by Randy Shaw on December 9, 2024 (BeyondChron.org)
Huge Gains for the Pro-Housing Movement
“When future New Yorkers look back, another 60 years from now, they will see 2024 as the year that we finally turned the tide on housing in New York City.”-@NYCPlanning
Last week, New York City passed City of Yes for Housing Opportunity, its most significant housing reform in decades. It follows Kamala Harris’s push for three million homes and downpayment assistance, which is the first time housing affordability centered a core platform of a major party’s U.S. presidential campaign.
2024 was a housing game-changer across the nation. It saw the biggest pro-housing jump in political support in decades. It was the year when governors, mayors, key local and state legislators and editorial boards tipped the debate in the pro-housing direction.
2024 was the year of the YIMBY.
It did not happen overnight. When the University of California Press published my book on the housing crisis in November 2018— Generation Priced Out: Who Gets to Live in the New Urban America—grassroots pro-housing groups were still small. My book uncovered a potentially powerful movement that would shatter city and state housing policies.
I highlighted how progressive, “blue” cities had worsened the housing needs of the working and middle-class population. A political opening for a pro-housing movement seemed to exist.
But it took time for pro-housing forces to impact policy. We saw some major breakthroughs—Single-family zoning was ended in Minneapolis, Cambridge created new zoning for affordable apartments, and Berkeley shifted to a pro-housing council majority—but opposition to the widespread legalization of apartments largely prevailed.
What changed?
YIMBY Growth
The power of the pro-housing movement reflects the growth of the YIMBY organizations I wrote about and dozens more. Legislative bodies regularly hear from pro-housing voices, and it makes a difference.
YIMBY Action, which began in San Francisco, became a national network of local groups. It now has 67 chapters and is steadily growing (I tell the origin story of the group’s Executive Director, Laura Foote, in my book).
Groups like Open NY For All, Abundant Housing LA and AURA and others in Austin ramped up their political strength. California YIMBY went from being unable to get a floor vote on its top legislative priority in 2019 to passing over a dozen pieces of pro-housing legislation in 2024.
The YIMBY movement has also been fueled by an explosion of books, articles, and newspaper stories that expanded the audience for pro-housing arguments. No longer were legislators mystified to hear talk about ending single-family zoning. NIMBY opposition remains fierce, but the political tide has turned.
A Generational Shift
What also changed is that the generations priced out of blue cities are now obtaining political power. As Michael Lane, State Policy Director for SPUR puts it, “At every level of government, we’re now seeing a new, younger generation of elected officials that came of age during the worsening housing and homelessness crises over the past couple decades and are willing to take on these challenges head-on and some even proudly identify as YIMBYs.”
A good example is California Assemblymember Alex Lee. Elected in 2020 at 25, Lee stated that “Since my first day in office, I have been pushing relentlessly to bring social housing to California.” Lee’s Social Housing Act establishes a state authority to address California’s chronic housing shortage. Lee’s bill passed the legislature in 2023 but was vetoed by Governor Newsom. He has reintroduced the bill in 2024. Lee is the Chair of the California Legislative Progressive Caucus, reflecting how pro-housing advocates are increasingly found among both moderates and progressives.
NYC Helped Nationalize the YIMBY Agenda
New York City’s problems often get national attention that issues in other major cities do not. And in 2024 the issue that topped NYC politics (other than the Mayor’s ethics problems) was the need for the city to build more housing.
Open NY for All’s City of Yes agenda galvanized pro-housing activism in the city. New York Times’ reporters and columnists are constantly promoting housing construction. Last week, columnist Mara Gay wrote, “New York Democrats Begin Saying No to the NIMBYs.” Along with her colleagues Ezra Klein and Binyamin Appelbaum, Gay has written many stories on New York City’s need to build housing. NY Times stories are read nationally, boosting the YIMBY movement.
A Worsening Crisis
YIMBY support also grew in response to a worsening housing crisis. This impacted the political debate in two ways.
First, housing prices rose across the nation. This impacted cities outside the usual suspects for high-housing costs. In California, for example, Central Valley and North Coast districts now see affordability as a top issue. Bills pass because affordability is a legislative priority across the state.
Second, the gap between housing supply and demand became too obvious for politicians to ignore. The Biden economic boom did not include housing production because high interest rates and cost of materials deterred construction. This led to story after story about families leaving for new cities and/or states in pursuit of affordable homes.
Democrats have raised alarms that the population decrease caused by families leaving blue states will impact the 2030 distribution of the Electoral College. If California and New York don’t start building a lot more housing, their share of electoral votes will shift to red states. No wonder national Democrats like Kamala Harris made building millions of new homes a top campaign priority.
Political Wins
I used to tell YIMBY groups that building political support required them to defeat NIMBY politicians and elect YIMBYs. That has happened.
Nationally, YIMBY Action endorsed 158 successful candidates in 2024. It had 369 housing proposals approved, which is estimated to bring 155,000 new homes. New York City’s City of Yes will alone bring over 80,000 new homes.
The times are changing.
Consider Berkeley. I described Berkeley in my book as effectively the NIMBY capital of the progressive world. It pioneered the use of “neighborhood preservation” laws to block new apartments.
In 2020, strong housing advocate Terry Taplin won a hard-fought battle to create a pro-housing council majority. In 2024, Taplin was re-elected without a major challenger.
The 2024 Berkeley mayor’s race saw the candidate backed by YIMBYs withdraw from the race after his family got death threats over his support for housing on People’s Park. YIMBYs, including State Senator Nancy Skinner and Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, then endorsed a little-known candidate, Adena Ishii. Despite facing two longtime councilmembers with much higher name recognition, Ishii’s backing from pro-housing forces carried her to victory.
Berkeley is a politically transformed city. If it can happen there, it can happen in almost any city.
Contrary to claims that California moved right last November, Santa Monica and Culver City both won power shifts that installed pro-housing and pro-tenant council majorities. And San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors is now very pro-housing.
Challenges Remain
For all the good YIMBY news in 2024, the struggle continues.
My book tells the stories of two nonprofit affordable projects planned for affluent neighborhoods. Venice Community Housing and Hollywood Community Housing are working to create 120 to 140 new homes on a city-owned parking lot in Venice. Habitat for Humanity New York City/Westchester and Pennrose are trying to build affordable senior housing on a storage site that the lessee turned into a garden when the long scheduled project moved forward.
Neither project has broken ground.
The struggle to build housing on what became known as Nolita’s Elizabeth Street Garden site has brought wealthy movie stars into the battle against affordable housing. New York’s highest court rejected legal challenges but opponents found judges who have provided further delay. If anyone needs a case study for why affordable housing builders avoid affluent neighborhoods, the Elizabeth Street Garden story qualifies (See my story in 2015 about this project!).
The good news is that it is still on track to be built.
The Venice struggle reflects political problems caused by the 2022 election of a council member in Venice who opposes the project. It’s another example of an affluent community complaining about the unhoused while opposing permanent supportive housing for that population (The Los Angeles Times published a December 9 editorial in support of the Venice Dell project)
Blue cities in particular have a way to go before they do what is ultimately necessary to address the affordability crisis: legalizing apartments in single-family home neighborhoods and by-right approvals of housing that is zoning compliant.
But the progress in recent years has been enormous. And 2024’s success shows that its only a matter of time before other key affordability battles are won.
Randy Shaw
Randy Shaw is the Editor of Beyond Chron and the Director of San Francisco’s Tenderloin Housing Clinic, which publishes Beyond Chron. Shaw’s latest book is Generation Priced Out: Who Gets to Live in the New Urban America. He is the author of four prior books on activism, including The Activist’s Handbook: Winning Social Change in the 21st Century, and Beyond the Fields: Cesar Chavez, the UFW and the Struggle for Justice in the 21st Century. He is also the author of The Tenderloin: Sex, Crime and Resistance in the Heart of San Francisco