Amid a Surging Housing Crisis, Should More Funders Be Paying Attention to YIMBYism?

Alexander A.Trofimov/shutterstock

There’s no shortage of problems testing the limits of philanthropy right now, and the housing affordability crisis is definitely one of them. Even before COVID, millions of low-income families were housing-insecure nationwide, not just in high-rent coastal cities. Housing costs have continued to skyrocket in the time since, with predictably dire results for people already in danger of losing their homes or spending most of their paychecks to stay housed.

On a basic level, the laws of supply and demand suggest a simple fix: more housing. According to one analysis, the nation’s housing supply deficit stands at nearly 4 million units. Meanwhile, an extended building slump dating back to the 2008 recession has only been exacerbated by ongoing COVID-related supply chain and workforce challenges.

That said, the housing crisis is not only an economic problem, but also a political one, and many activists cite local resistance to new housing as a key factor. Dubbing themselves “YIMBYs,” which stands for “yes in my backyard,” these housing development advocates pit themselves against their arch-rivals, whom they label “NIMBYs” (“not in my backyard”). YIMBY is a coinage derived from NIMBY, which is itself usually pejorative.

The YIMBY position often goes something like this: NIMBYs, usually well-established homeowners who already “have theirs,” oppose new housing in their communities over of a variety of deep-seated fears and hostilities (racism, fear of lower-income families, worries over decreased property values, etc.), while often publicly citing more innocuous reasons for their opposition (“character of the neighborhood,” traffic and parking problems, density, environmental concerns, etc.). Because housing development is governed by local land use laws, politically active NIMBYs can effectively forestall new housing development in their neighborhoods, and have done so in high-cost cities for decades. YIMBYs, meanwhile, seek to clear the way for new housing by challenging restrictions on development. (See here for a deeper overview of YIMBYism.)

In an interview with Inside Philanthropy last month, political science professor and Niskanen Center Senior Fellow Steve Teles highlighted the YIMBY cause as an under-explored opportunity for philanthropy, especially for funders who want to give in a cross-ideological way. Restrictive zoning, he said, “just cuts straight through the middle of both parties. The left cares about it because of the effects of spiraling housing costs on inequality and opportunity, and the right sees it as a classic case of the impact of overregulation.” But as yet, Teles said, few funders of either ideological predisposition have taken on the issue.

That doesn’t mean, however, that no philanthropic funders are walking the YIMBY path. A handful of donors and grantmakers have put their toes in the water, and their ranks may be on track to grow as the affordability crisis escalates. Meanwhile, though it may have bipartisan potential (or because of that), the YIMBY movement is somewhat controversial. This is a tiny corner of the funding world, but it’s one with outsized potential for impact as philanthropy navigates the housing crisis. Here’s what’s going on.

A growing pro-housing movement

While NIMBY land use regulations can be as old as racist redlining — and dovetail with that practice in some cases — the YIMBY movement is a newer phenomenon. In a report from earlier this year titled “Where pro-housing groups are emerging,” researchers from Brookings identified over 140 pro-housing development advocacy groups across the country. The vast majority of them date from the past decade, and nearly half emerged over the past two years — that is, during the COVID pandemic.

Predictably, the vast majority of these organizations have a local or regional focus, with only 8% of them operating on the state level and 4% operating nationally. Also predictable is their concentration in high-cost cities and regions, with West Coast cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles playing host to the highest concentration overall.

Brookings’ report also observes that although “the pro-housing movement emerged in direct response to NIMBYism,” only around half of the groups surveyed embrace the term “YIMBY.” That may reflect the fact that the YIMBY movement has been characterized by some social justice advocates as itself a primarily white, economically comfortable movement, whose leaders push for more market-rate housing (often advertised and priced in high-cost cities as “luxury housing”) while giving short shrift to how such development affects low-income communities of color.

There’s likely some truth to that, and certain YIMBY groups have sought to highlight their embrace of all housing: affordable as well as market-rate (the phrase “PHIMBY” — “public housing in my backyard” — has been invoked). Still, the social justice coalition in land use activism doesn’t fit neatly within the pro-housing nor the anti-housing camp, and individual housing advocates may back certain new developments while opposing others. So you might think of YIMBY as an evocative, if imperfect way to describe those who typically want to get more housing built.

The funding landscape

Well, what about the funding? Although several philanthropic organizations do openly back YIMBY groups — we’ll get to them in a second — it’s hard to zero in on the exact donor pool here because so many pro-housing groups are structured as 501(c)(4)s. That lets them actively lobby in local political fights over housing policy while also keeping their donor lists undisclosed. Many of those groups do maintain 501(c)(3) affiliates, but c4s tend to predominate. These mostly local organizations also tend to draw in lots of smaller donors.

On the 501(c)(3) side, many of the West Coast housing funders we’ve discussed in other contexts haven’t been shy about openly supporting YIMBY groups. The Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and Open Philanthropy, for example, are all major donors to Abundant Housing LA, one of the main YIMBY groups operating in Southern California.

Like many YIMBY groups, Abundant Housing LA is structured as a 501(c)(4) that operates alongside a 501(c)(3) group, the Abundant Housing LA Education Fund. CZI and Open Philanthropy have supported both the c3 and c4 arms, while Hilton backs the c3 along with other regional philanthropies like the Weingart Foundation and the California Community Foundation.

The astronomically expensive Bay Area, meanwhile, also plays host to many YIMBY organizations. They include YIMBY Action, one of several national umbrella organizations that guide and support local YIMBY groups. Like Abundant Housing LA, YIMBY Action is a c4 with a c3 affiliate — in this case, appropriately called Yes In My Backyard. California YIMBY, another regional organization supporting local groups in the Golden State, is a 501(c)(4) that has received support from several tech figures like Stripe founders John and Patrick Collison, Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman and former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman.

The prominence of big tech backers on the West Coast YIMBY scene has soured some housing activists on the enterprise, prompting speculation that the movement operates as a front for big-money interests (many YIMBY groups, for their part, claim to accept no funding from the real estate industry, though clearly tech is another matter). Whether or not that negative characterization has merit, it would be unfair to paint the broader YIMBY movement solely as a big-donor construct — California YIMBY, for instance, claims to have drawn over 80,000 members since it was founded in 2017.

On the national level, Open Philanthropy is one of the few major grantmakers that has offered the YIMBY movement full-throated support. Founded and funded by Facebook billionaire couple Dustin Moskovitz and Cari Tuna, the effective altruist giving vehicle has granted out around $7 million in its “land use reform” focus area. Recipients include California YIMBY and Abundant Housing LA as well as pro-housing groups in Seattle, Massachusetts, Maryland, Connecticut and New York.

Open Philanthropy’s land use reform grantees also include places like the Sightline Institute, the Urban Institute, Greater Greater Washington and Smart Growth USA. As opposed to the lobbying and movement building focus of typical YIMBY organizations, these grantees are part of the larger research, advocacy and journalism ecosystem around sustainable urban planning. That can encompass YIMBYism, but it’s not limited to it, and neither is its pool of funders. Smart Growth USA, for instance, advocates for environmentally sustainable and socially equitable urban development, and its backers include a bunch of big foundations like Rockefeller, Ford, Surdna, Kresge and McKnight.

————

In the end, whether they label themselves YIMBY or not, pro-housing advocates of all stripes are sorely needed in a country where housing insecurity and homelessness are rampant, and many cities large and small are saddled with insufficient, aging housing stock.

The issues at play in YIMBY activism aren’t straightforward or uncontroversial, and the social justice implications of looser restrictions on development require more attention. But this is an area with potential, especially since philanthropy’s traditional approaches to housing access seem woefully inadequate to the crisis at hand.