WELCOME TO YIMBYTOWN: Yes In My Backyard!
The San Francisco Bay Area has long served as the cultural hearth of edgy social movements, but the latest one seems oddly against the accustomed liberal/left political mold. But the Bay Area’s notoriously high-priced housing market has given rise to a budding movement of pro-development “Yimby” (yes in my backyard) groups that advocate for building more housing in hopes of easing exploding rents and home prices. Today a group of 200 or so activists from around the country, as well as Britain and Canada, convene in Oakland for the “Yimbytown” conference.
The conference is another sign of momentum for the Yimby movement, which has clashed with the Bay Area’s liberal establishment. A year ago most Yimby groups were tiny ragtag operations, but today they are pushing bills in Sacramento and have attracted enough money from Silicon Valley and elsewhere that many activists have been able to quit their day jobs to do politics full time. Scott Wiener, the state senator from San Francisco who is pushing a bill that aims to force California cities to ramp up housing production, is scheduled to speak at the conference on tomorrow.
Read more: The New York Times (14 July 2017)