YIMBY Action

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.

There is also a long history of tearing down "naturally affordable" aka old housing and replacing it with new housing that is more expensive. Really pursuing development without displacement is REALLY complicated, and folks are terrified that building = demolition.

Nonprofit Affordable Housing Developers have in general seen what we do as good. Affordable Houser was on the founding board of YIMBY Action and NPH is a co-sponsor of #SB50.

On the other hand, many tenants rights organizations have been varying degrees of neutral to anti-YIMBY. A few have seen the value in abundant housing, but most are skeptical of what they see as "market based solutions."

This is way more nuance than we generally do on Twitter, but please get in touch if you want to chat more. This is @NeverSassyLaura at the helm!