Liberalizing land use—and most other areas of policy—will happen incrementally. Getting to the big wins requires a lot of small wins first.
This article explores the new legislative and legal strategies coming out of the YIMBY movement. The laws that regulate housing define how our cities get built and who can afford to live in them. In the U.S. at least, YIMBYs are coming up with innovative strategies to pass and enforce stronger pro-housing legislation: building on past wins incrementally, using lawsuits to solidify new legislation and increasingly to redefine what’s legal in the first place
Many lessons here for other policy areas. If people keep doing the hard work organizing, policy can continue to improve slowly in a virtuous cycle until momentum exists to improve quickly (for example CEQA and zoning reform in California, now maybe energy permitting reform in the federal government 🤞🏻). One day licensure? Clinical trials? Land tax reform?? Tons of promise and opportunity right now
Posted by jeromelevin