Yimbyism, Supply-Side Housing Policies, and the City of Yes
Anti-Displacement NYC is unequivocally opposed to the City of Yes for Housing Opportunity plan. Zoning changes do not address the housing access, affordability, and tenancy crises we face. The City of Yes for Housing Opportunity plan continues a decades-long failed housing strategy that relies solely on private developers to build housing. We have known for a long time that real estate capitalism will never build housing suitable for the working class. New York City and New York State have spent decades wasting resources on market-driven, developer-designed housing policies. Enough is enough.
Background On Yimbyism and Supply-Side Housing Policies
We are highlighting Yimbyism because its supply-side and deregulatory principles are central to the theory behind the City of Yes for Housing Opportunity plan. Nearly every proposal in the City of Yes reflects the priorities of developers and Yimbys. Yimbyism (a decade-old pro-development movement called “Yes in My Backyard” that advocates for deregulatory and private market housing policies) is a selfish, disingenuous, and insidious endeavor solely focusing on a “missing middle housing shortage” of townhomes, duplexes, bungalows, and condos affordable to middle- and high-income people, ignoring the massive need for deeply affordable housing, of all housing types, for working-class communities.
The hype around zoning changes represents the pervasive desire, predominantly led by liberal economists and yimbys under the banner “Yimbyism,” to turn to deregulation as the primary solution to addressing what they see as the “housing supply crisis.” Yimbyism sees the “housing supply crisis” as supply, building, and restrictive government regulation problems. The yimby supply dogma rests on the idea that developers need a deregulatory environment suitable for capital accumulation and profit maximization. Such an environment is supposed to create perfect competition between developers and landlords and unleash the full force of the private market to build en masse, which will make prices and rents fall.
Some practices favored by supporters of Yimbyism look like efforts to drive down initial capital costs for construction, lower wage and labor standards for construction, minimize or eliminate affordability mandates, and environmental, climate, and building code standards. Additionally, Yimbyism aims to ensure that the government fosters a market environment that continuously drives up land values and prices. Yimbys argue that we should allow the private market to build for those who can afford market-rate housing, which will help bring overall housing costs down and enable the filtering process.
Due to profit maximization incentives, developers are inclined to build high-end units to attract middle and high-income residents. The theory is that these high-income residents are expected to move to a new and upgraded unit, leaving their previous unit available for a lower-income resident. This theory is called “filtering” or “migration chains” (or “trickle down)—as higher-income households move to new units, their old units become affordable to the next household. “Today’s luxury housing is tomorrow’s affordable housing” as the Yimby parable goes.
Filtering relies on a few fantasies: the idea that rents will go down while at the same time, land and building values go up through real estate speculation, (causing gentrification) that wage growth is equitable and consistent, and that landlords act in good faith. There is an inherent contradiction with the private housing market—there is an expectation for developers, investors, and landlords to maximize their profits while at the same time acting against their interests by lowering rents. We know and have experienced landlords raising rents, especially after a vacancy. Landlords warehouse and purposefully hold units vacant to avoid affordability and other rent stabilization regulations, hoping that finally, the Supreme Court will overturn rent stabilization laws or that they can hold out for a higher-income tenant. Often, landlords will engage in harassment, intentionally fail to maintain repairs, increase evictions, and use tech to automate extra fees and rent hikes to get rid of lower-income tenants.
A deregulatory environment for housing development—one that allows developers to build without government-imposed restrictions on Floor Area Ratio (FAR), affordability, environmental, and labor standards—is appealing to municipalities and the private sector. This approach reduces the reliance on taxpayer funds for affordable housing production, reflecting austerity-focused politics and policies maintained by municipalities. In such a framework, a city may create a public-private partnership housing and zoning program that incentivizes developers to build to a certain height, offering tax breaks in exchange for including some income-restricted units.
Public-private partnerships offload some of the government’s responsibility to provide housing to private developers, reducing the public funding needed. Municipalities benefit from these partnerships by creating union construction and building services jobs, prevailing wage standards, and establishing community benefits agreements. These agreements may include requirements for developers to contribute to an affordable housing fund or build new infrastructure, as well as commitments from the city to increase funding for tenant resource programs. However, these jobs by developers and community benefits are never guaranteed nor is the development itself. Further, public-private partnerships do not necessarily support local economic development efforts, enabling communities to build and control their local economies and wealth. Outside private investors, developers, and corporate landlords extract neighborhood wealth through the local labor used to construct and service the new developments and from the rents they collect. There is limited opportunity to expand local economic development efforts when the city engages in top-down housing planning with the private sector rather than supporting local communities through community-led and equitable comprehensive planning.
The problem with municipalities relying on partnerships with the private sector for housing production—a reliance largely rooted in austerity politics—is that there is limited public land and public funds available to subsidize individual buildings for affordable housing. As a result, the private sector alone cannot meet the scale of the need for deeply affordable housing without substantial city, state, or federal funding. Without subsidies, private developers claim that building affordable units will not 'pencil out.' To finally address the housing access and affordability crisis, municipalities must prioritize their budgets for non-market-based housing solutions: public housing, community land trusts, and cooperatives.
City of Yes Will Not Address Affordability and Must Be Rejected
Under the guise of zoning being outdated, Mayor Adams and his cronies have created a grab bag of giveaways and incentives for developers. The City of Yes for Housing Opportunity plan gives more power and money to private developers and the real estate industry while trying to cut the already minimal means of community engagement in the land use process.
The City of Yes plan shows that once again, the private market cannot meet the need for deeply affordable housing nor correct the current mismatch and gap between the availability of lower-rent apartments and the number of rent-burdened tenants who need a low-rent unit. Currently, there are more vacant units concentrated at rents over $2,400. At the same time, 65 percent of rent-burdened tenants (over 700k tenants) need a unit that rents for <$1,100/mo. There are less than 2,300 units available at $1,100/mo. The Universal Affordability Preference, which is an opt-in program, will only require 20 percent of the development to be permanently affordable to households earning 60 percent of Area Median Income ($74,580 for a two-family household).
City of Yes and Yimby proponents claim that affordability requirements are what “makes housing scarce,” and that adding more regulations and administrative red tape stops developers from building because the costs become too high. However, it is because the city relies on private developers to supply the city’s affordable housing stock that limits the production of more housing—it cannot be true that a developer can maintain profit maximization while simultaneously building income-restricted units that limit the profit gained. Developers have more of an incentive to build luxury apartments for people making $100,000 and more because they make more in rent than if the building was only affordable to people who made $30,000. It is only with city, state, and federal funding that a developer would be able to add some income-restricted units. This means that it can become very expensive for the city to use public dollars toward individual developments. This speaks to the problems and contradictions with these public-private partnerships. The city chooses to have a limited budget for housing and private developers cannot build enough affordable housing without public dollars to subsidize the affordable units. Private developers can never meet the demand for affordable housing. Only with the full strength of the city, state, and federal government can we effectively meet the massive demand for affordable housing for working-class New Yorkers.
The real housing crisis is the lack of housing affordable to working-class New Yorkers, the ongoing privatization of public housing into programs such as PACT/RAD and the Preservation Trust, rampant source of income, voucher, and other protected-class discrimination, and the warehousing of thousands of rent-stabilized units. The City Council cannot fix the City of Yes plan with slight modifications or additions. The entire premise of City of Yes is wrong and a false solution. Zoning is not the issue—it is merely used as an excuse by developers and their lobbyists to distract people from addressing the root causes of the housing access and affordability crisis as outlined above.
We have the tools to end displacement, foreclosures, and power imbalances between landlords and tenants:
Support community-led and equitable comprehensive planning efforts to keep planning democratized
Demand more funding for the reinvestment, repair, and acquisition of public housing, CLTs, and cooperatives
Get corporations out of housing - treat the housing industry as a monopoly, ban corporations from owning
More of the same public-private neoliberal housing policies are not working, are not harm reduction, and are only serving to accelerate evictions, displacement, and homelessness. Housing is not a commodity or investment asset. Housing is an essential human right. The City Council must affirm these facts and vote No on the City of Yes.
Anti-Displacement NYC is a housing policy collective of organizers and educators that promotes decommodified housing solutions and develops political education tools and frameworks to fight against displacement and gentrification in New York City.