YIMBY Legislation Makes Headlines But Does It Make More Housing?

Last month the California legislature passed Senate Bill 79, intended to create more housing around light rail, a measure that was touted as one of the most significant housing bills ever. Is it? Probably not, and at almost the same time that the bill was being touted as such, people from Massachusetts were telling a Yes In My Back Yard (YIMBY) conference that a similar measure passed there a few years ago isn’t really performing as hoped. The problem goes back to the heart of the YIMBY phenomenon; most of the measures hyped by the movement are necessary for big changes in housing supply, but most aren’t sufficient. There’s a pretty good chance that the recently passed bill in California will wind up much like the one in Massachusetts, better in a headline than in reality.

Almost anywhere light rail can be found, battles quickly ignite about whether there is enough density around the stations. In my own experience in Seattle, the regional light rail authority, Sound Transit, was well known for passing measure after measure raising more and more money for the system, but doing absolutely nothing to create more housing around light rail stations. Way back in 2011, I fought a lonely battle trying to get the Seattle City Council to pass rather modest increases in zoning to allow more housing around the Roosevelt Station. They didn’t.

The YIMBY instinct is correct: billions of dollars spent on light rail infrastructure is really wasted money if nobody lives around the stations. Yet, angry neighbors around light rail stations do everything they can to oppose zoning changes to allow more housing. Because local elected officials have their bread buttered by those neighbors, counting on them for votes at election time, nothing gets done. So, the best thing is, the thinking goes, to get the state to preempt local governments from limiting the size of housing developments.

The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) law was one of these state laws, but at the YIMBY conference last month, the Commonwealth Beacon reported that, “housing experts note that they still don’t know how much housing will directly result from the rezoning changes.” While the law gave organizers a chance to change zoning around transit, “the process became an energy and attention sink,” and the effort became bogged down in process and legal challenges. The problem in Massachusetts was that the measure wasn’t enough of a mandate, so locals still could gum up the works. The headline of the Commonwealth Beacon story says it all: “It was too effing complicated.”

In California, Senate Bill 79, like almost all such YIMBY bills is being called “a dramatic step forward,” in a story in Cal Matters. The problem, though, is obvious and in a sub headline in the Cal Matters story: “Amended to victory”

“Over the course of the year, the proposal underwent 13 rounds of amendments — more than any other policy bill. Many of those changes were made to convince powerful interest groups to drop their opposition. That often meant reducing the bill’s scope.”

Those amendments eliminated many of the requirements at locations across the state. Now the bill only applies to counties with at least 15 stations, and that leaves only 8 counties, Los Angeles, San Diego, Orange, Santa Clara, Alameda, Sacramento, San Francisco and San Mateo, the biggest population counties in the state. It only applies to half a mile around stations, hardly a dramatic step forward. And the building heights are limited to seven stories and even lower outside the half mile.

More importantly, there are what the story calls “asterisks.”

• Developers, have to hire unionized construction workers;
• Projects have to set aside 7% of the units to be “rent controlled” and replace any existing housing units removed for construction; and
• There are odd provisions for longer planning periods for low income neighborhoods, preventing any changes until 2032

These sorts of things are glitches in YIMBY legislation, they are features. The YIMBYs pride themselves on being inclusive, and as I’ve pointed out before, they really don’t favor market solutions but public housing. And they clearly don’t understand how housing gets built. The sponsor of the California legislation, San Francisco Senator Scott Weiner, is often associated with these sorts of measures that look like big leaps forward but really don’t result in much change because they add so many requirements and limitations that nothing can really be built. Legislation, for example, that allowed San Francisco to “end single family zoning” (they didn’t, you can read my analysis here), was much better as a headline than in reality.

The growing problem with YIMBYs isn’t that their legislation doesn’t do much, but that the media and progressives are enamored with the idea that the legislation does something. The headlines feel great, but the follow through is empty. Legislators and YIMBYs go home with a “win,” nothing changes, and the standard is lowered to what the internet says is success rather than measurable impacts in the form of new housing and lower prices and rents for really people struggling to make ends meet.