There are three things slowing new housing in this country. High interest rates, a shortage of construction labor and local (by public officials &/or voters) resistance to allow new homes (in many major markets).
Some the local resistance comes from ridiculous environmental review/permitting that can take years. That's something the federal gov can tackle. As for people not wanting more congestion in their town? That's something that is and should remain the decision of local governments. To have Big Brother decide how many homes should be built in your community sounds pretty tyrannical. Something Trotsky might love, however.
Why the Pro-Housing ‘Yimby’ Movement Is Wading Into the Election
Harris’s proposal to build millions more homes draws fans among ‘Yes in My Backyard’ activists
Yimby-tinged ideas are a central plank in Kamala Harris’s platform to bring down housing prices. Photo: Jacquelyn Martin/Associated Press
By Molly Ball, WSJ
Sept. 15, 2024 5:01 am ET
The video call that would host a parade of the Democratic Party’s most prominent officeholders began with a shirtless man in a barren room issuing this clarion call: “Welcome to Yimbychella!”
To the thousands who had tuned in, Armand Domalewski’s words required no explanation. For everyone else, what he meant was that the call was the equivalent of the hip Southern California music festival Coachella for the political movement known as Yimby—“Yes in My Backyard.” (As for the shirtlessness—Domalewski, a San Francisco data analyst, housing activist and former Democratic operative, appeared to be wearing American-flag overalls with nothing underneath—that wasn’t explained.)
The “Yimbys for Harris” convening attracted some 30,000 participants on a recent Wednesday night. It represented a breakthrough moment for the decade-old Yimby movement, which seeks to undo the zoning regulations and procedural requirements that make it difficult to build new housing. As home prices and rents have skyrocketed across the nation, experts have largely concluded that the problem is rooted in basic supply and demand—a lack of available housing at all price points. The Yimbys have spent years trying to force local policymakers to address the situation, battling intense headwinds from entrenched “not in my backyard,” or Nimby, interests.
“I could not be more thrilled that every top Democrat in America is becoming a Yimby!” Laura Foote, the executive director of the national Yimby Action group, said on the call. “We have officially made zoning and permitting reform cool! I just want everyone to take that in.”
Homes in San Francisco. The Yimby movement seeks to undo regulations and requirements that make it difficult to build new housing. Photo: Jeff Chiu/Associated Press
Their cause, long the boutique obsession of a scattering of wonky bloggers and local activists, has suddenly moved to the political mainstream this election season. Yimby-tinged ideas are a central plank in Vice President Kamala Harris’s platform to bring down prices and were prominently mentioned at last month’s Democratic convention. On the Yimbys for Harris call, Democratic governors, members of Congress, and local officials from San Francisco to Manhattan to Sheboygan, Wis., and Spokane, Wash., appeared to sing the praises of upzoning, ADUs (accessory dwelling units) and single-stair buildings, as commenters posted “Build, baby, build!” in the comments.
“What we’re seeing is a generational shift,” Sen. Brian Schatz (D., Hawaii) said on the call. “If we want to actually solve the problem of the housing shortage, the simplest way is to make it permissible to build.” The call would ultimately raise nearly $130,000—a greater one-night total than the “Swifties for Kamala” convening of Taylor Swift fans earlier that same week.
The Yimbys were encouraged by numerous high-profile mentions from the stage of last month’s Democratic convention. “America is not a museum!” declared San Francisco Mayor London Breed, who was elected with the help of Yimby activists in 2018 and has made encouraging housing development central to her tenure.
Former President Barack Obama devoted a passage of his convention speech to a Yimby-themed riff: “If we want to make it easier for young people to buy a home, we need to build more units and clear away some of the outdated laws and regulations that have made it harder to build homes for working people in this country,” he said. His former speechwriter Jon Favreau subsequently said on a podcast that Obama had wanted to get even deeper in the weeds on the issue and had to be dissuaded from discussing “zoning laws” in his prime-time address.
Verde, a new residential building, at the Mission Rock redevelopment project in San Francisco. Photo: Philip Pacheco/Bloomberg News
Harris’s speech accepting her party’s nomination also alluded to the Yimbys’ rallying cry, pledging to “end America’s housing shortage.” She has made housing the centerpiece of her policy proposals to fight the rising cost of living, with a plan she says would result in three million new homes being built. An ad touting her plans for housing is in heavy rotation in battleground states, and the campaign recently held a weeklong blitz of housing-themed events in 19 cities across 12 states.
A Harris campaign spokesperson wouldn’t comment on whether the Democratic nominee identifies as a Yimby. But she is a longtime ally of pro-housing politicians such as Breed, and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, has pursued a Yimby-friendly agenda in his home state. The movement’s leaders see Harris’s current proposals and rhetoric as in keeping with its longstanding goals—and they are thrilled to see their pet issue suddenly in the center of the political conversation.
For his part, Republican nominee Donald Trump has nodded to both sides of the debate. In an economic speech earlier this month, he proposed cutting regulations for builders and allowing more building on federal land—Yimby-friendly ideas that overlap with some of Harris’s policies. When he was president, his housing secretary, Ben Carson, proclaimed himself a Yimby. But Trump also has attacked Yimby reforms as a “sinister plan to abolish the suburbs” by allowing low-income housing to “invade” them, and his recent economic speech argued that illegal immigrants were to blame for high housing costs by increasing demand.
The federal government has a limited role in the land-use decisions that are the Yimbys’ main target. The Biden administration has drawn praise from Yimbys for the Housing Supply Action Plan it released in 2022. But most of the housing-policy debate has unfolded at the state and local levels, often pitting Democrats against one another. That is what makes the Yimbys’ emergence in the Democratic mainstream particularly significant. As more liberals get “Yimby-pilled,” the movement hopes its growing mindshare in the party will make it easier to win those intraleft policy battles.
Rep. Robert Garcia, a California Democrat and former mayor of Long Beach, has sponsored pro-housing legislation in Congress and recently founded the bipartisan Yimby Caucus on Capitol Hill. The movement, he said, will only succeed by making further inroads on the left. “Folks in office that call themselves progressives or Democrats are holding back housing construction,” Garcia said. “We should be the party of growth, and that means housing for everyone that is affordable and accessible.”
Rep. Robert Garcia, a California Democrat, has sponsored pro-housing legislation in Congress and recently founded the bipartisan Yimby Caucus on Capitol Hill. Photo: Matt Slocum/Associated Press
The Yimbys’ progressive critics argue that their proposals lead to out-of-control development that harms the environment, disrupts local character and gentrifies low-income neighborhoods. Grassroots opposition from local activists and their representatives has torpedoed Yimby reform efforts from California to Colorado to New York in recent years.
“Supply matters, but supply-side economics left to its own devices doesn’t address the needs of the middle and working class,” said David Campos, a former San Francisco supervisor who lost his bid for state assembly because of opposition from Yimby activists. “It’s important for the Democratic Party to be pushing for more housing, but it’s also important that the diverse communities that see the Democratic Party as their political home have a voice in the housing debate.”
Foote, the Yimby Action executive director, reminisced in an interview about how far the Yimbys have come. A decade ago, she was a recent San Francisco transplant struggling to afford an apartment on a low-level sales-job salary. Commiserating with fellow millennials struggling to make ends meet, she saw how the city’s soaring rents were deforming their lives: friends who commuted for hours every day, friends who resigned themselves to living with bad roommates or toxic exes, a friend who avoided complaining to the landlord about her apartment’s black mold. As Foote researched the roots of the city’s calamitous housing shortage, she realized it could largely be traced to the little-noticed municipal meetings at which neighbors would come out of the woodwork to oppose any proposed development—the Nimbys, whose voices were generally the only ones policymakers heard.
Foote and a growing group of allies began showing up at meetings to push back on the Nimbys and advocate for more housing, their numbers burgeoning in a Google group they had formed. In 2016 they formed a political-action committee to support the local candidate who had become their most vocal champion, Scott Wiener, then a city supervisor seeking a state Senate seat. Housing issues were central to the campaign, with Wiener’s opponent, a fellow Democrat, accusing him of selling out to developers, and hundreds of Yimby volunteers mobilizing on Wiener’s behalf.
The issue was viewed at the time as a politically toxic morass that few elected officials wanted to risk touching, Wiener, who also appeared on the Harris call, recalled in an interview. As a state lawmaker, he has fought fellow Democrats to push for statewide housing reforms. California has passed more than 150 pro-housing laws since 2017, including Wiener-backed measures to shorten permitting times for new housing construction and allow churches to build housing on their property.
California State Sen. Scott Wiener has fought fellow Democrats to push for statewide housing reforms. Photo: Laura Morton for WSJ
“I’m still a little dumbfounded that this movement has now busted out in such a huge way,” said Wiener, who first became interested in the issue as a young lawyer working with HIV and AIDS patients. “This wasn’t the case even five years ago let alone a decade ago. The Overton window has shifted on this issue, and it’s just music to my ears.”
Yimby Action now has dozens of chapters across the country, and other grassroots groups have sprouted up alongside them. A 2022 Brookings Institution report found more than 140 local groups calling for housing reform, and the biennial “Yimbytown” national conference drew hundreds of participants to Austin, Texas, earlier this year. The movement is a bipartisan one; in states such as Florida, Texas, Montana and Utah, Republican policymakers have touted housing reform as a deregulatory measure that is good for the economy. Schatz, the Hawaii senator, has co-sponsored a federal YIMBY Act with Indiana Sen. Todd Young, a Republican.
While the Yimbys are celebrating their moment in the political spotlight, some worry it could come at a cost. “The biggest risk of this issue being affiliated with Democrats is that Republicans may be less willing to push for these kinds of political changes,” said Jenny Schuetz, a Brookings senior fellow who studies housing policy. Republican governors and mayors, she said, are often naturally sympathetic to Yimby goals as a matter of economic competitiveness and workforce development. “But it’s a harder argument if it’s about a progressive idea.”
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