YIMBY Action

There are two opposing factions: don't build anything, or let developers build unlimited market-rate housing without zoning restrictions. Both are wrong. The solution has to be somewhere in the middle: build more housing, but use zoning restrictions to ensure it is affordable.

How do you ensure affordability with zoning restrictions? I'm open to the idea that there are people hurt by development that the YIMBYs are missing. But I've not seen it spelled out

These are not the correct sides and there are many more sides. YIMBYs basically advocate for 4 things: 1) allowing multifamily housing in more places 2) speeding up permitting 3) more $$$ for subsidized Affordable Housing 4) reforming bad incentives (prop13, parking)

Market rate and Affordable Housing is good. Both need multifamily zoning and a streamlined process that doesn't enable NIMBYs.

The primary funding source for Affordable Housing is not taxes on Market Rate Housing, and shouldn't be. It we do that, we'll never get enough of either. We should directly subsidize a ton of Affordable housing through taxes, bonds, etc.

Zoning restrictions don't help us get Affordable Housing. Sometimes a few big cities use the "granting of density" as a carrot to get market rate developers to give more funding to Affordable Housing. We have mixed feelings about these kinds of policies.

You can often get into situations where folks are demanding really high levels of funding for Affordable Housing such that in the end nothing pencils, so we lose both Golden Eggs (affordable housing) and the goose (market rate housing). As fans of gooses and eggs, this is bad.

This is where the "YIMBYs don't support Affordable Housing" argument largely comes from. We've generally advocated for Inclusionary Housing that is "feasible" which has put us at odd with folks who think IZ can be any rate and they don't care if it kills some projects.