Anti-NIMBY movement is winning with a simple message
As much as I support what YIMBY is trying to do for San Francisco, I think this is trying to solve the symptom of a greater problem: that our economy has shifted to not needing (yet still somehow requiring) our workers to work in a physical office.<p>I recently became a remote worker and I cannot imagine going back. If this became the norm in the US I think this would do a lot for fixing the housing problems.<p><i>We have enough space to house everyone, the problem is we believe we need to house them close to where the &quot;jobs are.&quot;</i><p>But if employers allowed their workers to work from anywhere, then not everyone would need to live in NY, SF, LA, Boston, et al. The cities that experienced the worst emigration (e.g. Detroit, Cleveland, Milwaukee) could stabilize. Housing prices would normalize as a result of everyone not being forced to live within a 2-hr commute of the country&#x27;s biggest employers. And those same employers <i>could pay less for talent</i> because they wouldn&#x27;t have to give them a salary to afford places where the average starter home is over $1mm.<p>And yet, we see articles in the NYT how big companies like IBM are already rescinding their offers for giving people more flexibility. We&#x27;re not moving in the right direction.