Silva: Upzoning proposals distract from real-world solutions

Letter to the editor

However sincere their intentions may be, a few people pushing to upzone Gainesville are resorting to means and rhetoric that end up serving interests other than the city’s. Thursday is the next installment at City Hall, when one commissioner’s proposal, spun as “expanding homeownership opportunities and starter homes through lot dimension standards,” is on the agenda. It’s a rehash of attempts to open the city to random market-rate rental units without consideration of economic realities, infrastructure capacity, or long-term effects.

In 2020, the city commission did away with single-family zoning in a 4-3 vote to allow two rental units plus a house of any size on any residential property in the city. A commission majority later approved citywide spot-zoning. Those changes weren’t enough for relentless upzoners, and it looks like nothing will be. Now the house is on fire, and pointing fingers and repeating slogans are really not helping.

Two recent examples also underscore how California-based “yimbys” (“yes in my backyard” adherents) have amped up the rhetoric nationwide. A tiny Yimby Action affiliate was organized here in mid-2022 and jumped into the deregulation fight based on a trickle-down theory void of local context. People who raise questions about upzoning policies are labeled “nimbys” (“not in my backyard” racist, classist, selfish property owners) or worse and are discredited. 

Example 1. The most vocal local yimbys target former architecture professor and dean Kim Tanzer as Enemy #1 in personal attacks on social media. It’s a very weird obsession. Two of these yimbys were appointed to the City Plan Board. In a board meeting, they argued for reducing building setbacks to zero feet in some zoning categories. The two women on the seven-member board, the only ones with engineering degrees and professional experience in development, gave their perspectives. One woman said zero setbacks have led to construction problems and wouldn’t allow for windows on some walls of buildings. The other woman, who also serves on the City’s affordable housing committee, asked basic questions for any policy proposal: where did it come from, what assessment was done based on what data, and what benefit might it provide compared to what cost or risk? The closest she got to an answer was that it would benefit a certain local developer. She voiced other concerns and was interrupted several times with generic assertions about affordable housing, old nimbys at commission meetings, and more. Her mention of congestion around UF was met with, “That area’s not for you anymore.” Given yimbys’ attacks on Dr. Tanzer, their interruptions and irrelevant rebuttals began to look like disrespect for knowledgeable women. 

On an earlier item, though, Plan Board members and public commenters had a useful and needed discussion of a much bigger issue, the state’s Live Local Act, passed last year to override local industrial and commercial zoning. They talked about the loss of good jobs, among other potential outcomes. The city deserves that level of thoughtful analysis of issues, but endless efforts to keep upzoning Gainesville suck the oxygen out of searches for real-world solutions.

Example 2. The article “Red State, Red Tape” in the January issue of Reason magazine falsely says that Ron DeSantis sued Gainesville over the previous commission’s 4-3 vote to allow quadruplexes in all neighborhoods. Anyone familiar with what went down knows that’s not at all what happened.

The article quotes Lauren Poe espousing the same story lines he did as mayor. The writer tries to connect the lines to libertarian and conservative values but ignores the extremely not-libertarian City spending, punitive microregulations, surveillance of everyday life, and the embeddedness of UF and developers in City government. The writer claims that local government regulations slowed building in Florida since 2020, but like his yimby counterparts here, he fails to mention the impacts of supply and labor shortages, interest rate hikes, inflation, concentration of ownership, market disruptions, or Florida’s property insurance crisis.

Still, a few City staff, commissioners, and board members promote the upzoning cause. If they escape the echo chamber, they can widen their views and do more good for the city.

Tana Silva, Gainesville

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