User:0xtomato/YIMBY movement

The YIMBY movement has supporters across the political spectrum including left-leaning adherents who believe housing production is a social justice issue and free-market libertarian proponents who think the supply of housing should not be regulated by the government.

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The YIMBY movement has supporters across the political spectrum, including left-leaning adherents who believe housing production is a social justice issue, free-market libertarian proponents who think the supply of housing should not be regulated by the government, and environmentalists who believe land use reform will slow down exurban development into natural areas. (cite)

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The YIMBY movement (short for "yes in my back yard") is a pro-housing development movement in contrast and opposition to the NIMBY ("not in my back yard") phenomenon. The YIMBY position supports increasing the supply of housing within cities where housing costs have escalated to unaffordable levels. YIMBYs often seek rezoning that would allow denser housing to be produced or the repurposing of obsolete buildings, such as shopping malls, into housing. Some YIMBYs have also supported public-interest projects like clean energy or alternative transport.

The YIMBY movement has supporters across the political spectrum, including left-leaning adherents who believe housing production is a social justice issue, free-market libertarian proponents who think the supply of housing should not be regulated by the government, and environmentalists who believe land use reform will slow down exurban development into natural areas. YIMBYs argue cities can be made increasingly affordable and accessible by building more infill housing, and that greenhouse gas emissions will be reduced by denser cities.

Political spectrum

The debate over YIMBY policies does not follow the usual political lines with YIMBYs activists often aligning from all over the political spectrum.

A major part of the political coalition aligned with the movement include environmentalists and proponents of sustainability, which support measures to deregulate zoning for a variety of reasons. Urban development with higher density levels and fewer restrictions on land use reduces the population’s need to travel by automobile, and thus, cities’ need to develop car-based infrastructure, which in the United States accounts for 29% of all greenhouse gas emissions.

Furthermore, higher urban density reduces the total area of land occupied by housing developments. This opens up land to be used either for natural conservation or for low-intrusion clean energy developments such as wind or solar farms, both of which are goals of the broader environmental movement that can be achieved through land use deregulation.

Conversely, because "NIMBY" is often used as a pejorative, self-identified NIMBYs are rare, but opposition to YIMBY policies comes from some progressives, right-wing figures like Donald Trump and Tucker Carlson, historical preservationists, local power brokers, and homeowners concerned about their property values, and renter advocates concerned about resident displacement and gentrification who disagree with the view among progressive housing economists that displacement is caused by lack of enough housing.

Evidence from California suggests that support for development is often higher when the development is less local. For example, a statewide upzoning bill will have more popular support statewide than a new apartment building will have from the immediate neighbors. This can vary by state. While the national Sierra Club is in favor of infill development, local Sierra Club chapters in California oppose making development easier in their own cities. A 2019 poll conducted by Lake Reach Partners for California YIMBY found that support for more infill development is higher among renters, Democrats, and Black people, though it enjoys majority support among all groups in California.

Opposition to market-rate housing has been referred to as "PHIMBY", for "public housing in my backyard". Similarly, requiring a very high inclusionary (i.e., subsidized) percentage for new construction can result in less housing development, as subsidized homes are often more expensive to build than market-rate ones.

The origins of the modern YIMBY movement are separate from existing tenants' rights groups, which are suspicious of their association with young, white technology workers and may be wary of disrupting the status quo, which allows incumbent groups to use discretionary planning processes to negotiate for benefits while slowing development in general. Some have raised concerns about high vacancy rates, citing high vacancy rates even in high-demand cities as a sign that increasing market-rate housing will not improve affordability. There are also concerns that new housing in an expensive city draws more migration than it houses, and will actually worsen the housing crisis via induced demand. These beliefs are considered by economists to be a form of "supply skepticism".

Academic research

Housing supply and prices

Studies show that strict land use regulations reduce housing supply and raise the price of houses and land.

Research into the granular effects of additional housing supply show that new housing units in hot markets do not increase nearby rents: the effect of moving chains on demand pressure is greater than the amenity effect. This has been observed in New York City, in San Francisco, in Helsinki, and across multiple cities. Additionally, in California, new market-rate housing reduced displacement and slowed rises in rent.

Upzoning (rezoning for more housing) in the absence of additional housing production appeared to raise prices in Chicago, though the author disputed that this could lead to general conclusions about the affordability effects of upzoning.

In Auckland, New Zealand, the introduction of upzoning led to a stimulation of the housing construction industry and an increase in the city’s supply of housing.

In Portland, Oregon, an analysis of 17 years of land use deregulation policies found that individual land parcels in upzoned areas had significantly higher probabilities of development, density creation, and net additions to the Portland housing supply.

Another study published in Urban Studies in 2006 observed price trends within Canadian cities and noted very slow price drops for older housing over a period of decades; the author concluded that newly constructed housing would not become affordable in the near future, meaning that filtering was not a viable method for producing affordable housing, especially in the most expensive cities.

A more recent study on the subject of housing elasticity found an opposite conclusion; while newly constructed housing was often purchased at higher prices, the increase in supply at the high end of the market drove down prices everywhere else, leading to material benefits for people across all income groups.

Economy

Proponents of the YIMBY movement argue that eliminating restrictions on land use, in particular the common zoning regulations that only allow certain land to be developed as single-family homes, would increase economic growth.

A 2019 study by Chang-Tai Hsieh and Enrico Moretti in the American Economic Journal found that liberalization of land use regulations would lead to enormous productivity gains. The study estimated that strict land use regulations "lowered aggregate US growth by 36 percent from 1964 to 2009."

Similarly, a study conducted by the National Bureau of Economic research also estimated that deregulating land use in the United States would lead to productivity gains, with domestic output projected to increase between 3-6% and economic well-being lifted by 3-9%.