Culver City Observer -

Dear Editor:

Patrick Meighan’s letter states that the submission of a resolution against the Elimination of R-1 Zoning to the Culver City Democratic club was “forced by a right-wing member”. I am that member. I am a Biden Democrat. This is part and parcel of the Exclusionary Politics practiced by the Exclusionary Upzoners who pretend to be progressive while promoting an elitist policy that will displace the middle class and people of color. They have fought hard to prevent full discussion on this topic. Dark Money forces have found that normally liberal Democrats are susceptible to their disinformation operations. YIMBY is a confluence of far-left leaning rhetoric used to disguise free-market libertarian trickledown theory that the free market can solve housing affordability issues by deregulating land regulation such as zoning. Its policies lead to hyper gentrification and displacement of middle class and people of color. https://vimeo.com/568350740

Fernando Marti co-director of the Council of Community Housing Organizations, a coalition of affordable housing and community economic development advocates in San Francisco wrote this about the YIMBY movement:

“This is the viciousness of the YIMBY argument: It tells people who want our homes that they deserve, by virtue of their whiteness and their status as part of a young college-educated elite, to get them.

And there lies the genius of this narrative. An agenda for building up the power base of the neoliberal right is not going to get too far in liberal beachheads like San Francisco or New York using the traditional Republican platform. It needs a new story that appeals to young millennials, and it has found it in the “pro-housing” language of the YIMBYs. But it is pushing the same underlying principles: the way to a more efficient future is to destroy belief in regulation, public investment, and democratic participation, whether the arena is charter schools or health care or housing affordability. But this story is as thin as the next market crash.” https://shelterforce.org/2019/02/19/yimby-white-privilege-and-the-soul-of-our-cities/?fbclid=IwAR0FoubJz28avo5q-GayURhsbqzvDdLSx_c1U01PBVtawIPHasmFRoCfBOA

The YIMBY agenda is regressive and uses the Big Lie that present day R-1 zoning is exclusionary based on race and bad for the environment to justify their policy to allow unparalleled building density and the destruction of our neighborhoods. As Cicely Bingener a resident of Culver City and a member of GPAC has written to me “I live in an R-1 neighborhood and nearly all of the houses that have been purchased or rented within the past few years on my block have been to nonwhite residents who are fairly affluent.” How then can present day R-1 zoning be exclusionary? The answer it is not, it is inclusionary. Is the YIMBY agenda good for the environment? It is not. By the wholesale elimination of R-1 zoning your single-family neighborhood will be turned into an urban heat trap. https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/14/weather/worst-urban-heat-island-cities/index.html

If single family residences are racist, why are the people most speaking up against the YIMBY agenda are people of color and the middle class. Because they know that they will be displaced, and their neighborhoods ruined by the rampant development and density the YIMBYs want to feed their Big Tech and Wall Street funders. https://stopbtownupzoning.org/2021/02/22/is-upzoning-progressive/ It is the ultimate white privilege for the YIMBYS to claim that Culver City today is racist as they push an agenda that will displace the middle class and people of color on behalf of white billionaire investors.

Patrick Meighan is another Hollywood Storyteller that YIMBY enlists for their propaganda campaigns. I guess being a Democrat and a Joe Biden supporter makes me right wing in his book.

People don’t be fooled by the regressive and extreme position of the YIMBYS, it is white privilege at its worse.

Ron Ostrin

Culver City