If there’s anything we find encouraging about the future of housing affordability,
it’s that the “yes in my backyard” pro-housing movement crosses political and ideological
lines. [“This week, three bills making big changes in how Montana’s cities handle zoning
passed through the house, with broad margins and bipartisan support.”] Unfortunately,
the “not in my backyard” activists who oppose housing and neighbourhood change are
also pretty diverse politically. [“I have seen a city of renters and it’s terrible.”]
[“My constituents did not elect me to line the pockets of developers, to gut zoning regulations
and ignore the wishes of our cities and towns.”] In this video we’re going to cover pro-housing
and anti-housing positions from four different political perspectives.
The environmentalist case for YIMBYism is that denser development is just better for
the environment. It sounds counterintuitive given the trope of cities as concrete jungles
but building more compactly and building up are very effective strategies for paving over
less forest, farmland, and otherwise ecologically valuable land. If Brooklyn had the density
of Staten Island, it would take up almost five times more land than it currently does.
Letting people live closer to things makes walking, cycling, and transit more practical,
allowing them to leave cars for trips where they’re really needed, like hauling bigger
cargo. Motor vehicles spew all sorts of things into the air that give people cancer, respiratory
diseases, and other health problems, on top of contributing to climate change. One study
from California found that urban infill development (allowing more homes where people already
live) is one of the best strategies to decrease greenhouse gas emissions.
Environmentalism gets housing wrong when it takes an extremely local perspective and ignores
the bigger picture. Ann Arbor, Michigan recently rezoned a commercial corridor “notable for
its oceanic parking lots” to allow high-density housing with the goal of creating a more “downtown-style”
environment that’s more pedestrian-friendly and less car-centric. One councillor opposed
the changes: “The craze to fill our city with new residents overlooks the fact that
every person we bring here [...] brings their carbon footprint”. This makes no sense — carbon
doesn’t get counted according to city boundaries, and people moving to a higher density, less
car-centric neighbourhood are going to have a lower-carbon lifestyle on average. Another
environmentalism hazard is focusing too much on aesthetics and “seeing green things”,
which can lead someone to think that the monoculture, manicured lawns of suburbia are the pinnacle
of environmentalism. Even more urban environmentalists are not immune to prioritizing aesthetics
over function; a former city councillor in Ottawa recently declared that “no building
should be higher than the highest tree”, which he deemed to be six storeys.
The conservative case for YIMBYism is that dense, mixed-use neighbourhoods are just the
traditional way that cities and towns were built for as long as human settlements existed,
until the radical suburban experiment of top-down planning and one-size-fits-all approaches
to housing. Neighbourhoods built before modern zoning were based on organic growth according
to the needs of individuals and households, so for example, if your retired parents are
getting older you can build a secondary suite in your backyard for them. This is not legal
on most land in most cities under modern zoning. Taller apartment buildings might or might
not be for you, but they’re only financially viable in a city where there’s demand and
need for them. Traditional mixed-use main streets are more conducive to smaller and
more local business, and more traditional compact urban forms allow children more independence
and physical activity without needing to be driven everywhere.
Conservatism gets housing and density wrong when it turns exclusionary. Modern housing
regulations almost always prioritize larger homes that take more land and cost more money
and that’s appealing to a lot of people as a method of government- enforced economic
segregation. “Why do we want a bunch of poor people in Alexandria anyway? No one does,
except city council so they can tax the property [and] live their progressive dream of turning
us into a mini San Francisco.” This exclusionary instinct often targets renters. [“And I’ve
seen cities of renters and it’s ugly. It’s unkempt, noisy, strangers, schools, issues.
The whole thing is absurd. It sounds like a socialist kind of idea. If I sound like
a NIMBY, too bad. Because I care about me, my neighbours, my friends, and my cities.
Single-family homes are gonna be doomed, and when that happens, part of the spine of a
city becomes doomed.”]
The progressive case for YIMBYism is that rules about what kind of housing is allowed
(and where) fundamentally reinforce economic inequality. Through zoning, you are effectively
banned from building anything other than a mansion in Toronto’s Bridle Path neighbourhood.
Some recent city-wide reforms make it a little better but you still can’t build apartments.
Rich people literally use the power of the government to ban anyone else from living
in their neighbourhoods. “Mansion zoning” is the most egregious case, but most cities
reserve most land for only single-family detached homes, the most expensive type of housing,
limiting apartment buildings — both tall and short — to small sections of the city,
often near highways or arterial roads. Treating denser housing as a nuisance that has to be
carefully managed leads to housing scarcity, raising prices and putting power in the hands
of landlords and home sellers. Additionally, our broken housing system doesn’t just hinder
private development. Talk to anyone who builds non-profit or affordable housing and they’ll
tell you that low-density zoning, parking requirements, and community opposition are
major barriers in their housing work. [“A new development in Orleans that includes affordable
housing units will be delayed because of a parking issue. Some suggesting, though, that
it’s not really about parking, it’s about keeping affordable housing out of the neighbourhood.
Oh, I’m not against affordable housing at all, it’s just I think there are other places
that would probably be a little bit better.”]
Progressivism gets housing wrong when it rejects incremental progress in favour of idealism
that perpetuates the status quo. The Arizona Senate Democrats spoke out against state-level
housing reforms by saying that “Housing without assured affordability protections
is a non-starter. [...] Our motto cannot be that a $300,000 house is cheaper than a $500,000
house.” (1:18) But that’s a really big improvement that would make stable housing
accessible for hundreds of thousands more families in Arizona. Perversely, this way
of thinking gets even more appealing the more expensive your city is. Who wants to argue
that an 8-plex with units starting at $900,000 is the solution to housing affordability?
Well, that actually would have been a step in the right direction in West Vancouver,
average home price $3 million, where that project was rejected, with one councillor
complaining that “the starting price is still out of reach for many”. Another progressive
mistake is thinking that supporting non-profit housing development should be paired with
obstructing for-profit housing construction. There’s a pervasive idea that we can just
reject market-rate housing because the private market is fundamentally incapable of serving
regular people but that’s plainly not true. A townhouse in Edmonton (a fast-growing city
with high-incomes) averages $260,000, with condos averaging $195,000. To be clear, this
doesn’t solve every housing problem or eliminate homelessness, but it’s fundamentally more
functional for middle- and even lower-income households than high-cost cities where housing
has gone off the rails.
The libertarian case for YIMBYism is that zoning and land-use regulations are some of
the most blatant infringements on freedom and property rights in North America. Why
does your city government get to dictate how big your lawn is or prevent you from redeveloping
your property into a multiplex or apartment building? What’s worse, the economic research
is clear that these burdensome land-use regulations hinder economic growth by making job markets
less efficient. [“We do become more productive when we’re surrounded by a maelstrom of
economic activity: people for us to work with, to learn from, to sell to, to buy from.”]
Despite their inclusive rhetoric, high-opportunity cities like New York and San Francisco effectively
exclude large classes of people from living there through their dysfunctional housing
markets. Liberalizing land-use regulations might be one of the best policies out there
to promote economic mobility. [“I know of no pathway out of poverty into prosperity
that does not run through city streets.”] Allowing more compact development patterns
is also good for city finances — forcibly spreading people out inflates cities’ infrastructure
liabilities.
Libertarianism or free-market conservatism gets housing wrong when it prioritizes local
control rather than freedom. Colorado House Republicans opposed state-level housing reforms
to legalize more housing across Colorado, saying that the attack on “local control”
goes against the principles of small government libertarianism, even though the local governments
are the ones enacting onerous regulations and the state government was trying to legalize
more housing. [“Newly rolled out affordable housing regulation would allow denser development
throughout Colorado’s biggest cities. Opponents of the legislation, including the Colorado
Municipal League, say that it steamrolls local control and home rule.”] The Republican
acting mayor of Greenwood Village, Colorado dismissed the state-level reforms as a “mandate”
denying people the right to “have a say over who their neighbours are”. A scholar
from a free enterprise think tank characterized California’s state-level efforts to override
local control and legalize more housing construction as “Soviet-era central planning”. There’s
also a sentiment in many libertarian circles associating cars with freedom, leading some
otherwise libertarian-minded people to support rules that mandate and micromanage car parking
in new buildings instead of leaving it up to demand and normal market forces to decide.
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