This has been something I have struggled to grapple with as someone who spends a lot of time in far left spaces as well as urban planning spaces. Hopefully you guys can correct me if I'm being a lib or even worse, a neolib.
On one hand one I love cities and one of the things I love is how dynamic they are. Each building and street tells a story about the city and the people that live there and how they have changed over time. I don't think we can stop that process from happening and since I believe cities to be our best chance to fight climate change they must change. We need more housing, more transit, and we need to invest in our cities to make them better places to live for everyone. I believe that means making it easier to build more housing. You might even call me a YIMBY. That means there is probably going to be a lot more a lot more 5 story buildings with a coffee shops on the first floor, bike lanes, and inevitably breweries, but what is the alternative? If we don't build those yuppie apartments then yuppies will just move into existing apartments which will accelerate displacement. If we don't invest in the most disinvested parts of the city we will just recreate places like the south side of Chicago or Detroit that essentially had no investment in generations and creates extreme segregation. That's not good for anyone.
Of course if I were dictator for a day I would just make all housing public but since I can't do that I think we have no option but to embrace the YIMBY strategy while simultaneously fighting for realistic housing reforms to protect current residents, like rent control, with the long term goal of decommodifing housing. I live in Minneapolis and I'm involved in a few Socialist/Left orgs and I can't believe there are people that were against the plan to get rid of single family zoning in Minneapolis because it was supposedly a handout to developers. Single family zoning is one of the most reactionary policies in America that entrenches a white petite bourgeoisie, and socialists are opposing eliminating it? People just seem to hate developers more than solving actual complex problems.
The real problem isn't gentrification, but capitalism. As long as housing and land, the things we all require to live, are commodities cities with opportunities will always be expensive because demand to be there will always outpace supply of land and housing. I just feel like so much of the gentrification discussion on the left is purely reactionary and doesn't have any actual solutions that could actually help people in our lifetime.
Am I just a lib?
I agree with you and housing policy is probably the main reason I haven't joined any of the Bay Area DSA chapters (the other reasons are drama).
I think I've been able to mostly find common ground with other socialists when I propose upzoning with significant protections for existing tenants and multi-family housing. Where I have trouble with them is getting them to ever say that there are enough of those things to allow private construction.
Exurbs are a symptom of a lack of density and they're killing the planet. If someone's solution to the housing crisis is "the revolution", I don't think they're being helpful. In my opinion, we might as well let the capitalists build us the dense urban form we'd want to realize under socialism anyway.
I think red star chapter has similar viewpoints, at least the people I know in it
Yeah pretty much all Bay Area leftist orgs are proponents of "but first the revolution" housing policy.
I don't blame them for taking the black pill when a sizeable portion of exected municipal governments are literally landlords and real estate developers (a majority in many cities). There is absolutely no way you are going to get any kind of meaningful housing reform out of that sort of government. If the stars align and you get just one Trot on the city council like Kshama Sawant in Seattle, the bourgeoisie from all over the country will collaborate to stamp them out.
It's stupid to shrug and say "well, I guess there's nothing we can do until the rev happens," but we will have very limited means to do anything as long as housing is a commoditized, financialized asset and our political system is just a rubber stamp for capital. I think you're right though. It is not enough to point out the problem. We need to present an alternative. Like a housing equivalent of Medicare for All - but with some actual concrete steps that can be taken, as opposed to a nebulous slogan. Then research can be done, we can find out empirically who will benefits (the majority), who will lose (a few kulaks), draw battle lines, and start mobilizing people.
I guess I just get frustrated when I see them defend bills that would eliminate single family zoning.
There's no world in which exclusive single-family zoning needs to exist.