I'm not sticking up for him! I think that's pretty apparent from my comments on this thread (this is one of my hobbyhorse issues). I'm just saying, in this particular situation, Andreessen is behaving like the overwhelming majority of suburban homeowners.
Most suburban homeowners will vote against anything that they believe will reduce their home values. It doesn't matter if their home value is $200k or $200M. Same result.
You'd actually think that a multibillionaire who owns a mansion would be less sensitive to fluctuations in home values, since their wealth is usually contained in other assets (unlike the average American homeowner, for whom their home is likely where the majority of their net worth is). If Andreessen were to accidentally light $200M of his own cash on fire, he'd come through it, lifestyle unscathed.
Well, I'd have expected that most suburban homeowners are planning to stay put for a while (i.e. they're not renters). So I'd expect them to value the health of the neighbourhood over property values.
Where I live, property is expensive, and I live in a neighbourhood that seems to be dominated by investment property; many empty properties or short-let properties. There are no kids here, even though the neighbourhood would be fine for kids.
Anyway, that's apparently not the way the cookie crumbles; owning property so you can live in it seems to have become unfashionable. I hope the fashion changes, because I have no plans to sell.
I think the semantics of NIMBY got lost recently where I’ve read tweets about YIMBY’s who are against building that effects them. People forgot the acronym NIMBY refers to people in favor of liberal policy until it affects them.
