It's been my experience that the farther you let an undesirable process proceed, the higher the chance that it will reach its undesirable conclusion. The enforcers will make decisions based on sunk costs; there will be more loopholes for the grifters to exploit; the time demands of due process will let them manipulate to their benefit; and there will be higher consequences for disrupting the status quo (e.g. there will be people actual living in the buildings already).

Here's an even better suggestion: withdraw federal and state funding for roads, schools, water and sewage &c if housing targets are not met. The local NIMBYS will come around once the potholes become too bad and the school's roof starts leaking.

No, that's not what's going to happen.

What's going to happen is that they will start voting for the most blatant grifters running for public office, because they're the ones who are going to lie to them about solving this without raising taxes.

Federal contribution to the things you mentioned is rather low in NIMBY areas, so NIMBYs will be more than happy to pay it. Seriously, do the math. The federal funds do not magically appear out of nowhere, they are collected from the very same NIMBYs, and it’s only a small fraction of their total federal tax bill.

> NIMBYs will be more than happy to pay it. Seriously, do the math.

Citation please.

We know what the math is due to towns near the border of Los Angeles along the I-15 corridor. Thsoe suburbs that decided they wanted to not be a part of Los Angeles received a very rude awakening as to what stuff really costs.

Okay, so how much the stuff really costs?

As I said, the NIMBYs are already paying for all this stuff. The federal money is not a charity of some third parties, it’s what the very same people paid in taxes in the first place.

Sounds like a way to end up with shoddy, dangerous housing or incomplete or impossible to complete projects.

Most of the hoops are things like performing endless studies of traffic and infrastructure with a narrow set of grifting consulting firms even if the same study has already recently been done.

Didn't China try something like this and end up with crumbling skyscrapers that were totally uninhabitable and expensive to replace?