The underlying motivation for NIMBY is that people who own houses want their value to go up, and for their neighborhood to be too expensive for poor people so that their public schools will be well-funded and full of other upwardly mobile kids, and for their streets and parks not to be crowded.
It's a perfectly rational set of motivations. It's the same reason people move to nicer neighborhoods in the first place. With limited development over period of time you get the benefits of living in a more expensive neighborhood, without having paid the premium for it.
These arguments don't play well in public, especially in a socially progressive city like SF, so the rhetoric gets confusing. NIMBY groups sometimes float arguments such as: building more housing will make neighborhoods less affordable.
Some well-meaning progressive people who don't understand supply and demand are fooled by such arguments, and support NIMBY policies too, so it's not just homeowners. In the end, most people don't know what to think, and gravitate to the status-quo (ie, limited development.)
It's a perfectly rational set of motivations. It's the same reason people move to nicer neighborhoods in the first place. With limited development over period of time you get the benefits of living in a more expensive neighborhood, without having paid the premium for it.
These arguments don't play well in public, especially in a socially progressive city like SF, so the rhetoric gets confusing. NIMBY groups sometimes float arguments such as: building more housing will make neighborhoods less affordable.
Some well-meaning progressive people who don't understand supply and demand are fooled by such arguments, and support NIMBY policies too, so it's not just homeowners. In the end, most people don't know what to think, and gravitate to the status-quo (ie, limited development.)