Zoning Battles Are Heating Up — And The NIMBY Crowd Has Emerging Opposition

Supporters of Development and zoning reform have won several high-profile victories across the country this year, providing the latest twists in an ongoing housing fight that stretches to every corner of the United States.

Lawmakers in Montana passed a sweeping series of bills to legalize duplexes in all single-family zoned neighborhoods. The legislation also allows homeowners to build so-called "accessory dwelling units" on any detached house, limits parking mandates to one space per home and shifts development review to earlier in the process.

In Venmont, Gov. Phil Scott signed into law the right to build duplexes anywhere year round residential development is permitted, with triplexes and four-unit buildings in some areas, along with city zoning reforms.

"We will continue to focus on turning the tide of this housing crisis. More important work lies ahead, but this bill is a great start," Scott said in a news release at the time.

Last month, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law 56 bills aimed at homeownership affordability by streamlining development, funding new affordable-housing units and setting maximums on security deposits.

Taken together, the bills mark a pivotal moment in the ongoing battle between the "not in my backyard" - or NIMBY - opposition to various housing developments and the more-nascent "yes in my backyard" YIMBY counter-movement, as momentum builds to allow more housing through greater density as a means to increasing housing affordability.

The conflict, experts agree, cuts across the traditional left-right paradigm that often defines modern politics. And the public itself is deeply divided.

Not a red or blue issue

A Redfin survey in September found 78% of people support policies that promote building more housing, but just 32% said they would feel good about an apartment complex being built in their own neighborhood. About 20% would feel bad about it.

That goes for not only homeowners, but also renters in roughly the same proportions, the survey showed.

"Personal preferences for things like a quiet neighborhood or old-fashioned charm are often at odds with building new housing." said Redfin Chief Economist Daryl Fairweather. "Even though so many Americans believe in building new, dense housing in theory, that ideology isn't strong enough to outweigh their own desires - especially when they don't stand to directly benefit from the building. That's why it's so difficult to overcome community opposition to dense new housing, even during a time when so many Americans believe in the Yes In My Backyard movement."

About 83% of self-identified Democrats support policies to build more housing, according to the Redfin data, alongside 75% of self-identified Republicans. About 23% of Democrats would feel bad about a new apartment complex in their neighborhood, compared to 37% of Republicans.

Fairweather said the Republican-dominated South is building more houses than other regions, at least when it comes to single-family homes, with 570,000 permits in August alone. That's more than twice as many as any other region and up 10% from the same time last year.

"There are YIMBY's and NIMBY's on both sides of the aisle, " Fairweather said. "That's part of the reason it's so difficult to push through policies that promote dense housing."

Joel Arnold, planning and advocacy manager at affordable-housing developer Communities First Inc. and an organizer for YIMBY Michigan - part of a network of YIMBY organizations under the national umbrella YIMBY Action - said the movement is about building a broader coalition to tackle housing. He said the pandemic supercharged people's awareness of housing affordability as rents and home prices skyrocketed.

"It's certainly a movement that's been growing and seeing wins, but there a lot of places where it's nascent," Arnold said. "There is certainly a sense that the pandemic has made some of these issues more clear."

Ultimately, the state-level advocacy on new legislation is part of a two-pronged approach to get more supporters to local zoning and planning meetings - where development decisions are typically made, Arnold said.

His group has worked to educate people on housing and to give people the information and tools they need to show their support in constructive ways.

"There is an old line in politics that people often come out to oppose projects while people who are fine with it stay home, "Arnold said. If you want to see new, better-quality and more-affordable housing in your neighborhood, you have to show up to things and say you support it."

And while development opponents have in the past harnessed social-media platforms such as Facebook and Nextdoor to oppose projects, YIMBY Action has been able to use the same tools to organize its own supporters, Arnold said. "Engaging with social media can win you allies who are genuinely concerned about affordable housing."

NIMBY can take many forms

So-called NIMBYs are not a monolith.

In practice, there is no national NIMBY group, and opponents of development are often local or project-specific. Concerns expressed often include traffic, home values and the more amorphous "neighborhood character" that can bubble up at public meetings.

And what types of development should be halted or hastened is largely a matter of personal opinion.

Ultimately, the idea of NIMBYism may result from a relatively simple idea - that while affordable housing benefits everyone in a community, people closest to that development feel they are paying a cost that outweighs the benefit, according to a 2021 paper by David Foster of the London School of Economics and Political Science and Joseph Warren of the University of Alaska, Anchorage.

Essentially, those who benefit from new housing often are future residents not there to support it, while those who live there have a hand in shaping local development - creating a local bias against development.

Foster and Warren argue that state-level efforts to preempt local zoning come with distinct dangers for disadvantaged communities that otherwise might be able to use land-use decisions to secure benefits and counter threats from development.

Proposed community benefits and concessions by developers may pull low-cost projects across the finish line but do little to offset opposition to high-cost projects, Foster and Warren wrote, because residents see the costs as too high to bear.

And then there's the trust factor - as in, local residents don't trust developers.