Neighbors for More Neighbors - Yes In My Backyard - Higher-Density Housing

[lpetrich]

I found more articles on YIMBY's.

The YIMBY movement ("Yes in my back yard") fights for renters in stupidly expensive cities like San Francisco and New York — Quartz

Low-cost housing advocates have traditionally focused on fixing prices, via rent control or subsidies, to keep cities affordable. Trauss, 35, is one of the leaders of a new movement dubbed YIMBY, for “yes in my back yard”, that thinks differently. They embrace the laws of supply and demand.

Essentially make more housing. IMO, increasing density is good because it means a smaller ecological footprint and better utilization of public transit -- and less takeover of outlying land. Instead of building outward, build upward.

Trauss and fellow San Francisco YIMBY Party members, a group that now includes more than 500 people, believe that the only way to solve San Francisco’s housing problem is by building a hell of a lot more houses. To advocate for this, YIMBYs, many of whom are millennials tired of skyrocketing rents, have aligned themselves with private developers and against long-settled locals who see new housing as an intrusion on their lifestyle and, more importantly, a threat to the value of their homes. YIMBY groups have also emerged in New York, Seattle, and Boston, among other places, challenging the much more prevalent NIMBYs (“not in my back yarders”) who favor keeping things as they are.

...
Who are you up against, exactly? What stops new housing from getting built?

Our opponents are primarily the people who actively oppose construction in their neighborhood. People who are worried that a new building will be ugly, or will put shade on their yard, or make traffic or parking worse. If you actually listen to what people are saying at planning commission hearings, those are overwhelmingly the issues—in low- and high-income neighborhoods.

...
Also, the demographics are changing. In San Francisco, 30% of the city moved here in the past five years, and 20% of the city going to be dead in the next 20 years. Newcomers are way more pro-building than long-time San Franciscans, but the long-time San Franciscans are way more likely to vote. The reality is that our movement’s entire success depends on whether we can get renters voting in a significant way.

There is also the difficulty that property owners may not want the value of their property diluted by increasing the supply of housing.

Home - YIMBY Action
California YIMBY | California is for everyone.

 

[lpetrich]

Meet the PHIMBYs, California's Public Housing Advocates - CityLab - In California, advocates who demand “Public Housing in My Backyard” have joined traditional NIMBY groups in fighting a bill designed to boost density in transit-accessible neighborhoods.

A loose alliance of socialist activists and tenants’ rights and affordable housing boosters, PHIMBYs also oppose SB 827, but for radically different reasons than the affluent homeowners: They’re convinced that unleashing market-rate development will not significantly improve the housing situation for low-income people. Their efforts are instead focused almost exclusively on the production of subsidized, below-market-rate units, and strengthening tenant protections and rent controls for existing residents.

The collision of the three groups, each with its own vision of what’s supposed to be in its backyard, has created a confounding political dynamic. YIMBYs have criticized PHIMBYs for winding up on the same side as wealthy homeowners and rejecting zoning reforms that would likely yield real benefits to their stakeholders. PHIMBYs ding YIMBYs for their religious adherence to supply-side economics and their inability to reach out to, and provide for the needs of, communities that have long been on the losing side of housing policy. NIMBYs, meanwhile, stick mostly to their usual script—density equals traffic and parking woes—but are happy to co-opt the rhetoric of PHIMBYs when it helps them preserve the status quo.

Talk about weird politics. I'm for YIMBY's, and I have no objection to PHIMBY development as long as YIMBY development can occur.

Rise of the yimbys: the angry millennials with a radical housing solution | Cities | The Guardian - "They see themselves as progressive housing activists. Critics call them stooges for luxury developers. Meet the new band of millennials who are priced out of cities and shouting: ‘Yes in my back yard’"

Clark and other members of yimby groups consider themselves progressives and environmentalists, but they’re not afraid to throw the occasional firebomb into the usual liberal alliances. They frequently take aim at space-hogging, single-family homeowners and confound anti-capitalist groups by daring to take the side of developers, even luxury condo developers. They have started a “sue the suburbs” campaign that targets cities that don’t approve big housing projects and have even attempted to take over the board of the local Sierra Club.

Their willingness to lobby for market rate housing in traditionally minority neighbourhoods has seen them called techie gentrifiers and developer stooges. Their penchant for market-based solutions, has seen them called “libertarians” with “trickle-down economics”.

'Yes In My Backyard' Movement, YIMBY, Grows As Bay Area Housing Tightens | Here & Now - The 1,080-square-foot house in West Berkeley a developer wanted to replace with two new two-story dwellings. One neighbor objected to the new properties partly because it would cast shadows on her garden

Making it difficult to grow zucchini, something that became a big issue.

 

[lpetrich]

YIMBY in action: How pro-housing policies became a political rallying cry - Curbed

Active in cities from LA and Portland to Boston and Minneapolis, YIMBYism lives in the center of a Venn diagram of urban ills: the intertwined issues of rising rent, scarce opportunity, and increasingly long commutes. Both are accelerated by a lack of affordable, accessible housing and an apparent standstill in new construction amid skyrocketing demand. Not surprisingly, it first took root in 2013 and 2014 in the increasingly wealthy Bay Area among activists like Sonja Trauss and her Bay Area Renters Foundation (BARF). Early YIMBYs pushed back against unnecessary and sometimes comical barriers to building, like the Berkeley homeowner complaining a new building would block the sun from the zucchinis in her vegetable garden.

...
Opponents paint YIMBYs as being in the pocket of real estate interests: naively helping rich developers at best, or outright shills at worst, with funding from tech millionaires. But for every recent policy victory, such as upzoning approval in Minneapolis, Austin’s new affordable housing bond, or statewide rent control in Oregon, there have been many more defeats, most notably, the ambitious slate of housing bills in California, perceived as a huge blow in the home state of the originators of YIMBY organizing. YIMBY candidates for local Bay Area offices suffered defeat at the ballot box last November.

But they are not giving up, and they are confident that they are shifting the debate in their direction.

America Is Finally Tackling Its Housing Crisis - GEN

 

[ruby sparks]

YIMBY is an interesting acronym. Shouldn't it be YIYBY (Yes In Your Back Yard)?

 

[ruby sparks]

I've got mixed feelings about this.

I do think it's a valid objection when residents of exclusively low density detached houses oppose, typically, the demolition of one of the houses to either provide a much denser development and/or a bigger or taller one (block of flats for instance). But it depends, often, depending on several factors, such a development does not adversely affect either the property value or the amenities (eg privacy) enjoyed by the existing dwellings. I think each site or plot of land can and should be viewed and dealt with on a case by case basis, within its own urban and local planning policy context. Residents' concerns are not always valid and reasonable, but they often are, imo.

In my experience, there are numerous ways and opportunities to address the issues that YIMBY's and the like are raising (ie 'the housing crisis' and the environmental issues) without resorting to the above. So in other words, I do agree that 'zoning is a promise'. Not one that should never be broken, only one that can be broken if there are good justifications, and I'm not sure that the above example is necessarily justified, if there are other solutions that would not involve it, which there usually are plenty of in most cities. Imo, there should be some flexibility regarding zoning rules (and here there usually is) but they should not easily be overturned without good justification, imo.

I think it's also fair to say that while areas of exclusively low density detached houses do exist here, and are not exactly uncommon, they are not as common as in the USA, I believe. In other words, a lot of housing in urban areas in Britain is already mixed in that sense.

 

[lpetrich]

Ibraham Samirah’s Virginia zoning reform ends single-family zoning - Vox - "Market economics vs. suburban identity politics." by Matthew Yglesias

Ibraheem Samirah, a Democratic member of the Virginia House of Delegates who represents portions of DC suburbs in Fairfax and Loudon Counties, has an idea: legalize “duplex” houses on all residential land throughout the state.

The proposal, intended to ameliorate housing shortages, is similar to ideas recently adopted by several West Coast states. And it has provoked an immediate backlash — driven less by economic analysis than by defensiveness about the sense that suburban lifestyles are under attack.

Though the proposal is striking in its breadth, applying without exemption to all communities in Virginia, it’s actually modest in its practical implications when you peer under the hood. And again, it’s not the first of its kind: Oregon adopted a measure this past summer that eliminated exclusive single-family zoning across the bulk of the state. California has adopted a series of laws encouraging “accessory dwelling units” that accomplish something similar. And further proposals for statewide land use reform are now endemic on the West Coast.

But it provoked this response:
Luke Rosiak on Twitter: "Dems Declare War On Suburbs, Seek To Ban Single-Family Housing Neighborhoods As Barrier To "Integrated Communities"
State laws in Oregon and Virginia would override local officials to add high-density housing and public housing in every neighborhood https://t.co/pezABihrFK" / Twitter
noting Democrats Seek To Outlaw Suburban, Single-Family House Zoning, Calling It Racist And Bad For The Environment | The Daily Caller
Luke Rosiak tweeted:

Dems Declare War On Suburbs, Seek To Ban Single-Family Housing Neighborhoods As Barrier To "Integrated Communities"

State laws in Oregon and Virginia would override local officials to add high-density housing and public housing in every neighborhood

'This could completely change the character of suburban residential life,' Republican says

Dem boosters call wanting to live in quiet, natural settings "modern-day redlining" and want to add duplexes or townhomes in EVERY neighborhood, even multi-acre lots.

Republicans say putting duplexes in quiet, semi-rural areas would only add to traffic and sprawl, and destroy nature. Democrats aim to spread poverty from the city into the suburbs, and put public housing in every neighborhood, in the name of "equity."

Like living on a leafy, quiet, tree-lined street where your kids can play in the street?

That's racist, say state lawmakers, who would render local lawmakers powerless to define the character of their individual communities.

Oregon did this last year, and Virginia may follow.

House Delegate Ibraheem Samirah (D-VA) told me suburbs are "white and wealthy," "living in a bubble," and "have not done their part. Those are the areas the state is having significant trouble dealing with.

Single-family housing zones would become two-zoned."

Asked whether some people may prefer to live in woods-filled, quiet suburbs because they enjoy being in nature -- not because they are racist — he said “caring about nature is very important, but the more dense a neighborhood is, the more energy efficient it is.”

He said if local officials want to get around the state law by changing zoning setbacks to keep duplexes from going up in quiet suburban neighborhoods, "there’d have to be a lawsuit to resolve whether those zoning provisions were necessary.”

Multimillionaire real estate developers are likely to align with identity-politics Democrats to pass the measure to double the density of EVERY suburb in the state, seeing a cash bonanza in razing open spaces.

Whatever happened to "The Market Will Provide"?

 

[lpetrich]

Luke Rosiak on Twitter: "Guess they forgot to get their story straight before they decided your way of life was wrong and everything you like about your day to day reality in quiet suburbs would be forcibly taken away from you.
Some people don't want to live on top of others in crowded, dirty places. https://t.co/4TmTOxYh2K" / Twitter
with aggregated tweets

Guess they forgot to get their story straight before they decided your way of life was wrong and everything you like about your day to day reality in quiet suburbs would be forcibly taken away from you.

Some people don't want to live on top of others in crowded, dirty places.

Most people want local government to do boring stuff like fix potholes and preserve quality of life according to residents' desires

Not LARP as national politician and see everything as some sort of ideological and philosophical war between "left" and 'right.'

Urban (central) planner soy boys have never left their fancy white neighborhoods in DC to realize how much of outer suburbs are filled with people who value nature+rugged individuality & live on acreage

They say you either work in industrial agriculture, or live in city

The irony is the "urbanist" types know full well that taking neighborhoods of 1 house per acre and making them 2 houses per acre isn't smart growth, or energy efficient. It would just destroy the ambience and create traffic.

It's revenge for having a better life.

"Soy boys"???

It's higher-density development that's more energy-efficient. One does not have to travel as far to get to anywhere important. It also means more undeveloped area.

A critical distinction that often goes missing in upzoning debates is that bills that would “end” or “ban” single-family zoning don’t end single-family homes or neighborhoods that are primarily composed of them.

Rather, they’re reversing an existing ban: Single-family zoning requires that only detached single-family homes can be built in a given neighborhood.

But the opponents of this proposal seem to think that only one sort of density can ever be allowed by zoning.

Also, right-wingers often seem to think that everybody but them must accept losing in the marketplace. They cry bloody murder when it's them who lose, like their outrage at "the liberal media". They are also doing it here.

In practice, contemporary American politics has become sharply polarized along the lines of population density. Central cities and the inner suburbs of large cities are where Democrats live. Small towns, outer-fringe suburbs, and the suburbs of small cities are where Republicans live.

 

[Rhea]

I am trying to figure out how duplexes are inherently "dirty" or "crowded". Why would you not be able to put a duplex on a large wooded lot? Why would duplexes not have leafy-tree-lined streets?

Coming from the perspective of someone who lives on a rural, leafy, tree-lined street where each lot is 20-50+ acres and many of them have some sort of granny-pad duplex, or an extra hunting cabin or even in some cases, extra single-wides that they are renting out. One house on our street has 7 single-wide trailers stuffed into little 1-acre plots in their woods; one has an RV hooked up in the front yard for the brother, another had a single-wide in the front yard for 10 years for the son and his family until they got on their feet. (full disclosure: I have a single wide trailer in my side yard that was used by our parents, and now is rented to a local community college student)


I don't understand the complaint.

And, as Loren points out, won't the "free market" keep it single-family if that's what the market will bear?

 

[Toni]

How is one to do that with a large population?

Encourage the distribution of population throughout rather than concentrate on small areas.

Since we are stuck with large communities, one must ask how to create an approximation of small communities in them. A good way, it seems, is to build casual meeting areas, like benches on city streets. Some place where people can feel welcome to stay as long as they want, without being pushed out after a few minutes of (say) eating what they bought in a nearby café.

We are not 'stuck' with large communities. We have large cities. We don't have to keep subsidizing them. Communities form within cities, large and small and also within smaller towns and rural areas.

If you life in an area where you feel pushed out as soon as you've finished consuming the dinner or snack you just purchased, I would like to suggest that you concentrate your purchases on your local businesses and when you visit, visit more friendly and welcoming communities and establishments.

I absolutely admit that I am partially advocating for what I personally enjoy: a smaller, walkable town with easy access to parks, libraries, pools, walking paths, doctor/dentist/hospital, post office, banks, grocery and pharmacy, a variety of restaurants and cafes and retail establishments. AND still near enough to be able to visit larger museums, and other cultural venues without it involving an overnight or longer visit. PLUS access to great expanses of green space: farmlands, that we are ever cognizant of where our food actually comes from and how connected we are environmentally and economically to food, and also great expanses of forests and/or prairies, lakes and streams. I'm not so fond of deserts but that's a me thing and I don't think my dislike is universal nor should it be. I appreciate nature in its many forms, but I enjoy some aspects more than others. Being able to quickly go where I do not hear the noises of cars and cities and phones, etc. does a great deal to restore my personal sense of peace and relaxation. I know that I am not alone in this. Plus, it again keeps us connected to nature and our part in in and helps us recognize how closely our wellbeing is tied to the wellbeing of green spaces and indeed, wild spaces.

Superblocks: Barcelona’s radical urban plan to take back streets from cars - Vox
Dutch Living Streets - The Woonerf - Partners for Livable Communities
Pedestrian-Priority Spaces | Global Designing Cities Initiative
New Urbanism: Pedestrian Cities

COPENHAGEN’S 10-STEP PROGRAM
1. CONVERT STREETS INTO PEDESTRIAN THOROUGHFARES
2. REDUCE TRAFFIC AND PARKING GRADUALLY
3. TURN PARKING LOTS INTO PUBLIC SQUARES
4. KEEP SCALE DENSE AND LOW
5. HONOR THE HUMAN SCALE
6. POPULATE THE CORE
7. ENCOURAGE STUDENT LIVING
8. ADAPT THE CITYSCAPE TO CHANGING SEASONS
9. PROMOTE CYCLING AS A MAJOR MODE OF TRANSPORTATION
10. MAKE BICYCLES AVAILABLE

High density has the additional virtue of consuming less land than low density. It can also mean shorter commutes and better support for mass transit. So high density is environmentally good in those ways. I think that some environmentalists seem to have romantic notions of living on a farm, but there isn't enough land for everybody to live in a farm-sized estate.

Not every climate is well suited towards bicycling for meaningful transportation year round. My area's climate, for example, is inhospitable to bicycling for at least 4 months a year, particularly if one is over the age of 45 or so.

I have no idea what is meant by the words 'encourage student living.' I live in a college town and in fact, quite near the campus of the largest university in my small city. I also live on the same block as lovely family homes that have been converted to poorly maintained student housing. My city eventually enacted legislation to limit the number of multifamily rental units on a single block because all of that density you are so in love with had the net effect of increasing the number of cars on the streets, stealing the greenspaces that had been yards where people gardened and raised flowers and vegetables and children played to gravel parking lots adding to the runoff into storm sewers. Apparently, college students are much more fragile than they used to be and are unable to function without a personal automobile as they used to do in my day or to walk 6 or 8 blocks to campus. Nor are many professors or administrators or support staff able to walk to work or take public transportation (which there is virtually none in my town nor anywhere outside of very large cities). This is not making any of us thinner or more fit or more environmentally responsible.

Our city core is quite populated, with neighborhood density surrounding the local university extremely high---while residency on campus has declined. Unfortunately, paying exorbitant rates for dilapidated apartments owned by neglectful landlords does not make an 18 year old more responsible or capable of changing lightbulbs or taking out garbage and seeing that it is actually in a trash can rather than spilling onto the sidewalks or cooking a meal rather than ordering endless takeout (and decrying environmental pollution!) because they are too busy trying to get the landlord to give them actual heat, repair broken appliances and windows, and so on. My observation is that students are better off living on campus until they are at least juniors and perhaps seniors and frankly, there is nothing wrong with living on campus for 4 years. It's the more environmentally friendly option, after all....yet extremely unpopular with young people.

Things proposed in Denmark are very admirable--until we ask ourselves to actually live like that. We don't like it. And frankly, not all of us are wired to live cheek by jowl.

 

[TV and credit cards]

Encourage the distribution of population throughout rather than concentrate on small areas.



We are not 'stuck' with large communities. We have large cities. We don't have to keep subsidizing them. Communities form within cities, large and small and also within smaller towns and rural areas.

If you life in an area where you feel pushed out as soon as you've finished consuming the dinner or snack you just purchased, I would like to suggest that you concentrate your purchases on your local businesses and when you visit, visit more friendly and welcoming communities and establishments.

I absolutely admit that I am partially advocating for what I personally enjoy: a smaller, walkable town with easy access to parks, libraries, pools, walking paths, doctor/dentist/hospital, post office, banks, grocery and pharmacy, a variety of restaurants and cafes and retail establishments. AND still near enough to be able to visit larger museums, and other cultural venues without it involving an overnight or longer visit. PLUS access to great expanses of green space: farmlands, that we are ever cognizant of where our food actually comes from and how connected we are environmentally and economically to food, and also great expanses of forests and/or prairies, lakes and streams. I'm not so fond of deserts but that's a me thing and I don't think my dislike is universal nor should it be. I appreciate nature in its many forms, but I enjoy some aspects more than others. Being able to quickly go where I do not hear the noises of cars and cities and phones, etc. does a great deal to restore my personal sense of peace and relaxation. I know that I am not alone in this. Plus, it again keeps us connected to nature and our part in in and helps us recognize how closely our wellbeing is tied to the wellbeing of green spaces and indeed, wild spaces.

Superblocks: Barcelona’s radical urban plan to take back streets from cars - Vox
Dutch Living Streets - The Woonerf - Partners for Livable Communities
Pedestrian-Priority Spaces | Global Designing Cities Initiative
New Urbanism: Pedestrian Cities

COPENHAGEN’S 10-STEP PROGRAM
1. CONVERT STREETS INTO PEDESTRIAN THOROUGHFARES
2. REDUCE TRAFFIC AND PARKING GRADUALLY
3. TURN PARKING LOTS INTO PUBLIC SQUARES
4. KEEP SCALE DENSE AND LOW
5. HONOR THE HUMAN SCALE
6. POPULATE THE CORE
7. ENCOURAGE STUDENT LIVING
8. ADAPT THE CITYSCAPE TO CHANGING SEASONS
9. PROMOTE CYCLING AS A MAJOR MODE OF TRANSPORTATION
10. MAKE BICYCLES AVAILABLE

High density has the additional virtue of consuming less land than low density. It can also mean shorter commutes and better support for mass transit. So high density is environmentally good in those ways. I think that some environmentalists seem to have romantic notions of living on a farm, but there isn't enough land for everybody to live in a farm-sized estate.

Not every climate is well suited towards bicycling for meaningful transportation year round. My area's climate, for example, is inhospitable to bicycling for at least 4 months a year, particularly if one is over the age of 45 or so.

I have no idea what is meant by the words 'encourage student living.' I live in a college town and in fact, quite near the campus of the largest university in my small city. I also live on the same block as lovely family homes that have been converted to poorly maintained student housing. My city eventually enacted legislation to limit the number of multifamily rental units on a single block because all of that density you are so in love with had the net effect of increasing the number of cars on the streets, stealing the greenspaces that had been yards where people gardened and raised flowers and vegetables and children played to gravel parking lots adding to the runoff into storm sewers. Apparently, college students are much more fragile than they used to be and are unable to function without a personal automobile as they used to do in my day or to walk 6 or 8 blocks to campus. Nor are many professors or administrators or support staff able to walk to work or take public transportation (which there is virtually none in my town nor anywhere outside of very large cities). This is not making any of us thinner or more fit or more environmentally responsible.

Our city core is quite populated, with neighborhood density surrounding the local university extremely high---while residency on campus has declined. Unfortunately, paying exorbitant rates for dilapidated apartments owned by neglectful landlords does not make an 18 year old more responsible or capable of changing lightbulbs or taking out garbage and seeing that it is actually in a trash can rather than spilling onto the sidewalks or cooking a meal rather than ordering endless takeout (and decrying environmental pollution!) because they are too busy trying to get the landlord to give them actual heat, repair broken appliances and windows, and so on. My observation is that students are better off living on campus until they are at least juniors and perhaps seniors and frankly, there is nothing wrong with living on campus for 4 years. It's the more environmentally friendly option, after all....yet extremely unpopular with young people.

Things proposed in Denmark are very admirable--until we ask ourselves to actually live like that. We don't like it. And frankly, not all of us are wired to live cheek by jowl.

You're not. Reading your posts, I find myself in agreement with what you say.
At the core of this density issue is corporations wanting to locate in these already overburdened cities. Is any state like WA providing the proper incentives/disincentives to limit the influx? For example: If UselessCrap.com wants to set up it's corporate headquarters in Seattle and bring with it 2,000 employees that will need housing, medical services, emergency services, schools, etc., Does the state in any way try to coax it to locate in Tacoma instead? This is just an example. I do not know what conditions are like in Tacoma. I do know if corporations are locating in certain cities for the talent pool, locating in a smaller city 30 miles away will draw much of that same talent. And in many cases, the difference in cost of living will offset the need to travel those thirty miles for the cultural amenities available only in the big city.

Cramming the majority of a states population into a few mega-cities is not going to work for many of us. Further, for as much as many of us like cultural diversity, many are most comfortable living with their own kind. That's why we have all these ethnic communities identified with the ethnicity followed by "town". People, even many who enjoy cultural diversity like to settle with their own. It's comfortable. It feels like home. Rich people are no different, nor should it be expected of them. They are generally highly educated, high income earners or business owners who busted their butts to get what they have and want to live among people with similar educational backgrounds and motivations. They have every right to their little enclaves, just like the folks living in Koreatown.