YIMBY movement: Difference between revisions

In 2017, USC planning professor Dr. Lisa Schweitzer conducted a series of interviews with Los Angeles anti-displacement activists and explored their understanding of YIMBY ideas: ▼

<blockquote>''"One of my points in yesterday’s discussion was, simply, that the rhetorical or persuasive burden on YIMBY advocates is higher than it is on the NIMBY component (which is different than the anti-displacement side, btw). I stand by that statement for the simple reason that NIMBY have policy inertia on their side. They have existing zoning laws on their side; they have federal home ownership favoritism on their side. They have close to 70 years of zoning being mainstream practice, at least in the US. It’s not just or right, necessarily; it’s that any form of progressive reform always has to break free of the event horizon of the status quo. Those who want the status quo only have to maintain it.'' ''"Given that progressive reforms have happened and do happen, it’s not impossible. It just requires heavy lifting, and some of that heavy lifting is tediously having to repeat the same points on the policy agenda to anybody who doesn’t run away quickly enough.'' ''"I’ve been spending my summer working on interviews with anti-displacement advocates (if you are reading this, and I haven’t pestered you, and you have something you want to say, hit me up), and it’s been enlightening. It caused me to back up and examine what premises you have to accept in order to arrive at a yes for YIMBY if you, yourself, don’t have a preference for urbanism. And it’s a pretty long persuasive journey.'' ''a) that zoning contributes to sprawl (probably the least contentious);'' ''b) that sprawl’s environmental and social consequences are sufficiently important to require that existing neighborhoods, which people may enjoy as they currently are, allow infill, even at the risk of crowding and other problems that strangers bring, in order to prevent the consequences of more building on the suburban fringe;'' ''c) that infill development actually can fix affordability or the other problems wrought by exclusion/zoning/sprawl rather than just displacing and potentially harming existing residents; that is, it is possible to accommodate as many new people (or more) in existing neighborhoods, closer to the city center, as it would have been to put them in new suburban developments on the fringe to address housing demand in urbanizing metro areas;'' ''d) that doing so will result in more good than harm overall; and for various subgroups at any given time,'' ''e) that doing so will result in more good than harm *to them personally* overall.'' &nbsp; &nbsp;</blockquote> ▼

McElroy, Erin and Andrew Szeto (2017). "[https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4sw2g485 The Racial Contours of YIMBY/NIMBY Bay Area Gentrification]."&nbsp;''Berkeley Planning Journal'', 29(1), published 2017-01-01.▼

<blockquote>▼

<br/> ''"At the height of San Francisco’s hyper-gentrification in 2014, capitalist development groups began coopting anti-displacement grammar, thereby promulgating market-driven solutions for rising rents and eviction rates. Despite the historic roots of pro-development, this new form of San Francisco pro-growth activism emerged as a reaction to a renewed housing justice movement. It was during this time that over a dozen tenant’s rights and nonprofit housing development organizations consolidated the Anti-Displacement Coalition, collectively framing the “housing crisis” as increased eviction and homelessness rates. Coalition members called for specific policies such as eviction moratoriums, taxation on real estate speculation, and enforcement of short-term vacation rentals to stop the displacement of long-term working class communities. Through direct action and strong anti-displacement policy advocacy, the Coalition united a renewed movement against gentrification. In reaction, pro-development groups that were amplified by the Bay Area Renters Federation (BARF) initiated a surge of what they called “YIMBYism” against housing justice groups’ putative “NIMBYism” (Yes in My Backyard versus Not in My Backyard). While NIMBYism has long been understood as linked to racist and wealthy neighborhood preservation, in this article we assert that despite YIMBYism’s framing of housing justice activists as NIMBY, both YIMBYism and NIMBYism shelter similar racist onto-epistemologies."''▼