Amidst a historic housing crisis in the United States, there is a burgeoning YIMBY movement — a movement of people saying “Yes In My Backyard” to affordable housing. This movement works to push back on local anti-housing sentiments in many high-cost communities, which reflect a culture known as NIMBYism or saying “Not In My Backyard” to affordable housing. But the battle lines of America’s housing debate are not so cut and dry. A faction of pro-housing activists is heavily disillusioned with YIMBYism, believing that encouraging rapid new housing development is leading to more displacement and gentrification.
YIMBYs diagnose a housing shortage as the root cause of the housing crisis, and zoning reform as the solution. In this view, the law of supply and demand explains most of the precipitous rise in housing costs. Local zoning codes often restrict housing development to single family homes or other low-density housing units, limiting the supply of housing. These zoning rules are upheld by older voters active in local government, NIMBYs, who in the name of “neighborhood character” and preserving their property values express sentiments underlaid by troubling racial and class undertones that explain their antipathy to incoming residents and renters in general.
At least on the issue of a housing shortage, YIMBYs are right. Population growth has far outpaced housing construction relative to historical norms, especially in major cities. Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies estimates that current levels of population growth would support the construction of 300,000 more units than are currently built each year. As for causation, housing economists have consistently found that restrictive zoning ordinances are a key driver of low supply and high prices.
But might legalizing higher-density construction cause gentrification? Caught between YIMBYs and NIMBYs in the housing debate, some activists target luxury developments as the driver of this phenomenon. Yet the reality is that any new apartments in expensive neighborhoods will always be marketed by developers as “luxury” to justify sky-high market prices. And what is the alternative to this new development? Housing demand in major cities is rising on its own as new residents are drawn in by expanding job markets, and prospective tenants must always find somewhere to live. Either they move into new high-density construction, or they move into renovated older homes bought up from longtime residents. Both scenarios, unfortunately, involve some displacement of locals, but large developments will house more incoming residents per each displaced existing resident because they are higher density. And over time, building luxury condos will shift more wealthy residents out of older homes, freeing these units up for low-income residents in a process known as filtering. In short, apartments labeled “luxury” are an effect, not a cause, of the housing crisis. Allowing more of these developments, as YIMBYs promote, will ease the housing shortage and reduce market pressures to displace current residents.
On the other hand, some YIMBYs wrongly believe there is no place in the housing market for inclusionary zoning requirements and similar tenant protections. Inclusionary zoning mandates that new developments include a subset of homes offered below current market rates. Some YIMBY critics correctly argue that this reduces developers’ incentives to build more housing by reducing their profit margins, thus exacerbating the housing shortage. However, this line of thinking ignores the obligations housing activists have to the communities they serve. The economic filtering process that shifts more units of housing toward affordable levels by providing higher-income residents with more apartments is an extremely slow one, as it depends on the sluggish pace of new development — not to mention the time-consuming obstacles this faces as it works through zoning approval boards in local governments. Millions of Americans are in desperate need of housing now, and the only way to serve every member of the community is to ensure there will always be housing affordable to even the lowest-income residents.
Though they may not represent the most trendy millennial movement, growing numbers of anti-gentrification activists are often more connected to the local community of renters than the characteristically technocratic YIMBYs. Organizations like Boston’s City Life/Vida Urbana, whose bilingual name reflects a much stronger multiracial coalition compared to the predominately white YIMBY movement, have watched new “luxury” housing development replace historically low-cost neighborhoods for decades. This development coincides with YIMBYs’ zoning reform efforts, and frustrated activists argue that building expensive new condos displaces low-income longtime residents, causing gentrification. Rather than runaway development, they would prefer greater investments in public housing subsidies, affordability requirements that stipulate some proportion of new units to be offered below market rate, and more tenant protections. A subset has even repurposed the YIMBY acronym to create PHIMPY: “Public Housing In My Backyard.” While not all of their policy positions match the realities of the housing market, others do. Most importantly, these activists deserve a seat at the YIMBY table.
In September 2018, the differences between anti-gentrification activists and YIMBYs led 200 attendees of a conference hosted by City Life/Vida Urbana to walk over to the simultaneous YIMBYtown conference and make their voices heard. “I invite you to learn from those of us who are already working on the front lines,” City Life Executive Director Lisa Owens told them. “I invite you to not put forward housing proposals without talking to us.” YIMBYs have historically failed to include and uplift the diverse communities that they purport to serve. Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term “intersectionality” 30 years ago to capture the interconnected nature of race, gender, class, and other identities — and the need to reflect these intersections in social activism. YIMBYism, however, will not be an intersectional movement unless it begins to incorporate the multitude of ways in which housing interacts with identities and depends on the perspectives of those most directly affected by the housing crisis. “I invite you to follow our lead,” Owens said, and that begins with centering the needs of the community in housing advocacy.
The lessons of local housing activism demonstrate a need for reform in the YIMBY movement. Although YIMBYs are largely right on the economic drivers of the housing crisis and the urgent need for zoning reform to alleviate them, they must also adopt a more realistic sense of what other solutions are necessary to create a movement that represents all victims of the housing crisis. YIMBYs need to bring a multiracial coalition like that of City Life/Vida Urbana into the fold of mainstream pro-housing activism and elevate their voices as much as they elevate those of economists. To truly advocate for a reclamation of the housing market from NIMBYs that oppose housing on both economic and racial grounds, YIMBYs must make their activism intersectional. Only with the combined power and understanding of how neighborhoods, cultures, races, religions, classes, and other identities intersect with technical features of the housing market will a truly pro-housing movement emerge: intersectional YIMBYism.
Image Credit: Flickr/A Yee