The YIMBY Movement’s Twists And Turns

The subtle pivot of YIMBYism from infill development to sprawl is unsettling.

A view of recently constructed homes in the Dallas suburbs. Source: gettyimages.com

(Readers: Happy Mother’s Day to all the mothers and mother figures within the reach of this article! You deserve all the thanks that’s coming your way today.

In other news: I’m back! It’s been a struggle to maintain the writing pace I’d like to right now, but I haven’t abandoned you. Ideally I’d like to post some 2-4 articles a week, but lately it’s been 1-2. I’m working on getting that up soon. Until then, I’m making this article available to all subscribers, in part because of the lack of activity but also because I think this issue is extremely important now. -Pete)

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In recent weeks it seems that the progression of the YIMBY movement is reaching some limits on its growth, causing it to make some unexpected twists in the logic of its supporters.

A month ago, New York Times reporter Conor Dougherty wrote a pretty compelling story in favor of sprawl, or the continued outward expansion of our metropolitan areas. In his article, Dougherty marvels at how the Dallas metroplex has been able to accommodate explosive growth while remaining affordable. While touring the Dallas metro area by air with an exec from Hillwood, a development company owned by Ross Perot, Jr., Dougherty sees how Dallas does it:

“The Dallas area has grown by about three million people over the past two decades, and, he predicted, it would continue to push outward for many decades more — 40 miles from downtown, then 50, until the metroplex bulges across the state line into Oklahoma, surpassing the population of the Chicago region and continuing to expand from there. “I told my kids, ‘All you got to do is fill in this map, and you’ll have a pretty good business,’” Perot said.

The executive took me around one of the firm’s projects, quaintly named Pecan Square, which has a faux downtown complete with parks and pickleball courts; a co-working space on the square has been built with exposed ductwork, to give it an industrial vibe. Once finished, Pecan Square will have 3,100 homes, starting around $415,000 for a three-bedroom.”

Relatedly, there’s growing support for the use of publicly-owned land for the development of housing, particularly affordable housing, to reduce costs. Strangely, this idea has found common ground between many YIMBYs and the Trump administration. Who would’ve thought that:

“Federal officials have estimated that 400,000 acres of federal land could potentially be made available for housing development, said Jon Raby, the acting director of the Bureau of Land Management. The estimate, which will continue to be refined, was determined after officials looked at land within 10 miles of cities and towns with a population of 5,000 or more, he said.

The effort could be most impactful in states like California, New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona, Wyoming, Oregon, Idaho and Colorado, Mr. Raby said. Officials said the lands vary widely and range from deserts and grasslands to mountains and forests. The lands are generally uneconomical or difficult to manage because of their scattered or isolated nature and “must meet specific public interest objectives.””

Many supporters of YIMBYism, like I assume Dougherty is, have focused for years on reforming zoning legislation to increase housing production, especially in high-cost housing cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York. And they’ve had some high-profile successes, such as the elimination of purely single-family home zoning districts in Minneapolis a few years ago, allowing the construction of 2-4 unit dwellings where none could be built before. California YIMBYs have made great strides statewide in passing legislation making it faster and easier for homeowners to produce accessory dwelling units (ADUs) in single-family zoning districts. YIMBYs have also been successful at implementing transit-oriented development near transit stations in cities like Portland, Denver and Arlington, VA, just outside of Washington, DC.

However, the singular pursuit of building more housing, anywhere and anyhow, is warping the logic of the YIMBY movement. Instead of advocating for more housing in the areas that are the most expensive, YIMBYs are beginning to support more housing on the margins of metro areas, i.e. sprawl, to achieve what they desire.

While doing research for this piece, I came across a Substack newsletter called Deep Left Analysis. It appears it’s written by an anti-Trump right-winger whose views on many issues I find abhorrent. In the author’s take on the American housing crisis, the author notes several points that expose flaws in the YIMBY movement. The author also takes some of those points to extreme libertarianism in my view, but also raises two salient points that don’t get discussed enough:

“There is a housing shortage in desirable areas. But that’s a “desirable area” shortage (not a housing shortage)…

The problem isn’t that we don’t build enough houses; the problem is that behavioral segregation is only possible through pricing. The only way we can manifest “desirable areas” is by pricing criminals out of the market, i.e., zoning.”

The first point is one I’ve made for years. Back in 2014, I wrote a piece called “The Millenial Housing Shortage Fallacy” (now paywalled) that starts with this insight:

There is no shortage of housing in most U.S. metro areas. There is a shortage of housing in the areas most attractive to today's young and affluent urban pioneers. Their efforts to increase supply in cities, in the most desirable areas, is misguided and could ultimately cause more harm than good.

The second point made by the writer is true in the sense that zoning has been the most widely utilized and accepted tool to enforce economic segregation in U.S. metro areas. I find the author’s acceptance of “behavioral segregation” as the American norm to be wrong; it’s insulation, and that’s another theme I’ve discussed in past pieces. Nonetheless, whatever you want to call it, it’s at the heart of our nation’s housing issues today.

Strong Towns founder Charles Marohn wrote a commentary on the “Why America Should Sprawl” article last week. He also made two salient points that rarely get discussed. The first speaks to California’s specific experience:

“California boomed with outward growth in the mid-20th century. Then it hit the wall. Infrastructure couldn’t keep up. Local governments faced budget crises. Anti-tax revolts and anti-growth regulations followed. Now California is trying, painfully, to retrofit its cities with mandated infill housing and top-town transit investments, but the process is slow and contentious.”

The bolded emphasis is added because that gets to the heart of YIMBY’s current frustrations. It’s the kind of frustration that bubbles over into other economic and political issues, leading to deep envy of places like Texas that have been able to grow explosively and affordably, and the publication of best-selling books like Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson. But Marohn notes that Texas isn’t doing anything special, nor should it be replicated:

“The article highlights booming Sun Belt metro areas like Dallas-Fort Worth as examples of how sprawl is already happening, like it or not. But Texas isn’t disproving the critics of sprawl—it’s just a few decades behind California.

Texas today is merely copying California’s approach—it’s just earlier in the process. What California experienced in the late 20th century, Texas is beginning to feel now: a flood of growth, a boom in low-density housing, and the eventual reckoning with infrastructure shortfalls, fiscal imbalances, and political backlash.”

It’s disheartening to see YIMBYs slowly moving toward sprawl as a way out of our nation’s housing crisis, when I view the solution as regeneration and redevelopment. I guess you have to come from a place like the Midwest, like I do, to come to that conclusion. In our metros, explosive growth faded away a long time ago.

Sprawl was never an answer to the Midwest’s challenges, and it’s not the answer for today’s explosive growth metros either.