Affordable Housing Part 3: Converting NIMBY’s to YIMBY’s

Note: This post is part of a series focusing on affordable housing in the US. You can read other parts looking at the surprising amount of support affordable housing has in the US here and the unexpected impact lower-cost housing has on existing housing costs here.

We need more affordable housing the US, because it is the right thing to do for young people struggling to launch and hard working families, because it improves educational outcomes, because it reduces crime, and because it increases economic development.

But if we want to build new housing for young people and working families at the scale that we need to build it, we can’t limit ourselves to building on large empty swaths of land — there just aren’t enough swaths left in the places people are working.

Instead you need to find ways to get more people in more neighborhoods to be more open to having affordable housing in their own backyards.

There are steps affordable housing advocates can take to reduce NIMBY fears (Photo by Liz Sanchez-Vegas for Unsplash)

Here are three strategies to consider if we want to convert NIMBY’s — people who support housing, but Not In My Back Yard — into YIMBY’s — people who say Yes In My Back Yard.

1. Share the data about what happens when affordable housing comes in:

In the previous post I highlighted some four dozen studies — and studies of studies — looking at the impact of housing on property values. The vast majority of those show that affordable housing has either a neutral or positive impact on property values.

People these days are more skeptical than ever about science and data. I’m not pretending that the studies conducted over the past two decades will will convince everyone, but it may convince a few.

Let’s be clear: the primary purpose of building affordable housing is not to increase property values. It is because there are not currently enough safe, affordable places for our fellow citizens to live and thrive and raise their families.

And those benefits go beyond just the people living in the affordable housing. As someone who lived for years near an affordable housing complex, there were side benefits for us to living so close to an “affordable housing” complex. Because of our mostly immigrant, mostly poorer neighbors down the street, our children grew up knowing there were people who looked and spoke differently than they did, with different traditions and assumptions about the world. That’s at least a start on an important lesson in life.

2. Be strategic about how it is built:

We don’t need the already-converted to support affordable housing; we need the skeptics. Here are a few things that will help convert the folks most worried about the impact of new housing on their neighborhood:

Appearance: New, affordable buildings that look like the surrounding neighborhood are more likely to reduce neighborhood fears and lead to increasing property values. Maintenance and management also make a difference. When existing affordable housing is rehabbed or vacant lots filled in in lower income areas, surrounding home values go up.

Density: Interspersing affordable units with existing homes typically has a greater positive impact than putting all units in one place. Large scale public housing units are more like to have a negative effect in higher income areas. There is no consensus on how much affordable housing is “too much,” but mixed income communities are much more likely to gain support.

Neighborhood trends: If property values are increasing in a neighborhood already, locating new affordable housing there does not appear to have a negative impact. In neighborhoods where housing prices are already decreasing, building new affordable housing is less likely to turn prices around.

3. Connect to others who believe in affordable housing:

The biggest advantage NIMBY’s have in their favor is their ability to delay, to slow down building projects for so long that developers give up and go elsewhere. To counter that opposition, people who believe in affordable housing need to make their voices heard.

And there are some good examples to learn from. Across the world, I’ve found 39 organizations in six countries calling themselves “YIMBY” — Yes In My Back Yard (I’m counting the one in Slovakia called YIM.BA (Yes in My Bratislava). The overwhelming number of YIMBY groups are in the US — in California and 10 other states.

These organizations advocate for affordable housing to be located in their own backyards, but also speak out for rezoning and removal of other obstacles to construction of affordable housing.

Reducing fear about the impact of affordable housing on neighborhood property values, finding ways to make it fit in with existing homes and bringing together supporters will all have the chance to change more NIMBY’s into YIMBY’s.

When communities come together, it takes some getting used to. (Photo by Mauro Mora for Unsplash)

But there’s still one more tough piece of work to do. A lot of NIMBYism is rooted in our fear of the unknown. So many of our neighborhoods are made up of people who look and act and earn much the same as we do. Residents of affordable housing could change that, and that can be scary.

The final test for us as our new neighbors move in is whether we can accept them and the difference they may bring with them.

-Leslie

Coming up: In the final part of the series on affordable housing, I want to look at the nuts and bolts and obstacles to meeting the full need for affordable housing in the US. It turns out, almost all the ideas we need have already been discovered. Hint: it’s going to take a lot of rezoning, retraining and reimagining.

Notes:
A good summary of the YIMBY movement: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YIMBY_movement#CITEREFDougherty2020