Why must the specific development "directly" displace someone for KCT to be concerned that it will ultimately cost them their homes? That seems like an exceptionally narrow way to look at the situation.TheBigChuckbowski wrote: ↑Mon Oct 30, 2023 11:35 am Explain to me how a development that doesn't directly displace anyone will cost KCT their homes.
I didn't bring up incentives because I thought or meant to insinuate that you were talking about them, I brought them up because you asked why KCT fights some developments and not others. I kinda thought that was clear both from the context in which I was speaking (your post that I had quoted) and the rest of the paragraph I wrote around that one line that you are quoting and responding to here. Incentives make a development a much easier target, so they're one possible answer to your question. SFHs are a bad use of urban core land and are for sure a gentrification problem, but a SFH built without incentives is harder to kill than a MFH development built with them (this would also go for Beacon Hill, where -- please correct me if I'm wrong, I haven't followed Beacon Hill all that closely -- the incentives have already been in place for twenty years and are not newly awarded on a case-by-case basis that KCT could more easily attack). Incentives were only one potential explanation for how KCT picks its fights, so my point in bringing them up was not to get into a whole thing about incentives specifically but that there are reasons KCT does what it does, and it's not just that they're "anti-capitalists" whose real goal is to end the private property regime (which, in any case, doesn't actually work very well either as an explanation for why they don't fight $800k SFHs).Beacon Hill. Mount Prospect. Every suburban development that gets infrastructure built for it (which is all of them). Every infill SFH can be built by-right without any redtape but every multi-family project has to go through an arduous approval process. Not a direct incentive but an incentive to choose to build SFH rather than something else that would build more homes that are more affordable.
But, also, my point about SFHs had literally nothing to do with incentives so not sure why that was your question. Nor do I expect them to protest every single SFH but it does seem like the process that leads to $800,000 SFHs being built would bear mentioning every once in awhile especially if they're going to protest $1,300 studios.
And while I agree wholeheartedly with you about the indirect incentives that encourage SFHs and suburban development, these aren't the same thing as the incentives that apartment developers apply for and that KCT fights back against. KCT is, again, a single organization with finite resources, and they'll get a lot more mileage out of opposing public dollars for luxury apartments than fighting the infrastructure that enables the suburban development in which a disproportionate number of Kansas Citians already live. The latter is a fight they would lose, and they'd gain nothing from having fought it.
Yes, and my point is that they are engaging in pretty straightforward political activism, however confounding it apparently is to many on this board, so in my view, distinguishing between calling their activism a temper tantrum and saying that what I described "sounds like a temper tantrum" amounts to splitting the finest of hairs. I don't give much weight to the fact that you disagreed with my explanation of their tactics, because your disagreement is based on your fundamental misunderstanding that they are "anti-housing." I'm not interested in engaging from a perspective untethered from reality, that they are animated not by broader concerns about the affordability of housing but just out of personal animus toward specific projects.LOL, dude, my point was that they aren't throwing temper tantrums but that's how you are describing what they're doing. Did you read what I said?
Considering the context in which this entire line of discussion arose, it seemed obvious to me that the kind of compromise I was talking about was one that represented a substantial step toward accomplishing their core goal, not symbolic gestures or tactical victories. A real compromise involves both sides making and receiving meaningful concessions from the other (which is to say, establishing a "housing trust fund," letting it sit empty for years, and then finally dumping a small amount of covid stimulus money into it doesn't quite cut it). Depending on your theory of KCT, they want either housing security, which they are far from achieving, or, I guess, the complete overthrow of the capitalist system (?), which they're even farther from achieving, but apparently you think they should just be satisfied with the lowest-hanging fruit they've managed to nab so far."What compromise has been offered to them?" ...here's a list... "No, not those. Those don't count. The kind of compromise I'm talking about is one they haven't asked for and don't want."
I just can't really escape the feeling that, on this particular point, you're now arguing just for the sake of arguing (I mean, it's a message board, so ultimately that's all any of us are doing, but more here than elsewhere). You didn't agree that "passion would evaporate if they got everything they want," you actually agreed that "passion would evaporate" if they didn't get everything they wanted but they got enough, which is a very key distinction given that your whole entry into this conversation was to latch onto one sentence I had written to declare that KCT are hardline anti-capitalists who would never compromise. My point having been made, I don't really have anything else to say here, but you are for some reason going more abstract with it to have some kind of argument about "membership" vs. "leadership," a distinction I've not otherwise made except for that one point that you already agreed with.I agreed that the passion would evaporate if they got everything they want and they likely wouldn't continue to exist. I didn't agree that everything you want to believe about what membership thinks (based on no evidence whatsoever) is accurate, nor did I agree that the opinions and communications of leadership don't matter.
I'm not even sure what you're talking about when you refer to what I "want to believe about what membership thinks." I've made statements here and there about what I suppose the views of KCT to be, but as I have repeatedly noted, I use "KCT" to refer generally to the whole organization (encompassing both leadership and membership), and I base my guesses about their views on the documents they themselves have published (drafted, presumably, by leadership) or what I would argue are reasonable extrapolations from those documents, as well as just thinking through what a reasonable person acting as a housing activist in good faith would think about something. It has long been clear that our disagreement is rooted in your view that they are neither housing activists nor acting in good faith, not in the differences between "membership" and "leadership." I believe the views of leadership "don't matter" only in the sense that I don't care what any given individual thinks apart from what the group itself does or says. Leadership's views have already been incorporated into what the group does anyway. I made my point by describing an extreme case in which the city provides a solution that satisfies most members but not a hardline anti-capitalist whose real goal is the abolition of private property, but it has never been my position that KCT leadership is disinterested in housing security, so the clean separation between "leadership" and "membership" in that specific hypothetical is not actually important to me, as it seems to be to you. It was just meant to clearly illustrate a point. And again (again, again, again), you agreed with that point. So I don't know what the point is of this line of discussion anymore.
Man that post didn't feel that long when I was writing it, but there it is.
