Better to Be Right or Effective?

Why YIMBY politics needs to be more democratic

Photo by Blake Wheeler on Unsplash

Changing the way America builds its cities is hard. As Reihan Salam surveys in a recent piece for The Atlantic, so-called YIMBY (Yes, in my backyard!) politics is finding a tough time getting traction. The movement aspires to densify America’s neighborhoods, aiming to build multi-family housing in the country’s suburbs and to transform city centers to be as dense as European ones. California has passed sweeping YIMBY-inspired laws that effectively outlaw single-family zoning, but similar efforts in other states have failed to overcome opposition. California’s law might even be rolled back by a ballot measure in 2024.

To progressives (and some centrists), YIMBY policies are obviously good. Yet they meet stiff resistance. Given that California and other states are bleeding residents and suffering from ballooning homeless in part due to housing costs, why do many residents want to roll back measures to increase the housing stock? The trouble here, like elsewhere in modern politics, is that advocates are often so convinced of the correctness of their cause that they forget to do effective democracy.

Salam points out the clearest outward manifestation of this: moral righteousness. One Twitter poster put it baldly: “NIMBYism is just racism with extra steps.” That viewpoint, in turn, justifies ham-fisted, top-down YIMBY policy. California essentially eliminated the right of local jurisdictions to govern their own built environment. People like Richard Kahlenberg are not content with even that, calling for a federal ban on single-family zoning and a law that would let judges decide if zoning policies are fair enough to poor and minority citizens. While the end goals are largely desirable to advocates of equity, the path taken is anti-democratic.

This matters because laws don’t just have to get on the books, YIMBY advocates would likely prefer that they stay there. But if their approach generates so much antipathy that new policies are quickly overturned, then they’ve essentially just wasted time and precious political capital. As Salam argues there’s no sustainable path toward realizing a YIMBY urban future without making compromises with skeptics. Indeed, failing to do so is exactly why YIMBY’s runs into so much opposition.

Salam proposes a number of strategies to meet NIMBYs halfway and build a stronger coalition. Given concerns about crime, whether they are accurate or not, YIMBY policy could matched higher law enforcement spending. YIMBYs could work with larger employers, who see it in their interest to keep housing costs lower. As I proposed in another post, testing policy changes in smaller areas can help demonstrate that potential side effects are small or easy mitigated.

These might seem like obvious moves. But good old fashioned politics like this is decidedly out of fashion in today’s political climate. From climate change to COVID-19, most political issues have become polarized, characterized by fanatical opposition between groups who are totally convinced that only they are on the right side of history. But as I show in my book, The Divide, such beliefs can make it impossible to get anything done. Yet, as I’ve experienced over the last several years, people are often very resistant to learning this lesson. But, ultimately, one has to decide whether it preferable to be “right” or to be politically effective. Here’s to hoping that more of us choose the latter.