Building more housing is a priority in these 10 YIMBY cities, Pacaso said
You’ve heard of NIMBYs: stubborn homeowners who live in big, dense cities, who reject the idea of affordable housing. “Not in my backyard,” they said, citing fears of glare or traffic.
NIMBYism can derail the work that needs to be done to fight the housing crisis across the US The shortage of new homes in the US is from 3 million to 6 million, Lisa Sturtevant, chief economist with real estate listing service Bright. MLS, mentioned earlier Good luck. That lack of new construction drives up rents and housing prices, and makes it harder for people to find affordable housing.
“The country desperately needs more housing resources to combat the challenge of affordability and the massive housing crisis,” Austin Allison, founder and CEO of real estate platform Pacaso, said. Good luck. “We hope that the future will bring an increase in the adoption of policies to increase density, as more cities allow solutions such as residential areas, and the transformation of areas.”
The good news is that while NIMBYism has hindered new construction in some cities, there are also YIMBY towns where homeowners and government officials alike support the idea of new construction—saying “yes, in my backyard.” The YIMBY movement is largely characterized by the adoption of mixed-use housing, rezoning for more residential areas, and allowing for “off-center” buildings—smaller than high-rises but larger than a single-family home.
Pacaso, in partnership with research firm MetroSight, compiled a list of the top 10 US metro areas that embody the YIMBY movement. To do this, they determined zip codes where there had been a significant increase in new construction without a corresponding increase in price, Allison said. Good luck.
In other words, “A ZIP code area was classified as YIMBY if it experienced sharp growth in the number of residential properties with relatively little growth in housing prices,” according to Pacaso. Home prices and housing stock were compiled and measured for 2008 to 2012 and 2018 to 2022, and the metropolitan areas with the largest share of ZIMBY codes made the following list:
Top 10 markets for YIMBY
- Washington, DC/Arlington/Alexandria
- Chicago/Naperville
- Austin/Round Rock/San Marcos
- Minneapolis/St. Paul
- Columbus/Marion/Zanesville
- San Antonio/New Braunfels/Kerrville
- Philadelphia/Reading/Camden
- New York/Newark
- Kansas City/Overland Park
- Salt Lake City/Provo/Orem
Why the YIMBY movement started and what it means
Housing stock is particularly low in many large metropolitan areas, especially as migration patterns have changed in the post-pandemic era. Take San Francisco, for example, where there is a huge housing crisis, yet NIMBYs and certain government officials are preventing new construction.
“As the housing shortage worsens across the US, a story is emerging in many small cities: we will not be the next San Francisco. And they’re right,” said Laura Foote, executive director of the advocacy group YIMBY Action Good luck. “To avoid the kind of astronomical housing costs and widespread homelessness in our cities, they must implement pro-housing policies now.”
Some companies, including Pacaso and BuildCasa, are approaching YIMBYism in creative ways. Pacaso, for example, allows users to own properties, especially in resort towns, which should make affordable housing stock more available. BuildCasa offers homeowners financing to build homes on additional land. For example, BuildCasa could build a duplex in someone’s backyard and sell each of those units separately as a condo, costing about 35% as much as a single-family home, said BuildCasa CEO Ben Bear. Good luck.
“It could really be this new version of the American dream where you still have a private outdoor space, and you live in the kind of single-family neighborhood that people want to live in,” Bear said. “But you can afford home ownership, even if you have a middle-class job.”
However, engineers and elected officials don’t always see the problem the same way. Some feel that urban growth is the best way to expand services, so many cities are building their downtowns, Peter Burns, a professor at Soka University of America who studies cities and urban planning, tells Good luck.
“YIMBY can succeed—and apparently has succeeded in other areas—because of organization,” Burns said. “It is really difficult, but it is not possible, for groups to maintain pressure on the government for a long time. [However]planning is difficult and time-consuming.”
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