I've seen enough willfully block affordable housing in violation of law that I've looked several times.
NIMBYs also encourage these sorts of lawsuits, because even if they know they will lose, these projects are 1) so close to not making sense that an affordable housing developer literally can not afford to fight for legal rights, and 2) there's a big fear that fighting the city legally will make all further building attempts by an affordable housing developer even more difficult and likely to fail.
I have zero empathy or sympathy for my NIMBY neighbors that have been displacing so many people in my community after several years of trying to fight for affordable housing. People that are otherwise "nice" behave in the most amoral ways when it comes to excluding people from their neighborhoods. It's been very eye opening for me in a sad way.
In other words, if "NIMBYs" are to blame, it's fine if they are the one that need to pay.
In my mind I play out some RICO case takedown where they all get indicted in one fell swoop but surely this is impossible.
> NIMBY neighbors that have been displacing so many people in my community
Who are the people getting displaced?
The Not In My Backyard people, are they ... rich and affluent who don't want low income people nearby?
https://lao.ca.gov/LAOEconTax/Article/Detail/265
The NIMBYs are almost exclusively wealthy homeowners. Not 100% but close to 99%. But in California, the wealthiest homeowners also co-opt the language of the displaced, and take on the mantle of those who can no longer afford rent, even as their actions of exclusion increase their home values and rents in general.
> co-opt the language of the displaced, and take on the mantle of those who can no longer afford rent
Oh this is too abstract for me (I don't understand)
I mean, Kwame is still in jail, right?
I guess that's a different league than this though.
Courts can also order specific performance.
> If you sue the city and win, the judge orders the city to follow the law, and they still don't, do elected officials go to jail or something?
Courts happily hold municipalities in contempt. The community can then figure out how to hold their electeds responsible.
Can you post examples of this happening, and what the ratio is?
https://lawblog.legalmatch.com/2021/05/03/town-of-mooresvill...
One example isn't very telling.
It kind of reminds me of a much more innocuous version of the French Revolution when it was going off the rails, and the wrong political opinion meant death. Almost nobody voted in elections, because keeping your head down was the best way to keep it attached to your body.
It’s reasonable to favor local governments on local issues, but this stuff is impacting outside their area so it’s no longer a local issue.
There are various things that might happen; an obvious one here is that, with the city declining to follow its own procedures, it would be prohibited from enforcing them against you. You would then not require a permit to do whatever it was you were trying to do.
I say this as a pro-development YIMBY.
To close the resulting loophole where they just reject all permits when they have a backlog, there would be automatic penalties for improperly rejected permits, with a floor of an after-tax value of 2 times the financial damage done to applicant; permit office pays legal fees.
We're a medical device company with Breakthrough Device status, and it works largely like this. Whenever we submit, FDA has 30 days to reach a decision from time of receipt, and if they don't decide, we automatically get approval. Really helps with keeping up momentum!
I think it makes a lot more sense then suing the city or issuing fines--at least in theory.
Government is spiteful and vengeful, and wronging them will result in vicious consequence.
I'm not very familiar with the specifics, but AFAIU the most important municipalities in the state enjoy so-called "Home Rule" under the California Constitution. I believe that means that a self-executing rule such as you've proposed is unconstitutional. Rather, somewhat like the constraints imposed on the Federal government viz-a-viz the states, the state government is often limited to cajoling municipalities through expenditures, budgeting, and law suits.
There are usually arcane rules. Sometimes things have to get put on by council sometimes cities allow citizen petitions.
Something that changes the charter/constitution versus just an ordinance or a tax/levy.
And sadly activist judges can have too large of a say imho.
If the latter strategy works out, you don't need to spend the money. So it can be re-used for other threats.
These shenanigans cost us rougly $500-1000 a day in insurance, interest, etc. They drug it out for about a year.
The department that decided they liked us has bankrupted multiple people on our street. We'd have at least 5-10% more houses on our street (there is plenty of room) if not for them.
California's state government has an alert on their website specifically listing various things that department did to us and pointing out they were illegal. Instead of suing, we kissed all the right asses in the right order, so now we have a house. Again, this is best case for interacting with them because they liked us, apparently.
Based on conversations with neighbors, my level of satisfaction with this planning office is roughly median for the area, but our experience was way better than average.
Marvin Heemeyer of Killdozer fame is a personal hero of mine now (Don't worrtly, I don't know how to weld. However, I do know how to make campaign donations and vote!):
https://allthatsinteresting.com/marvin-heemeyer-killdozer
Missing from that article are apparently true allegations of direct financial conflicts of interest within the zoning commission, and him being forced to sell land so that one of their cronies could develop it instead. Also note that he fought them for over a decade.
One of our state representatives is running for reelection on a plan to spend huge amounts of state/federal infrastructure money to bypass the office that likes to bankrupt people. 100's of familes will be forced off their land before the plan kicks in (assuming it passes).
So, anyway, there needs to be harsh financial consequences for just rejecting permits for the heck of it.
Ideally, promotions would be tied to correctly processing permit applications. That's probably illegal around here or something.
Capitalism is about amassing resources ahead of time and then trying to buy time, create a stalemate and wait it out until the other party has run out of resources and must give up.
Fighting a war accellerates the rate of capital exhaustion and destroys existing capital. Because everyone starts from a blank slate people do not have enough capital to waste on outwaiting their opponent and they instead focus on cooperation resulting in a few wonderful economic decades until everything goes bad again as people use their amassed capital to fight each other.
So .. perhaps the profession itself could be said to take money from both sides, but many times, in practice, an individual attorney does not or cannot...
crazy world we live in.
I guess I don't really follow. What are they saying exactly? "Hey we have lots of money so listen to us" while simultaneously claiming SF isn't listening to them because the other side has even more money? If it is just a matter of money as they claim but they other side has more wouldn't it seem like they are just going to lose?
I umm... I seriously doubt that
> San Francisco openly admits to not following a state law requiring certain permit processing times
> the state has yet to bring a lawsuit against the city over project denials
I like the idea of amassing money that can be used as a threat of a lawsuit. This is the real power that many people do have; this power is possible for all of us, collectively. We can and should influence our elected officials through legal maneuvers, if other efforts fail. It just makes sense.