r/yimby

I never understood the obsession with what private actors do with their own property.

Think about what the alternative is. What is the inverse of NIMBY? Like if you have a crack den, meth lab, or low income public housing project, what are you supposed to say?

“In my backyard! Yes please!”

Taking pride in where you live is important and we need to have the NIMBY attitude quite frankly. With a “please yes in my backyard” attitude you will just turn nice places shittier. And lower everyone’s property values.

Hey everyone,

We're hosting a Marin YIMBY happy hour and would love to meet more people who care about housing, affordability, and the future of Marin.

📅 July 2
🕠 5:30–7:00 PM
📍 Joinery, Sausalito
300 Turney St, Sausalito, CA 94965

No speeches, presentations, or membership requirements—just a casual chance to meet people, talk about what's happening locally, and enjoy a drink by the waterfront.

Whether you're deeply involved in housing policy, housing-curious, or just looking to meet some new people, feel free to stop by.

Hope to see some of you there! 🍻🏡

Submission statement: New York City’s Rent Guidelines Board approved a rent freeze for rent-stabilized apartments, aligning with a first-generation rent-control model. While this provides short-term relief for tenants, it poses long-term risks to the city’s housing market. The freeze could lead to deteriorating building conditions, reduced investment in housing quality, and a two-tier housing system that disadvantages newcomers and those needing to relocate.

I worked with Joe Minicozzi of Urban3 to go through the math-- per acre, dense neighborhoods (including poorer ones) tend to be the ones subsidizing low density sprawl. The low density sprawl couldn't be sustained financially if not for the apartment buildings.

Curious if anyone else here has run into the same "apartments are a drain" argument, and how you respond to it…

Submission statement: Vancouver, facing a severe housing crisis, is witnessing a unique development on Squamish land. Freed from city regulations, the Squamish are building Senakw, a dense residential neighborhood with 6,000 homes, challenging Vancouver’s restrictive housing policies. This project, led by Squamish leader Khelsilem, aims to provide much-needed housing while promoting urban density and sustainability.

Paywall: https://archive.ph/ayWCs

Hi everyone! Longtime YIMBY and lurker on this subreddit. I live in Montgomery County, MD. Last week, we had a fairly contentious county executive election where the key issue was affordability (surprise! The candidate considered the heir to the current NIMBY CEX won). I think it’s safe to say that the cost of living here in MoCo and across the DMV is unsustainably high.

This is especially the case with housing costs.
However, one aspect of this issue that both bewilders and yet fascinates me to no end is the disconnect between what people want and what actually needs to be done.

Here’s what I mean. One of my toxic hobbies is following local real estate channels on social media and oogling at the listings. Oftentimes, these videos are filled with the same few comments and variants of them: “that’s not worth X” or “That’s overpriced”. Mind you, this is for single-family homes. God have mercy on you if you venture onto posts about townhouses, where people reserve their worst scorn for. Some choice comments for these posts I’ve seen include “Any townhome over 500K is just waste, fraud and abuse” and perhaps tellingly: “I don’t want a half a million dollar town home. I want a single family home.” Still others bemoan the construction of new townhouses entirely, saying it should stop because “no one wants them” in some cases, saying there’s already too many people here. We’re full! It’s also not just older people saying this - it’s often people my age (I’m 31) and younger.

In some cases, the OP will respond asking these folks how much they think these houses are worth, receiving responses like “no more than $200k” or thereabouts. Sometimes they will try to explain this is just what the market is like right now, to blind eyes.

This attitude is something that I have seen among my friends and family members as well. I don’t mean to insult or demean them or our fellow residents. But it is quite shocking to me how many people can’t seem to connect the dots - housing is expensive because, despite all the issues we have here, we live in an overall highly desirable area with jobs, good schools, health care access, and so on. People want to live here! Consequently, when people can’t afford to live here, people leave, increasing the tax burden on those who remain, budget cuts, and so on, creating a negative feedback loop.

Other cities across the country (notably Austin) have shown us that you can lower housing costs by building more. It’s not rocket science. But there’s a tremendous unwillingness - a stunning lack of imagination even - from so many to entertain such a notion. Part of it might be cultural. So many grow up under the notion that accomplishing the American dream means having a big SFH with a yard and garage. Density is almost a swear word for many. Another reason might be similar to the concept of temporarily embarrassed millionaires - why advocate for building more apartment buildings, condos, and townhouses when you want a SFH?

The growing acceptance of YIMBY ideas shows there’s been progress made. Still, much work remains to be done. I’d be curious to hear from folks how we can overcome these barriers and help increase understanding of these issues.

My friend and I were arguing about this and he said that the housing market is not as competitive as it appears. According to him, Landlords often leave units vacant or offer months of free rent instead of lowering advertised rents because lower rents can reduce a building’s appraised value, limit access to financing, or affect loan terms. In addition, he said the RealPage litigation alleges that many large landlords used shared pricing algorithms and nonpublic data to coordinate rent increases, potentially reducing competition. If landlords can both coordinate pricing and strategically restrict supply to maintain higher rents, then rent freezes may be more justifiable as a response to these market distortions according to him.

For the first time, in...I think...ever? I have to say the phrase "thank you Speaker Johnson"

But here we are. He's not holding the bill back from being formally submitted to spare Trump from having to make a decision. He's actually acting.

Now Trump has 10 days, not counting Sundays, to decide on whether to sign, to veto, or to leave it blank.