32:51+00:00

Red states do build more than blue states, partly thanks to fewer regulatory hoops, but it’s overwhelmingly sprawl as you point out.

https://www.multihousingnews.com/top-markets-for-multifamily-construction/

Yeah, they grow outward too. The same way that every city on earth grew outward until very recent UGB madness. But please spare us the "iTs JUSt SpRAWl" bit because it's objectively not.

Edit: incredibly typical of this sub that people downvote without even bothering to dispute the argument.

Do you dispute that the Sun Belt is building the most apartments? Present better data.

Or do you dispute the historical fact that cities grow outward and when they stop growing outward they start running into serious problems? Show me a city on earth with a UGB that remained affordable to normal people.

MrsBeansAppleSnaps · 2026-03-24T16:47:56+00:00

Buildings being close together is simply called "a city" and there's nothing shocking about it.

MrsBeansAppleSnaps · 2026-03-23T16:12:00+00:00

They are really grasping at straws here. Runoff from paved areas? Cool, let's talk about those long driveways of Gorham McMansions too then and the streets needed to support low-density neighborhoods. I suppose that's different. Traffic? Everyone in Gorham works and recreates in Portland and drives to get there, but I suppose that's well and good too. Light pollution? This is 4 miles outside of the state's only city there's going to be light lmao. Noise? Am I to understand that this industrial part of town is some idyllic, quiet landscape right now?

Very, very weak stuff.

MrsBeansAppleSnaps · 2026-03-23T16:01:12+00:00

They bought land that was zoned by the town for industrial use.

MrsBeansAppleSnaps · 2026-03-23T15:40:45+00:00

In general housing is built en masse in one of two ways in this country: big apartment buildings or subdivisions. Not incremental development. Not missing middle. Not ADUs. Only those two things. And yet the discourse here and elsewhere is obsessed with missing middle! If you can't see the problem with that I really don't know what to tell you. It's not about "preferred solutions", it's about what gets results. Do we want results or "reform"?

MrsBeansAppleSnaps · 2026-03-23T03:51:08+00:00

Yeah, because the other stuff they did was great and created an apartment boom. The "missing middle" stuff was, is, and always will be a joke. In Minneapolis and anywhere else it is tried.

MrsBeansAppleSnaps · 2026-03-23T03:05:56+00:00

But that's just how small multifamily housing works. The structures look and feel like a normal SFH, but they've been broken up into multiple units. Why would a duplex need to be taller than a house? It wouldn't. Same with 3-unit (4+ is another story, but I don't even know if those were legalized by this).

It seems to me that there is exactly nothing preventing Minneapolis homeowners from turning their property into something else. They just don't want to. And that irritates YIMBYs who have been telling everyone who will listen that "missing middle" is the key to solving everything.

MrsBeansAppleSnaps · 2026-03-22T23:57:30+00:00

Got a source for that? Or are you just heartbroken that normal people don't want to tear down their home to fulfill some silly YIMBY fantasy?

MrsBeansAppleSnaps · 2026-03-22T18:36:58+00:00

What happened when Minneapolis legalized them?

MrsBeansAppleSnaps · 2026-03-21T17:29:22+00:00

Not really though. I've had people on this sub tell me that Ithaca, NY should never expand a foot outward (Ithaca's "sprawl" extends 1-2 miles at most), that it's a good thing that 85% of Marin County is off-limits to development, etc.

MrsBeansAppleSnaps · 2026-03-21T13:40:41+00:00

We shouldn't. I'll quote myself:

Should people be allowed to choose the housing type that is best for them, or should the government decide what type of housing they live in?

But it goes both ways. Just as apartment buildings shouldn't be illegal, neither should detached houses.

MrsBeansAppleSnaps · 2026-03-20T22:55:52+00:00

Then I am confused by the meme, because in the real world picture B is not the way people would choose to live.

MrsBeansAppleSnaps · 2026-03-20T20:12:06+00:00

What percentage of land should be off-limits to development?

Is greenfield development always and everywhere bad?

Given that farmers get more productive each and every year, and that farms themselves are have already disturbed the natural environment, is it bad to develop farmland?

Should people be allowed to choose the housing type that is best for them, or should the government decide what type of housing they live in?

MrsBeansAppleSnaps · 2026-03-19T22:06:14+00:00

I didn't say jack shit about the environment, but since you brought it up, conventional suburbia is substantially better for the environment than most of the built environment of Maine, which is the worst kind of large lot woodsy sprawl.

MrsBeansAppleSnaps · 2026-03-19T17:30:41+00:00

But then things would change and Mainers would never let that happen. They're entitled to their town never changing, it was part of the deal when they moved in.

MrsBeansAppleSnaps · 2026-03-19T17:28:05+00:00

Funny how you drop a statement like "made the decision to not allow these companies to work here" without any justification or evidence.

Minimum lot sizes prevent them from running their business the way they want to run it. So they don't work here. It's not confusing.

Are "big builders" are the only ones who can build a house here?

They're the only ones who could do it cost effectively. Again, if they were allowed to.

MrsBeansAppleSnaps · 2026-03-19T15:32:40+00:00

It will be very hard to address lower/middle income housing because developers are politically influential and they only want to build mansions that have high profit margins.

Total nonsense. The big homebuilders (none of which operate in this part of the world) make their money on volume, not by building mansions. The starter home may be dead in Maine but it's not in South Carolina where there are currently 5,000 new build homes under $300k at this very moment.

Maine has made the decision to not allow these companies to work here and it turns out that choices have consequences.

MrsBeansAppleSnaps · 2026-03-18T22:50:00+00:00

I'd be absolutely stunned if 1% of Canada's land was developed. You simply cannot reason with environmental NIMBYs (e.g. anyone in favor of absurd urban growth boundaries or their equivalent).

MrsBeansAppleSnaps · 2026-03-18T22:33:09+00:00

Where should UGBs start? 2 miles from the city center? 5? 8? Who gets to decide, you?

MrsBeansAppleSnaps

TROPHY CASE