YIMBY. It's an odd-sounding term, and chances are you've seen it used on Facebook or in a news headline, but what is it?!
The Movement
"Yes, In My Backyard," or YIMBY for short, is a pro-housing movement borne out of a desire to create more livable, affordable, sustainable, healthy, and productive cities and neighborhoods. It is often contrasted to its anti-housing counter-movement, "NIMBY," which advocates against increased development including housing, cyclist/pedestrian infrastructure, and homeless shelters.
The YIMBY movement's origins can be traced back to the Bay Area, where housing prices have soared to astronomical levels in recent decades. Following the Great Recession, pro-housing groups of many different backgrounds and ideologies united under the YIMBY banner in an effort to advocate for greater development, improving city zoning laws, and increase participation in city elections.
Before this movement began, however, some fringe YIMBY activists have used the term for decades. The first widely accepted definition came in the 1993 essay published in the Journal of the American Planning Association, "Planners' Alchemy: Transforming NIMBY to YIMBY: Rethinking NIMBY." In it, the author argues that "the local protectionism characterized as NIMBY represents a barrier not to societal goals but to the goals of capital."
The Research
Contrary to what you might find on a NIMBY Facebook group, or at a local city hall, the YIMBY argument is firmly rooted in facts and research. The consensus among academics and researchers who study these issues is that the observed increased cost of housing is directly caused by a shortage of housing supply.
It's basic economics. High school and college students across the country learn this within the first week of their ECON 101 course. The supply-demand graph below perfectly illustrates this phenomenon. As demand for housing increases (like it has in big cities such as NYC and SF where jobs have become highly concentrated), the quantity of housing supplied increases by a much smaller amount than price.
What this means is that cities like New York and San Francisco, where jobs are highly concentrated, are experiencing large growth in demand for housing. And because of inadequate land use regulations and zoning codes, housing suppliers are struggling to keep up. As a result, prices go way up, while the housing supply barely increases.
If you're a wonk like me, and you want to know more about the economics, public policy, and urban planning scholarship on housing, I encourage you to check out these works by some of the leading experts:
Glaeser, E., & Gyuorko, J. (2018). "The Economic Implications of Housing Supply." Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vol. 32, No. 1. pp. 3-30. Retrieved from: https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.32.1.3
Furman, J. (20 November, 2015). "Barriers to Shared Growth: The Case of Land Use Regulation and Economic Rents." The Urban Institute. Retrieved from: https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/sites/default/files/page/files/20151120_barriers_shared_growth_land_use_regulation_and_economic_rents.pdf
Avent, R. (20 November, 2014). "How Land-Use Restrictions Block Growth." Cato Institute. Retrieved from: https://www.cato.org/publications/cato-online-forum/how-land-use-restrictions-block-growth