One of the big reasons for holding out was left out here.. the rent prices themselves. These people wouldn't just have to move out of their home, they would have to move out of the entire city because they would never find a place with rent as low as what they're paying. I have the same issue in Toronto, I'll never find another place as cheap as where I am right now.
this is the reason so much of my extended family refuse to leave their low income housing neighbourhoods (moss park, cabbagetown etc) despite the “safe haven” of the suburbs. i understand the logic of why not live in a place where you’re close to work and paying half of what you would if you were to leave in exchange for the relative safety of the suburbs.
@@Omegatonboom rent control laws prevent this for some people who have had apartments for decades. Rent prices are only sky rocketing for those who leased apartments durring Covid when there was a dip in demand. Now that the city is opening up again, most 1 year leases are expiring and renewals are returning to pre-covid levels.
I think the ultimate holdout is the man who still has a farm in the middle of Narita airport in Japan. Since they couldn't get him to sell they just decided to build around him.
That’s odd. If it’s the State building it (which I assume is the case for an airport), I thought they’d use the eminent domain power. It practically means the State can take land from its citizens as long as it compensates them fairly. It’s how land reform worked even if the landowners wouldn’t part with a large amount of their own land. Oh no wonder, Japan supposedly has “weak” eminent domain powers.
I think its important we change the culture around housing, move the perception away from it being a financial investment. I listen to casual conversations between home owners a lot and I find it bizarre as most talk about their house entirely as a financial asset rather than a tool, a place to hang your hat. Viewing housing as a financial asset will always cram us into a rut of never having enough housing to accommodate the population. Just seems unfair
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yeah, I live in NYC and i always see cute little 2, 3, or 4 story mixed-use walkup buildings sandwiched in between huge apartment or office buildings. if you go on ZOLA alot of these buildings were built in the 1880's-1910's never really thought of them as hold outs tho
I'm all for holdouts. Good for them. But with home prices skyrocketing I think we'll see a lot more of this because now it seems developers just want to screw people out of their home. Developers have gotten a lot more greedy and a lot more ruthless. One example in particular is developers buying up condos and converting them into rental property forcing any holdouts to sell against their will. That is particularly evil.
@@benjaminking2513 No! You don't understand how a condo de-conversion works. People own their condos. but if 75% of unit owners vote for de-conversion they force the other 25% OWNERS to sell weather or not they want to. That's evil.
“Stubbornness, sentimentality, greed” is probably the worst way to describe a hold out. If they don’t want to move they don’t have to. Why not leave them alone…
Honestly made me nope out of the whole video when he said that. He sounds like a landlord trying to defend his mistreatment of his tenants or something. If he doesn't have a bias, he certainly sounds like it.
Where is the channel based? Because in a place like California, you’re not gonna find as many people sympathizing with holdouts as you may have previously. Yeah plenty will still do so. But others will regard them as contributing to that state’s housing crisis.
@@alexanderstone9463 Oh no! Corporations speculating properties and millions of people, both wealthy and not have moved to California and now there is a shortage of housing! I wonder what we could have to prevent this?
The house my mother grew up in was a victim of eminent domain around the year 2000. The State highway it was along was set to be widened and the house was too close to the roadside. It was a little sad for my grandparents to have to say goodbye to the place they had lived in for almost their entire marriage, about 35 years at that point. But they got a modern house built at government's expense further back on the property. It kinda sucked too because due to probably normal budgeting delays, and then the 2008 financial collapse, the road wasn't actually widened until like 2011.
That's actually pretty typical for govt projects. They acquire the land necessary in one round of financing and build some time later with a different pot of money. A new bridge/highway is nearly complete where I live and we have been hearing about it being built for decades prior. All the "takings" (which is what they actually call it) were done about ten years ago. People were compensated but only at the going rate for land per square foot and had no choice in the matter.
Happened to our home too, the government pretty much told us that they're going to widen the road and we have cut a portion of our house. We did cut it, but we left the exterior cut with the building portion intact. So if the government wants to use that land, they'll have to remove that part of that house in their own expense. Worse part, that was way back in 2020, and the road widening still hasn't started up till this day and they haven't compensated us ever dince
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This skips the darker story of developers who investigate the building(s) or property they want to buy, find the most likely people to be holdouts or just roadblocks in some fashion to the developers interests, and then some "natural" or random act eliminates those issues before the developers even announce their intentions.
This is happening now, especially in hot areas of Brooklyn, LIC, etc. They're using all kinds of underhanded tactics, like tearing the bldg apart around the tenants.
I know a holdout in NY that kept getting attacked with increasing brutality. She was an elderly, cancer stricken woman that wanted to peacefully live in the building she'd always lived in and not have to leave the state (bc OMG rent in NY) and continue her care at a top notch cancer center. It started with a break in and eventually she was beat up outside her building. It was terrifying to see her come to her treatment each week with new stories and eventually physical evidence. She was steadfast and held her own but her last days were far from peaceful bc she was being terrorized with virtually no recourse.
@@derpmansderpyskin it doesnt sound that insane. the insane aspect of a conspiracy most of the time relates to the number of people who are said to be part of it, the bigger the number the more less likely, like the fake moon landing. for this to the happen, one of the developer higher ups or its owner can just take the initiative alone and find a couple of muscles who are willing to do the job with their mouth shut.
what this guy reporting forgot to mention about the second story of the largest buyout in holdout history is that the guy was paid 17 million usd and given an apartment overlooking central park which he mentioned, but the man also received for the apartment a lifetime rent payment of $1 per month. for a 300 sq foot apartment, i'd say that was the best business deal in new york history 😂
No....the story is that he was victim of greedy, amoral, unethical developers....stick with the narrative. And also, we need more affordable housing and less density. And we also need to declare our cities as sanctuary cities. We need a revolution and we don't need anything changed.
I recall a more recent Macy's story making the news around 1970. A new branch store was planned for a block in Queens. Every parcel was purchased except for one house on a corner belonging to a little old lady holdout. The building was planned to be circular with rooftop parking. Since her home was not in the building's footprint, the decision was made to work around it, since time was of the essence. As the foundation was being dug it was discovered that it would go a few feet into the lady's backyard corner. All offers to purchase that small piece of her land were rejected, so they had to put a notch in the building, losing space on every floor, and two parking spaces on the roof. In 1977, we went to Europe out of Kennedy airport after landing at LaGuardia and taking a helicopter shuttle. On that flight, we passed over the store with the notch and the holdout house. If you go on Google maps, you can still see the store and notch, but there is a corner building taking up all of the lady's former lot. That Macy's is now Queen's Place Mall.
I think holdouts are a perfect way to display the history of an area. We should keep the holdout buildings around. Let them sit among the newer buildings untouched by new construction.
Los Angeles had to grow but still it kills me how so many beyond beautiful buildings and cultural landmarks were destroyed to put up massive structures that are in reality hideous
LA is only 120 years old as a major city. There’s not a lot of Landmarks of worth that existed before the city. Just like everything else in this city, it’s fake and/or meaningless
Hell the fact parking lots take up 25 to 30% of city land area on average so yes can go past 30%. Why not go up parking garages reduce there land use by 80% tada new homes land for native flowers bushes and trees to reduce heat and energy demand on cooling the city/homes.
@@thesilentone4024 let’s just make parking on the first 4 levels and even underground! and build the building on top. (Which they have been doing already) will be much better. 👌
@@thesilentone4024 with public transit and walkable city planning you can free up space from not only parking lots but also from hideous highways and large roads.
I’m glad they do hold off. Look how historical and nice the buildings actually look compared to what replaces them. I’m glad over here in England a lot of older buildings have protection orders on them where they can’t be changed or ripped down.
I wish it was more like that over here in the U.S. We have the registry of historic places but it’s basically useless at preserving history since a place can just get demolished anyway and the only thing that will happen is it being delisted as a historic site.
@@crazyguy_1233 it’s just awful. I can’t remember the name of the town but over here there’s a historical town where even the pig sty is a listed building and can’t be changed. It’s been around since the 1700’s or so. It’s known as a grade listing building. Grade 1 means no changes at all, just preserve it, grade 2 can be changed inside with permission, but the exterior has to still look the same as historically built.
I live in Van Nuys, CA, which for those not in the know is a section of the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles. My apartment building is in a small corner of town right near the courthouse where new developments are going up all the time. There's a big new apartment building being built right outside my bedroom window, there's another that just went up down at the end of the street, and it's pretty clear that more are on the way - it's very quickly becoming a gentrified area filled with 3-5 story apartment buildings. However, right next to my building, awkwardly sandwiched between us and the next apartment building over, is one tiny little house owned by a group of old ladies. It's one of the only single-family homes on the block, it doesn't match any of the other buildings design-wise in the area, clearly these people have been living here for some time, and I guarantee some developers have BEGGED these old ladies to sell their home. Yet there it still remains, right outside my balcony, just this little house with a roof that the local feral cat colony loves to sunbathe on. I love it so much, and I hope these women never sell it. The neighborhood would lose so much character without them.
I like the way the public just walks all over the Hess's Estates Private property which states very clearly it is not for dedicated for public use. I would have erected a statue of myself holding out the finger.
I'm honestly surprised that they said anything to the Hess's about the zoning mishap after being so ruthless toward them as it was clearly in a spot where it wasn't going to be a problem, it's like they walked up and told them where the loaded gun was lol
Here in Argentina, in some places, the contrary to Holdouts happens some times: The government declares a old house as historical monument, and the owner is not allowed to demolish it for building something else
the UK has issues with this, the owner can not afford to maintain the building, but they also can not sell it because no one else wants to buy it. So they are stuck, and the building ends up falling down anyway. Many historical buildings have high maintenance costs.
I'm going to be a holdout in my neighborhood. I spent my whole life making this house my personal Eden. There is no way any developer will offer me enough money to buy a house I like as much.
How I wish Toronto had such strict renter protection. I was forced to leave my lovely, beloved apartment by a ruthless landlord who intended on tearing down our historic building. After years of being terrorized, hassled, and coerced in and out of court, I left the apartment and Toronto itself. A real shame.
You were not forced to leave your apartment, you were forced to leave somebody else's apartment. You did not own it so you have no right to decide its fate.
This reminds me of the story of railroad baron Charles Crocker vs German immigrant Nicholas Yung, a fascinating, famous holdout story. In 19th century San Francisco, Crocker built his mansion and estate next to Yung's property. Crocker wanted to acquire Yung's property, but when Yung refused to sell, Crocker erected a 40' tall fence on three sides of Yung's property. This became known as a Spite Fence. Despite this, Yung held out until his death, and even then his wife still refused to sell. Definitely a great read for anyone interested.
The Problem with most buyouts is that the developers often times don't offer nearly enough for the people living there to be financially able to uproot their entire life and move somewhere else… most developers are way too stingy when it comes to those buyouts and don't do the due diligence to not screw someone over and throw them onto the streets with a few pennys to their name… so most holdouts are very justified and not talked about… the stories told here about gracious developers doing everything to get the holdouts out are very rare… most holdouts are just bullied out of their house without any compensation and those people never get their justice, that's why most holdouts are praised and supported by people…
@@RK-cj4oc It's not your place though. If you have an active agreement to rent until a certain date then that should be honored but no one should be allowed to dictate what someone else does with their property.
@@AC-im4hi You said it yourself, they have an active agreement, they literally signed a contract and unless the contract stipulates otherwise (I assume here) the tenant can’t be kicked out of the building just because the landowner wanted to kick him out, unless he breaks the aforementioned contract
Coming from someone who working in Demolition in Detroit, I see it quite often. Most times it’s kinda sad because it’s a older person who don’t want to leave and the block has seen better days. The remaining neighbors take the buyout leaving them the only house around. Usually in industrial areas. I’ve also seen some beautiful communities gone due to buyouts in industrial areas. But downtown, we do pretty well with preservation in my opinion.
We have a whole abandoned neighborhood in Bensenville, IL that was bought up to fund O'Hare airport expansion or business district or something, and then the project never happened.
Here in Costa Rica, i have a friend whose house is smack dab in the middle of a 21 story building and a parking lot next to Sabana park. His house is the Costa Rican Up house :D also its hell to live on since the building undergoes constant maintenance, he says
In the UK we have buildings around for hundreds some times a thousands years. I have a 900 year old church on my road. Let these buildings stay for the long haul, you won't regret it!
Me too. Don't forget if you go back a few years, the north part of Manhattan was forested land. Wouldn't that be great if those people who owned that land didn't sell it. There'd be deer and beavers on Manhattan in an unspoiled wilderness.
Moving can also be scary and too difficult, especially with so many holdouts being elderly people. They know well the place where they live. If the city convinces one to move out via a nice sum of money and they find a place with higher rent but reasonably affordable using the money from the buyout, great, but after moving in may learn there is more noise, violence, or service problems than they had before.
it's so fascinating to me as a european, because those holdout houses look like normal european city houses, while all the horrendously tall buildings around them are abominations
I loved this video! I had no idea the history behind some of these older buildings and now I can’t wait to start spotting them- and looking up their history to see who decided to put their foot down!
I'm all for it. Outside of NY a cousin of mine bought an old house in East Texas. Development sprung up all around her and her few neighbors. All her former neighbors sold out and her old home remained. The HOA has been trying to get rid of her for years but being she is grandfathered they can't do anything. They have offered her tons of money but she refused to sell. She dose not want to see her house demolished.
@@drmodestoesqtrust me, the houseing problem is far from that, how brainwashed can you be ? There are enough buildings and apartments for everyone in the us, homelessness shouldn't exist, unfortunately private companies do, artificially inflateing rent to stupid amounts, and buying as much property as possible while holding onto their big prices, houseing should never be an investment, it's a need
As much as I support tenant protections, the ability for any tenant to stifle a new apartment building that might add hundreds of units can't continue during this acute housing shortage in NYC.
The video is referring to tenets not the actual building owners . Tenets who have rent control , have no fixed term leases (meaning they can stay there as long as they wish as long as they pay the rent , the owner cant ask them to vacate since the rental agreement has no end like 1 year , 2 year etc). Also rent controlled buildings prevent the landlord for vacating the tenets undrr any circumstances including Sale of the building, Renovation, demolition etc
Houseing shortage is A LIE, stop spreading misinformation, there is enough houseing for everyone, the problem are private companies, holding and buying stupid amounts of apartaments, and renting them with ridiculous prices, or selling them for stupid amounts of dollars, don't believe the lies told by these scum, they are the reason why this generation will never afford houseing, greed
When we moved to the Houston area, south of it, near the Space Center, an area at the freeway was being built up for a strip mall. It wasn’t far from the local hospital & at the exit to JSC itself (and the nice neighborhood where the astronauts lived). That main road was lined with shops except for the intersection at the freeway. I don’t know the whole story but there was one holdout who wouldn’t sell his property at that corner. So the strip mall went up around him. It’s a much more developed area now but to this day you will see an old shed in an overgrown yard right behind that strip mall. It’s not a huge plot, either, and I don’t think anyone has actually lived there for years. It’s been at least 45 years & that guy-or his descendants-still haven’t sold.
I can see both sides to this as a homeowner. I love the holdout idea, but if I was the developer, I'd hate it. Just means you need to do ALL your homework on things, not just "enough" to think you know what's what. People now will purchase homes around where I live without a pre-purchase inspection. No way would I do that! I get the costs involved, but that's what I meant about doing your homework. Anyways, great video! Lots of cities have these issues.
The holdouts are saving history. We shouldn’t demolish our history. The only way I would ever give in is if they move my home piece by piece to a new spot at their expense.
Near my neighborhood, there's kind of an opposite story! There's a piece of property in an older, upscale neighborhood in the corner lot where the property has been up for sale for years now and even though it has a nice view of the city and they even split the lot into two separate parts, have not been able to sell it. There was a nice, big house there and it was torn down because it was haunted by the family that lived there and still know one wants to purchase the property and build a new house on it.
best places to search for a new home is places that "are haunted by the previous owners" because they usually sell for alot cheaper because people are stupid as shit and get scared away
One of the best holdout stories I know, is the one of the saint-hubert boulevard in Montreal, the boulevard is straight up cut for at least 4 blocks making you have to take a detour through tiny one way residential streets with parked cars on either sides to get from one side of this 4 lane boulevard to the other, a whole neighborhood just straight up refused the boulevards completion, and I think it will remain that way
Exactly. And now everyone's rush hour commute is sheer misery. So they can look out the window of their houses and see people stuck in clogged traffic. It's inspiring that sometimes the little guy wins.
My Staircase Neighbours and I Sort of live in a hold out. Located in Sweden our House is the only House on the entire street that hasnt been bought up by this Large Conglomerate Company. Our Landlord Refuses to sell and Refuses to raise the Rents. He has a heart for the underdogs and gives people a Chance. Nobody really knows anything about him, but we like him.
The only thing I don't like about holdouts is that now both new buildings have a whole extra facade and the benefit of non-detached construction when it comes to insulation is lost. Outside of that though, I think the stories are always great and the buildings themselves add a fun dynamic to the city. In the case of the Macy's store and the Rockefeller Center, the holdouts actually improved the final product.
Definitely both the developers and the owners are right from their own perspective but...if it was me the owner I would've took the millions and lived richly for the rest of my life...
What they don't tell you in these hold out cases is that usually they don't offer enough to uproot their entire life elsewhere. It happens all the way in Indonesia much less often cause the developer would give enough for the holdout to live like kings for several years or the rest of their life if they use it wisely.
That's why the story is always about the lone holdout. Anyone with a crummy day job is thinking I can retire early and don't have to face the grind on Monday morning. The person who refuses to sell doesn't have any economic pressures in their life. So they can afford to indulge themselves. All the people who find that inspiring are people who wish that they were in that situation so it's a form of wish fulfillment.
Now a days, you have to be afraid you don't come down with a radioactive cough, or accidently fall out a window -- especially when there's millions of dollars at stake.
I would definitely hold out as long as I could if my home was built there 100 years prior to all the new construction. They should be marked as historical structures. It's sad so few care to preserve original construction and craftsmanship, especially in NYC.
Holdouts greedy? Meanwhile the opposite party is trying to throw money at you to go away so they can build exactly where they want to build, which so happens to be on your property you own. Money isn't a metric for some people, but its a metric for companies: That's greed, lmao. Also I find companies harassing me to sell my land to them when I have never advertised it for sale, to be stubborn lmao.
there is also 2 holdouts in amsterdam right next to the victoria hotel, to this day there still are 2 small buildings from the 1600s right across the central station
Anyone sensible should be pro holdouts. It's economics at its purest - you don't sell until someone offers you an amount higher than its worth to you. If that's high, then that's the buyers issue, not yours.
At least NYC developers for the most part don't buy a building and either demolish it for a surface parking lot or let the building rot and sell the property/land years later for profit.
I am for the holdouts. I see this all over Los Angeles. There will be a wood house in between big buildings. There was a whole community near LAX that was torn down due to eminent domain. This happened about 1974. The last hold out was kicked out in 1989. You can see the roads and streetlights but, the houses are all gone. The town was called Surfridge. Manchester Square will also suffer the same fate soon.
It's scary that billionaire property developers are willing to offer so much money because the ownership of land is simply -that- important in the endgame of capitalism
Exactly. Those greedy capitalists want to build apartment buildings. You look in Russia under the communist Utopia. The communist government never had any complaints about housing.
The boring but obviously correct answer is that it depends on why the holdouts are holding out, and what they're preventing from being built. Like there's a difference between "holding out" to prevent the construction of affordable housing, or a subway line, and holding out to prevent the construction of some mcmansion or something. One will help lots of people, and by opposing it you're kinda screwing those people over, but the other really isn't going to help anyone, so who cares?
Something I’ve learned just perusing real estate stuff, a offer of $1mil is comically low since any full sized house in a desireable location is at LEAST half that, and if the property locale is in such a desirable spot, nothing less than like 10Mil would possibly get a holdout too move.
My high school has one of these. There's a house in between the left side football stadium parking lot and the right side football stadium parking lot.
For it. I like the underdog winning. My mom bought a property just as an investment and the government wanted to make a bird sancturary. She fought and won. Right on mom.
I hate that he cited a reason for hold out as greed. Truth is these rent controlled tenants will no longer be able to afford living in NY. The wealthy is wildly entitled. Smh
I had heard the story of the Hess Triangle before I went to NYC for the first time. I was just walking around the Village and happened to catch a glance of it as I was headed to the Christopher St. Station. I'd be been in New York for about 3 hours. Already had a slice on 7th, on a little patio where I could see One World Trade Center. I'd already taken a ride on the Subway. It was seeing the Triangle that made it really hit me; I was in New York. The Triangle itself and the way I found it exemplifies that feeling of being utterly surrounded by stories and history that I've only ever felt there and in the French Quarter.
As a renter, many holdouts are just abusing legal protections to strongarm a giant and unearned paycheck-a generous offer should almost always be accepted
Imagine someone paying to live in your house, and the city makes it so you can never end your tenancy agreement until the tenant decides to move out on their own.
Imagine being held to a contract you literally wrote? It's not rocket science, it's in the contract that they're renting unless evicted for reason, at a given price, and that the price can only change up to X% per year.
I very much respect these people, why are you forced to abandon your home, just for it to be bulldozed so another building can be built here. what about you? now you gotta find a new home, and in today's housing market thats almost impossible. these ppl have awesome location in the middle of a city, they live in the downtown area, everything is close - if they sold their home, now they gotta move further away, potentially having to abandon the entire city, and along with that a job, friends, etc.
What a weird perspective... making people that don't want to sell there homes come off as greedy. Not what I would've taken from a story like this. Shame this channel.
This is one way to keep developers away from changing the zoning of the area. Quiet neighborhoods around the city are targeted by developers to tear down and build huge apartment complexes, driving away the quality of life from the homeowners. I say, give them a number.... $100,000,000 for your 1 family house in the bronx, Queens, etc. That should scare them!
I love this! There's a place like this in Amsterdam that you can see when you step out of its central train station: A big old hotel called Plaza Victoria wrapping around a single out-of-place appartment that was owned by someone who refused to sell at that time
Nearly all of the images were of beautiful historic buildings. It would be a travesty for them to be demolished. They’re also built at human scale, unlike the edifices likely to replace them. Sometimes holdouts can be good. But other times not. But it makes me sad to think these buildings could be lost.
Rents are high partly because it is so hard to build new buildings. In that sense, the holdouts are causing high rents and scarcity. So, I don't think they are heroes to me. But, I also don't think owners should be forced to sell by any kind of government intervention. Tenants are a different story. An owner should be able to decide to have any tenant leave, when the lease is up; laws that prevent owners from controlling their own property are very bad for society generally.
My son is a holdout.. his home is affordable housing and he likes his home. He is one home among incoming parking garage and they are going to put in a splash pad behind his home and a park across the street.
In Saudi Arabia especially in Jeddah the government destroyed about a quarter of the city to renew it Once your house has been written (إخلاء) (eviction) on your door, you have less than a month to get out of your house or the government will cut the electricity and literally destroy your house on your head Note that Jeddah is the second largest city in Saudi 🇸🇦
@@johnsamuel1999 Or the neighbour who wants a giant sack of cash...but then the offer is off the table because your holdout neighbour won't see. So it's back to your crummy joe job on Monday morning.
Super cool video and i loved seeing all these quirky old houses stuck between much larger buildings. Reminded me of the music video for Dido’s Thank You, which heavily influenced me as a child and led me towards studying preservation. But what i wanted to say additionally was that the host has the most exaggerated American accent i’ve come across in a while, almost like he’s mocking or mimicking what a stereotypical American sounds like. Fascinating!
I almost bought a holdout house in Marion, ohio. It was this little 700 square foot cottage on land not much bigger than 700 square feet boxed in on 3 sides by the walls of an abandoned factory.
There was a case of a Kosher butcher hold out in Hartford, CT. The insurance company just built around the little shop and their corporate tower has a big vertical slot in the facade.
Another favourite is the former Wickhams Department store in the east end of London, which is a magnificent building around a single small shop whose owners refused to sell.
They were offered huge sacks of cash. They just refused to sell....for any price. The other people who sold won the lottery. Who wouldn't want a developer offering them ten times the market value of their house?
my grandparents are holdouts they have been offered a lot to move but are retired and can live comfortably on there savings and are resolved to pass it on to my uncle and mom so they can sell it after there gone and actually enjoy all that money.
Chicago in the ‘90s. An apartment tenant in a high-rise in Lakeview got wind that the owner was planning to take the building condo. Knowing what that meant, she sub-leased her apartment for nominal rent. The sub-leasee then sub-let to another, and so on. All friends and families. A matryoshka doll of a mess for the owner. I don’t know what happened, but funny.
A regular home outside the city can easily cost 1-2 million dollars now. That 2 million dollar condo on Central Park must have been in the North and the size of an elevator. These corporations are working with hundreds of millions of dollars, if not billions. Rent is unaffordable for anyone who isn't obscenely rich in even halfway decent neighborhoods. People who want to keep historical homes they've had for decades aren't likely the greedy ones. Lastly: eyesore, my ass. These are usually the most beautiful and unique structures in the area. Just look at how many of them are the only thing preventing some fool from completely blocking out the sky.
In my neighborhood that was once farm land, the developer couldn’t come to a deal for a parcel of land in the middle so the developer built all around it. Now that landowner can’t even give the land away and the city is on their case to do something productive with it as it’s eyesore and safety concern due to petty crime for the neighbourhood. Each year a sign goes up stating something is going in but nothing happens and this has been going on since 2015.
There is a new development in Miami called The Plaza Coral Gables. One owner refused to sell his home to the developers so that he could keep his family’s legacy alive or something like that. His home is still there even though the developers built all around his home
Holdouts are a great underdog story, but it's also _very_ easy to spin in a corporation's favor. New York is a very population dense city, and homelessness is rampant. Companies buy land to build more apartments, and provide more homes. They can't make the rent particularly cheap, but that's because there's _SO_ much demand and such little supply. The space is a luxury. There's also the cost of building the apartment, paying the workers, the materials used, the lawers for all the paperwork, permits, all this drives up the cost of rent. However, now you have all these holdouts, people taking up what little land is left, and doing nothing with it. At least, nothing to make the land useful for other people. So that makes rent in the places the company can build, more expensive because they can't make more apartments. So you see how interesting holdout stories can be? You have the raw, personal, relatable underdog that doesn't want to give up to the big massive corporation. But you also have the corporation, who's trying to solve a major crisis in an over crowded city. People complain about how there's so much homelessness, either because there aren't enough apartments or because rent is too expensive. But rent is too expensive because there's not enough apartments to justify the lower cost of rent. I'd love to see a short movie about this. Does the need of the many(the homeless) out weigh the needs of the few(holdout owners)? Do holdout owners have more rights than the homeless because they own their piece of land? And what about corporations? It's easy to vilify them, have them say it's an apartment, only to open a shop, but what about the genuine businessness? The ones that would open an apartment? What about their struggle to make the price as cheap as possible, but having to deal with government beuocracy driving up the price. Meaning they can't build there in the first place because it might get too expensive and thus losing housing potential. It's really facinating
this video reminds me my thoughts as a young person about the word progress… I look around as a young man growing up and I see all the land and beautiful trees and creeks disappear and shopping malls and highways take their place. This is progress I ask myself? It's really not and I've hated it ever since. Now you have to look back into black and white photographs to see the beauty that once was that will never be again… I stand for the holdouts. Anyway this video reminded me of the thoughts of a young person I once was. People should fight back against this progress
