To the Teacher:
The United States is suffering from a crisis of affordable housing. An estimated 11 million American households spend more than half their income just to keep a roof over their heads. The skyrocketing price of housing has led to an epidemic of evictions and widespread displacement of people, particularly in urban areas, where rent and home prices are rising far faster than incomes.
In the face of these mounting problems, a debate has emerged about solutions to the crisis. Some housing advocates support a movement called Yimby (short for “Yes In My Back Yard”), which proposes market-led development of new housing units. But others argue that these projects can end up benefiting developers rather than lower-income residents.
This lesson consists of two student readings on this issue. The first examines the arguments for and against Yimby-style development. The second looks at solutions that go beyond market-focused fixes, considering alternative ways to ensure that all people have access to affordable housing.
Reading One: The Yimby Solution: Pros and Cons
The United States is suffering from a crisis of affordable housing. An estimated 11 million American households spend more than half their income just to keep a roof over their heads. The skyrocketing price of housing has led to an epidemic of evictions and widespread displacement of people, particularly in urban areas, where rent and home prices are rising far faster than incomes.
In the face of these mounting problems, a debate has emerged about solutions to the crisis. One response to the question of housing affordability has come from the Yimbys. These affordable housing advocates, whose name stands for “Yes In My Back Yard,” argue for dramatic increases in urban development. They contend that increasing housing supply will be enough to ease the pressures of high housing demand and therefore lead to lower housing prices that more people can afford. Erin McCormick, a staff writer at The Guardian, describes the Yimbys in an October 2, 2017 article:
“The movement is fueled by the anger of young adults from the millennial generation, many of whom are now in their late 20s and early 30s. Rather than suffer in silence as they struggle to find affordable places to live, they are heading to planning meetings en masse to argue for more housing – preferably the very kind of dense, urban infill projects that have often generated neighborhood opposition from nimbys (‘not in my back yard’).
The birthplace of the Yimby movement, the San Francisco Bay Area, has among the highest rents in America. It added 307,000 jobs between 2010 and 2013, but built fewer than 40,000 new housing units, according to state of California estimates.
‘It’s clear that this is a housing shortage – and the answer is to build housing,’ says Laura Foote Clark, who heads San Francisco-based Yimby Action. ‘You generate policy by yelling about things.’”
By supporting greater urban density, the Yimbys stand in contrast to the traditional "Nimby"—or “Not In My Back Yard”—position held by many homeowners' groups. These groups often try to block new developments because they are worried that the construction will be a nuisance or that parking will become more difficult, or because they prefer single-family houses in the neighborhood rather than larger buildings.
However, not all opposition to large development projects comes from such property owners. Some long-time pro-tenant and anti-displacement community groups oppose Yimby-backed development projects as well, arguing that they often end up benefiting developers rather than lower-income residents.
In a July 20, 2017, op-ed in the San Francisco Examiner, housing rights advocates Leslie Dreyer, Joseph Smooke, and Sarah Sherburn-Zimmer argued that just promoting more development, without making sure the new housing created is actually affordable, will not solve the housing crisis. In opposition to the Yimby platform, they write:
“Lobbying for market-rate development without a strategy to keep low-income, senior, and disabled tenants in their neighborhoods is pro-displacement, not pro-housing, as your platform implies. Calling for housing deregulation won’t solve our housing crisis; it will simply make rich people richer — look at what deregulation and privatization have done to other basic needs like water and health care.….
Saying build, baby, build can add pied-à-terres, vacant investment properties and Airbnbs, but there is no data proving this tactic will provide real homes for people who actually need them.”
The housing rights advocates go on to counter the Yimby argument that “Today’s new, expensive housing becomes tomorrow’s inexpensive housing.”
“This theory doesn’t hold true for San Francisco, nor likely any other city strangled by the current global speculative market,” the activists write. They note University of California-Berkeley’s Urban Displacement Project research showing that:
- Constructing lots of market-rate units does not immediately drive rents down – in fact this could take generations and “may never actually work to relieve displacement pressures.”
- Subsidizing units for low-income people has more than twice the impact on reducing displacement pressures.
- Housing development in the short term in San Francisco can’t create a dent in affordability or displacement.
- At the regional scale, producing more market-rate housing will decrease housing prices in the long term. But at the local scale, new luxury buildings could send signals to the market that such neighborhoods are desirable for wealthier residents, resulting in new demand.
In contrast to the Yimbys, advocates such as Dreyer, Smooke, and Sherburn-Zimmer believe that reliance on the market alone is not sufficient to solve the housing crisis, and that more substantive solutions will be needed to make housing a human right.
For Discussion:
- How much of the material in this reading was new to you, and how much was already familiar? Do you have any questions about what you read?
- What do Yimby and Nimby stand for? What are the differences between the two?
- The Yimbys argue that the housing affordability crisis can be solved by building more market-price houses and apartment buildings. What is their reasoning?
- What are the arguments against Yimbys who would rely on the market to create affordable housing? Do you find these convincing? Why or why not?
- When it comes to providing housing for those who need it, the interests of long-time residents of a neighborhood can sometimes conflict with the interests of those looking to build new homes. Why might this tension occur? How do you think the interests of different groups might be balanced?
- Is there a shortage of affordable housing in your area? If so, is there a debate about how to address it?
Reading Two: PHIMBYs and Public Housing
Those who believe that simply building more market-rate units will not do enough to make housing affordable in this country have other ideas about how to solve the problem of high housing costs.
One policy that has gained considerable support is known as “inclusionary zoning.” As a report from the National Housing Conference explains: “Inclusionary zoning (IZ) programs use local control over the regulation of land use to require or incentivize the production of affordable housing as part of market rate housing development.”
Cities have zoning rules that often limit the size of buildings in a particular area (or limit what those buildings can be used for). “Inclusionary zoning” means that in exchange for being allowed to build a larger building in an area than the zoning would normally permit, a developer might agree that 20 percent of the apartments in a building will be priced below market rate and made available to families with limited incomes.
While inclusionary zoning has become increasingly popular, some advocates argue for a more direct public role in creating affordable housing – “social housing.”
In California, some advocates for social housing call themselves PHIMBYs (Public Housing In My Back Yard). They favor similar pro-density policies to the Yimbys, but believe that instead of providing incentives to private developers to create affordable housing, it should be funded directly by federal, state, and local governments.
Benjamin Schneider, editorial fellow at CityLab, explained the recent emergence of PHIMBY-ism in an April 13, 2018 article: “It might seem like PHIMBYs should have a lot of common ground with Yimbys. They disagree about what kind of housing California should build—whether built by private developers, nonprofits, or the state—but both groups concur that transit-accessible neighborhoods will need to densify to accommodate housing, one way or another.”
A much-discussed 2018 paper by the thinktank People’s Policy Project laid out how the U.S. government could build 10 million public housing units in ten years. Authors Peter Gowan and Ryan Cooper described how Sweden undertook “perhaps the most aggressive public housing plan of any country relative to its size.” In the mid-1960s, at a time when Sweden’s population was about 8 million, the Swedish government set a goal of building 1 million new housing units. The government achieved this goal in less than a decade – leading to an actual oversupply of affordable housing for decades afterward.
Similar social housing experiments have taken place in countries including Austria and Finland, with governments stepping in to provide significant amounts of high-quality, affordable housing. Unlike traditional public housing projects in the U.S., under these initiatives, any resident can apply to live in the new buildings. The amount of rent residents owe is based on their ability to pay.
In an April 5, 2018 article in The Guardian, Matt Bruenig, founder of the People’s Policy Project, explains the advantages of a social housing approach to solving the affordable housing crisis, as opposed to market-led approaches:
“First, social housing could be built at lower cost. The interest rates on government debt are lower than the interest rates on almost any other kinds of financing, including the bank loans relied upon by private developers. Additionally, local governments in many cities already own around a fifth of their city’s land, a figure that excludes public parks. It means that, unlike a private developer, municipalities could have zero land acquisition costs in many cases. Savings from lower interest rates, lower land acquisition costs, and the ability to forgo profits could be used to offer new housing at much lower rents.
Second, social housing could be built more efficiently. Both the yimbys and anti-gentrification campaigners seem to agree that private developers will build units at the top end of the market first. But this is not an efficient allocation of short-term construction resources. A municipal builder could redirect those same construction resources towards middle-income housing with smaller square footage per unit and fewer frills and amenities. By starting at the middle-end rather than working through luxury developments first, housing supply is added in a way that addresses the concerns of anti-gentrification campaigners.
Finally, social housing ensures that the public owns the resulting land and housing assets rather than private investors or homeowners. This gives municipalities more flexibility in managing their city’s housing stock, ensures that profits (if charged) flow to the public instead of affluent people, and avoids creating even more people who have an interest in blocking further housing development.”
Whether policymakers follow the Yimbys toward market-driven development, the PHIMBYs toward public development, or the Nimbys toward no solution at all, depends in part on what the public demands in coming years.
For Discussion:
- How much of the material in this reading was new to you, and how much was already familiar? Do you have any questions about what you read?
- What is “inclusionary zoning”? What do you think some of the pros and cons of this policy might be?
- What does PHIMBY stand for? How are PHIMBYs different from Yimbys or Nimbys? How are they similar?
- What are some of the advantages of social housing? How is it different than traditional public housing projects in the United States?
- Having learned about PHIMBYs, Nimbys, and Yimbys, where do you stand? Which group do you agree with most? Explain your position.
- Can you think of other solutions to the affordable housing crisis that are not discussed in these articles? What might some other ideas be?
— Research assistance provided by John Hess