{"id":317625,"date":"2021-09-18T06:23:36","date_gmt":"2021-09-18T06:23:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/radiofree.asia\/?guid=25890887c5af3d3d2abf7b136dbaf23b"},"modified":"2021-09-19T04:00:36","modified_gmt":"2021-09-19T04:00:36","slug":"yimby-movement-is-not-the-answer-to-housing-crisis-grassroots-activists-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/09\/18\/yimby-movement-is-not-the-answer-to-housing-crisis-grassroots-activists-say\/","title":{"rendered":"YIMBY Movement Is Not the Answer to Housing Crisis, Grassroots Activists Say"},"content":{"rendered":"\"A<\/a>

There is a battle raging in U.S. cities around land and who controls it. It is fought with zoning laws and red lines. Its battlefields are neighborhood associations and local elections. Across the country, racist reactionaries square off against capitalist developers in a struggle to determine the future of the housing market. In these types of battles, whoever wins, tenants lose, according to housing organizers working to halt the damage wrought by both developers and racist politicians.<\/p>\n

The U.S.\u2019s housing crisis began long before COVID eviction moratoria brought the problem into the spotlight. Median rent<\/a><\/span> in the United States has increased 70 percent since 1995, even as real wages remained static. This lack of affordable housing kept millions of people one crisis away from losing their homes. Before the pandemic began, almost half <\/a><\/span>of all tenants in the United States were cost-burdened, meaning they paid over 30 percent of their income towards rent. One in four Americans paid over 50 percent.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s basically no city in America where you make minimum wage and work 40 hours a week and afford the median rent on an apartment,\u201d says Max Besbris, a sociology professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.<\/p>\n

The solution is clear, academics and activists say: more housing for low-income tenants. However, for decades, the reactionary \u201cNot In My Backyard\u201d (NIMBY) movement stymied such construction in the name of keeping their neighborhoods white and property values high. Meanwhile, in recent years, the far more charismatic \u201cYes In My Backyard\u201d (YIMBY) movement has pushed back against regressive NIMBYs through aggressive advocacy for loosening of zoning restrictions and the construction of dense urban housing developments.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, though, grassroots activists reject this binary and argue that neither movement has the ability to solve the housing crisis.<\/p>\n

Whose Backyard?<\/h2>\n

The term NIMBY first appeared as a pejorative for opponents of the planned construction of a nuclear power plant<\/a><\/span> in Seabrook, New Hampshire, in the 1970s. The truth is that nobody wants to live next to a nuclear power plant. The trouble is that as long as these power plants continue to be built, they will end up in someone\u2019s \u201cbackyard.\u201d The question of whose backyard is a question of political power.<\/p>\n

NIMBYs existed long before the term came to prominence and it was never just about waste disposal. At its core, NIMBYism is an understandable desire for local autonomy. However, in the U.S. context, local autonomy also allows for the reification of racial and class segregation. In 1917, the Supreme Court outlawed policies<\/a><\/span> that zoned separate residential areas for different races. In response to this, NIMBYs exploited a loophole<\/a><\/span> that still allowed for class-based discrimination to indirectly ensure racial discrimination. Zoning board meetings, dominated by wealthy, white homeowners<\/a><\/span>, put new zoning laws into effect around the country, which decreed that only single-family housing could be built in a residential area. This kept many neighborhoods racially segregated, and the lack of apartment buildings effectively kept poor whites from entering these communities as well.<\/p>\n