Berkeley residents opposed to development, or “NIMBYs” (short for “not in my backyard”), recently obtained a court order to cap UC Berkeley enrollment at the levels of previous years. California’s state government quickly wrote a bill to reverse the order, and Governor Gavin Newsom signed it on March 14.
The fight over UC Berkeley admissions highlights a broader problem with development in the Bay Area. NIMBYs simply have too much power over land they don’t own. Their demands, intended to benefit a localized few, threaten the interests of the many – in this case, thousands of future UC Berkeley students.
In the UC Berkeley situation, residents opposed development on the grounds that the university did not provide enough dorms for students, forcing them into Berkeley’s residential housing. Most NIMBYs have a different concern: they oppose the development of housing itself. California may be willing to interfere with NIMBY plans when it comes to protecting its prestigious universities, but the state has largely failed the huge number of people who struggle to pay rent or lack housing entirely.
A Mercury News poll finds homelessness to be the number-one concern of Bay Area residents, surpassing wildfires and Covid-19. The need for change is widely understood. Yet many of us inexplicably betray this common understanding by advancing NIMBY causes throughout the Bay.
Various factors contribute to the Bay Area’s housing crisis, from strict regulations on the heights and density of buildings to the immense demand for houses generated by the rise of Silicon Valley. NIMBYs do not bear full responsibility for our housing woes. But they certainly play an important part, and that is enough to make their actions wrong.
The simplest reason for NIMBYism – homeowners defending the bloated price tags of their homes – is obviously indefensible. So NIMBYs offer other justifications for forcing people onto the street. Among them are the need to preserve a city’s “character” (because homelessness is apparently an essential part of the Bay Area) and the fear that new housing will lead to an uptick in crime (as if homelessness has no impact on the crime rate).
No possible justification is anywhere near as important as our obligation to provide adequate and affordable shelter for everybody. Our government has begun to recognize this, with Newsom dedicating billions of dollars in the 2021 “California Comeback Plan” to affordable housing. The plan also established a “Housing Accountability Unit” to hold local governments accountable for “their legal responsibility to plan, zone for, and permit their share of the state’s housing needs.”
Government action works best when it matches the actions of the people. Currently, opposition to development is such a common stance among the (housed) Bay Area public that the very idea of neighborhood activism may seem synonymous with NIMBYism. But members of the relatively new YIMBY (“yes in my backyard”) movement, motivated by the crises inflamed by their predecessors, seek the vast influence of neighborhood groups as a way to solve Bay Area housing instead of worsening it.
A popular yard sign explains the YIMBY mindset: “density means diversity,” “more neighbors = more fun,” and “triplexes and fourplexes are pretty.” YIMBYism has neither the fear-based convincingness nor the selfish financial motives that have propelled the NIMBY movement for decades. But the sheer awfulness of the Bay’s housing crisis has been enough to inspire a growing number of YIMBY converts. Should the YIMBY movement continue to expand, we might finally see a public that is willing to address the problems it has invited, and that will mean a great deal in the fight for affordable housing.