We want Social Housing in our Backyard as SHIMBYs.
Neither YIMBYs nor NIMBYs like social housing because it would decommodify shelter as we know it as human housing (hurting the pockets of the investor-class the YIMBYs serve) and bring in truly affordable housing (exposing the fragility of the racist & classist NIMBYs in their exclusive neighborhoods).
See the exploration below focusing on why YIMBYs are so dangerous to existing urban communities of working class families and neighborhoods of color.
YIMBYs & NIMBYs want the same thing!
What Is a YIMBY? (Hint: It’s Not Good)
By Patrick Range McDonald, July 14, 2021
Excerpts:
- YIMBY stands for “Yes In My Back Yard.” It’s a clever twist on NIMBY or “Not In My Back Yard.” NIMBYs have a controversial reputation for fighting new development in their communities. YIMBYs try to capitalize on that by using a moniker that sounds inclusive and appealing. Don’t be fooled.
- YIMBYs embrace trickle-down economics or what’s now called “trickle-down housing” policy. As middle- and working-class people have long known, trickle-down anything doesn’t work — except to make the rich richer.
- YIMBYs know developers built almost exclusively luxury housing, and that is okay with them.
- YIMBYs are NOT housing justice activists. But for political reasons, YIMBYs are desperate to own housing justice credentials. YIMBYs have co-opted messaging from the housing justice movement and joined housing justice coalitions. It’s a strategy that continues to this day.
- Despite their pro-gentrification agenda and clashes with housing justice activists, many Democratic politicians champion YIMBYism and the mainstream media too often touts the YIMBY cause. Why? Politicians take huge amounts of campaign cash from the real estate industry, and YIMBYism gives them political cover to deregulate land-use protections and allow developers to build more luxury housing — and to generate huge profits — under the guise of solving the housing affordability crisis
- “The YIMBY movement has a white privilege problem,” Anya Lawler, a policy advocate with the Western Center on Law & Poverty, told the Los Angeles Times. “I don’t think they recognize it. They don’t understand poverty. They don’t understand what that’s like, who our clients really are and what their lived experience is.”
- YIMBY leaders are consistently silent about the predatory practices of corporate landlords and developers. The silence speaks volumes.