Housing Justice is Needed: A Response to the YIMBY Movement
Matt Yglesias would like us all to just get over it. “There’s more to life than affordable housing,” he says.
There isn’t when you don’t have it. Or when you’re about to lose it. Or when your community, your cultural touchstones, your homes are wiped off the map to make way for yet another set of luxury developments.
Matt Yglesias’ article (“Affordable housing is just the beginning of YIMBY”) is factually incorrect and deeply condescending, but it is definitely instructive. The attitudes that he displays are not unique in the YIMBY movement and show why many in the housing justice movement have been wary of — while consistently trying to engage with — the YIMBYs.
Yglesias starts his essay in a predictable fashion; denigrate, minimize and dismiss. He attacks decades of deep, successful organizing and activism -primarily led by people of color and low-income working-class families — as ‘niche left.’ It’s a pretty profound tell that he believes millions of Black, Latinx and Asian communities, mothers, grandmothers, young people, immigrants and workers fighting to keep their communities intact and their families from homelessness should be summarily dismissed from the conversation on their own fate. Yglesias then doubles down, saying, in essence, that the ultimate goal of our public policy should not just be to ignore 100 years of racist housing policy, it should accelerate it by centering “families with above-average incomes (who want) to live in nice big houses.” Trust us. The last century and a half of U.S. housing policy has not disadvantaged those people (see redlining, blockbusting, highway construction, the GI bill, ‘redevelopment’, the mortgage interest tax deduction, predatory lending, education policy, infrastructure spending, and more.)
Perhaps the most laughable of his insults is his attack on the relative power of the housing justice movement to stop gentrification and ‘pull ourselves up by our collective bootstraps.’ We face fierce opposition from multi-billion dollar Wall Street investment firms and developers lining the pockets of every policymaker they can find. Yglesias himself has written extensively exposing the crimes and malignant economic power of the big banks. By his logic, should we assume that his inability to take down JP Morgan Chase and Bank of America means the issue should be dismissed? Of course not. This is as absurd as it is insulting. The reality is there is a growing housing justice movement led by renters, low-income homeowners, houseless families in the US. We are winning campaigns for just cause eviction laws and right to counsel protections, from investments in truly affordable housing to fair housing law, and no, we haven’t won everything we need yet.
The fact that we haven’t won a truly just housing system that provides safe, affordable, healthy and accessible homes for all is exactly why community organizing groups have been willing to reach out to YIMBY forces. We would like to be in this fight together. That’s why last week, hundreds of Boston residents on the frontlines of the displacement crisis joyously interrupted the national YIMBYtown gathering with a straightforward message: the real solutions to the crisis will come from the people it impacts the most.
The people who make their homes in these neighborhoods, or who did before they were displaced, understand these issues because they are living with them. And they know what solutions will truly solve the housing crisis. Groups in Boston have crafted a pledge from this hard-earned wisdom and are inviting YIMBYs from across the country to sign on and to commit to working together.
The people who appreciated Yglesias’ article the most are not his fellow YIMBY’s; it’s the Blackstone Group, the Kushner Group, and all their friends. His rhetoric gives narrative cover to their march to extract as much profit from our communities as possible with no regard for the families who make their homes here. It’s why they are providing funding the YIMBY movement.
Many, like Yglesias, in the YIMBY circle want to move full steam ahead in deregulating development to add market-rate housing in gentrifying, historically disinvested urban neighborhoods. They strike a libertarian note. And, we hope, there are those that are exploring solutions like directing new development to more affluent neighborhoods or suburbs so as not to drive pressure in low-income communities and supporting robust protections for existing residents who are at threat of displacement.
Yglesias says that a developers-take-all strategy is a path that will lead to ‘diverse benefits for a huge range of people.’ While dismissing grassroots social movements he presents his view as the only path forward, but the reality is that those of us who have been living the experience of the displacement, eviction, and gentrification for decades have large-scale solutions that we’ve been calling for and proposing. We believe in solutions that put the needs of people and the planet before the ability of private equity and corporate landlords to make unlimited profit. Solutions like just cause eviction protections, rent control and living wages for all families; expansion of public investment into community controlled housing like land trusts, cooperatives, and democratic public housing options; protections against speculation and house flipping and stronger requirements on developers to create truly affordable housing.
Yglesias would like the world to pretend like our movements do not exist or are not important. This assertion is categorically false. We are here. We are intelligent. We know what we need and we’re building true, grassroots movements from the ground up to transform the housing and economic system from one that benefits the very few to one that ensures the health and well-being of all.
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Homes For All is a national movement of 75 grassroots housing and racial justice organizations fighting for affordable, dignified and permanent homes for all people.
The Alliance for Housing Justice is a coalition of legal, advocacy, organizing, and policy groups aligning to advance housing justice.
Authors:
Trenise Bryant, Homes For All / Miami Workers Center
Malcolm Torrejon Chu, Alliance For Housing Justice / Right To The City Alliance
