A vision for neighborhoods with tight communities, abundant starter homes, and thriving young families is small-c conservative, a return to traditional land use.
A vision for neighborhoods with tight communities, abundant starter homes, and thriving young families is small-c conservative, a return to traditional American land use.
P resident Biden has periodically announced policies meant to mitigate the nation’s housing shortage and affordability crisis. His latest state of the union address touted a $400 mortgage tax credit, prompting concern from some quarters that such subsidies would make the housing crisis worse.
Conservatives understand why Biden’s proposed subsidies would not work: Boosting demand while homes remain in short supply will increase prices. Still, many conservatives worry that the pro-housing YIMBY (“Yes, In My Backyard”) movement is not for them, or even hostile to young families. As a father of three and the founder of an active, nonpartisan volunteer YIMBY group in bright-blue Northern Virginia, I have good news. The YIMBY movement really is for everyone. Our loudest detractors are antisocial Marxists. Their chief complaint is that some YIMBYs are conservative.
Montana’s rock-ribbed Republican governor Greg Gianforte spearheaded expansive housing-supply reforms. Gianforte was the keynote speaker at this year’s edition of YIMBYtown, a housing-advocate conference. The event’s 2024 host city, Austin, and its big-tent theme captured the welcoming spirit of the YIMBY movement. There was some tension, because housing as an issue brings together advocates who might otherwise have no reason to work together.
The truth is, YIMBY is not partisan, and urbanism does not require any notable ideological commitments. However, the YIMBY policy agenda boils down to deregulation. And our vision for neighborhoods with tight communities, abundant starter homes, and thriving young families is small-c conservative, a return to traditional American land use.
Most individual YIMBYs and urbanists are politically progressive because cities tend to be. As the YIMBY movement emerged in the Bay Area a decade ago, it caught flack from the city’s far-left tenants’-rights organizers. San Francisco’s local politics are incredibly confrontational and often hinge on minor differences.
Against that backdrop, SF YIMBYs diligently established their progressive bona fides. As a classical liberal, I do my fair share of smiling and nodding with progressive fellow YIMBYs. But it does not matter, because we agree that paring back broken regulations — such as restrictive zoning and slow, discretionary permitting — is the only solution to the shortage driving the housing crisis.
The zoning restriction that conservatives should object to most is minimum lot size, which make starter homes financially infeasible for many. Land is expensive, so large lots incentivize relatively larger and more profitable houses. Minimum lot sizes proliferated after 1940 to exclude young families who might cost public schools more than they would pay in property taxes. The regulation may also have been aimed at black Americans migrating north. It harms young families and low-income Americans, anathema to the conservative ethos of opportunity and upward mobility.
Conservatives should also be leading the charge against often Kafkaesque permitting. My city’s permitting office performed some kind of archeological review before I could remodel my townhouse’s third-floor bathroom. More troublingly, I watched a family politely beg my city council for a zoning variance so they could stop sewage from regularly flooding their basement. Council members were totally supportive, yet the permitting ritual still had to be performed. Such overbearing permitting slows construction of the new homes that families need.
Despite conspiracy theories about YIMBYs being paid out-of-towners, most housing advocates I know are regular people. YIMBYs fortunate to own a family home support policies to help friends who do not. YIMBY politics are not radical, but pragmatic and aimed at the moderate voter.
In his article “Urbanism” Isn’t Synonymous with “Big City,” conservative urbanist Addison Del Mastro writes beautifully about how virtually all American cities and towns historically had a pedestrian-oriented downtown, with a vibrant civic fabric. Small towns and big cities exist on a continuum, different in degree, not kind.
On his Substack The Deleted Scenes, Del Mastro waxes poetic about the geometry of outdoor spaces and the history of household technology, illustrating a key point for conservatives worried about YIMBYs’ true intentions. Urbanists are romantics and, more than anything else, huge nerds (myself included).
YIMBY movement pioneer Sonja Trauss stresses the importance of street trees. YIMBYs’ favorite neighborhoods are streetcar suburbs built a century or more ago. We scrutinize street cross sections, dreaming of the day that America’s kids can once again play and bike safely in front of their houses. And we commiserate about hoping to buy a home or start a family.
The YIMBY movement is an attempt to rebuild the American dream of a comfortable middle-class existence with a stable family life and good friends. I could call that aspiration many things, yet the first term that comes to my mind is “conservative.”