The Yes In My Backyard movement \u2014 gestated and born in the Bay Area \u2014 has dominated California housing politics for a decade with a simple premise: cut red tape to construct homes, and the new supply will bring down rents and home prices.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Lawmakers in Sacramento have enthusiastically embraced that logic, passing dozens of YIMBY-approved bills to weaken local zoning control, streamline approvals, and force cities to permit more units. Despite those efforts, San Francisco rents remain among the highest in the country, jumping 13.3% in the last year (opens in new tab)<\/a> by one count.\u00a0<\/p>\n What gives? <\/p>\n A new study (opens in new tab)<\/a> by urban planning and public policy researchers from UC Berkeley, UCLA, the Georgia Institute of Technology, and the University of Toronto suggests that reforming entitlement and zoning laws will do little to address housing affordability. In fact, the study says, even if the city were to build market-rate housing at a much higher clip, it could take decades to make a meaningful dent in rent prices.\u00a0<\/p>\n The authors suggest that wage disparity, rather than a short supply of housing, is responsible for high costs. The global labor market has drawn high-earning college graduates to dense urban areas, where they compete with lower-wage workers for housing. Rents have kept pace with the high earners\u2019 salaries, pricing out those without degrees.<\/p>\n The authors estimate that if the Bay Area were to increase its stock of market-rate housing by 1.5% per year \u2014 more than triple San Francisco\u2019s rate in 2024 (opens in new tab)<\/a> \u2014 it would take at least 18 years and as many as 124 years for the median one-bedroom apartment to become affordable to someone earning the median wage for non-college graduates.<\/p>\n \u201cBoth scenarios require enormous, localized shocks to the housing stock,\u201d the report says. \u201cThis simple exercise clearly illustrates that interventions focused on market-race supply alone are unlikely to generate widespread affordability in any meaningful timeframe.\u201d<\/p>\n Outside of that \u201csimple exercise,\u201d the researchers list several factors hampering housing affordability, including rising construction costs and the demolition of old housing stock. And it\u2019s not just lefty academics saying this.<\/p>\n \u201cThe issue is not zoning,\u201d said Bora Ozturk, a developer who has built homes in San Francisco\u00a0 but recently shifted focus (opens in new tab)<\/a> to Texas, Utah, and other states because of costs. \u201cNobody is starting construction until the costs come down.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n He told attendees of a BisNow conference Friday that construction costs would need to fall at least 10% before projects pencil out again in San Francisco.<\/p>\n Max Buchholz of UC Berkeley, the lead researcher of the study, said the YIMBY narrative has been politically successful because it\u2019s easy to understand.<\/p>\n \u201cThe appeal is that it offers a really simple explanation and a solution that doesn\u2019t require any on-budget spending,\u201d Buchholz said. \u201cMy view is that it\u2019s much more complex than that, and it probably will require some public financing and intervening in a lot of other ways.\u201d<\/p>\n A matter of time<\/p>\n In response to the study\u2019s findings, the executive director of YIMBY Action, Laura Foote, quoted a proverb: \u201cA society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.\u201d<\/p>\n Foote said the YIMBY movement over the last decade has accomplished a small fraction of what it needs to. Many land-use reform battles remain, from slashing fees on development to tweaking the building code so apartment buildings need only one staircase rather than two.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cMost YIMBYs know that with the reforms we seek, it will take decades to undo the damage that has already been done,\u201d Foote said. \u201cIn the face of that, do we keep digging the housing shortage hole, or do we stop digging and start building?\u201d<\/p>\n YIMBY activists contend that restrictive zoning and permitting tend to stymie production of subsidized housing even more than market-rate projects.\u00a0<\/p>\n Buchholz said those who wish to make housing affordable should take a broader view of the problem; namely, land-use regulation changes are important, but they won\u2019t remedy the affordability crisis alone. He instead identified three key ingredients for increasing access to homes: strong rent control, subsidies for low-income residents, and massive government funding for social housing<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n However, the paper doesn\u2019t model how such public investment would affect prices, which some YIMBY critics said was unfair \u2014 if the authors propose social housing as a fix, critics said, they should subject it to the same level of scrutiny they apply to market-rate housing production.<\/p>\n \u201cWe would love to see a study of this, but can only do so much in one study ourselves,\u201d the authors said in a written response. \u201cThe advantage of producing more affordable housing is it will be more affordable to people with low incomes than market-rate housing. We also think social housing alone is insufficient \u2014 we need to address income inequality as well.\u201d<\/p>\n The exchange highlights a key contrast between the study\u2019s authors and YIMBY activists. While the authors identify social problems as the root causes of unaffordability, YIMBYs say they\u2019re focused on specific, achievable reforms.<\/p>\n \u201cWe all agree there are social issues that need to be addressed: income inequality, et cetera,\u201d said Michael Lane, state housing policy director at the urbanist think tank SPUR. \u201cBut what we\u2019re focused on in particular is, what are the housing policy levers that we can move?\u201d<\/p>\n