{"id":9934,"date":"2022-06-16T13:30:00","date_gmt":"2022-06-16T20:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/essential.construction\/news\/?p=9934"},"modified":"2022-06-16T13:30:00","modified_gmt":"2022-06-16T20:30:00","slug":"meet-the-yimbys","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/essential.construction\/news\/meet-the-yimbys\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet the YIMBYs"},"content":{"rendered":"

This article is the first in a series looking at how a push for greater density in cities across the country is affecting the multifamily sector.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

For years, whenever Jeff Head presented his firm\u2019s affordable housing projects at public meetings, he wondered not if there would be opposition, but how deep the opposition would be.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhether for affordable housing or high-density housing, for 40 years the default answer has been \u2018no\u2019 for reasons that are usually not terribly logical or based in fact,\u201d said Head, the vice president of development for Chicago-based The Habitat Co.<\/p>\n

In the last couple of years, however, that has started to change.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Now, advocates for The Habitat Co.\u2019s developments \u2014 often wearing t-shirts and buttons inscribed with the slogan \u201cYes, In My Back Yard,\u201d or YIMBY \u2014 are showing up with some regularity at public hearings and city council meetings. They are even lobbying state legislatures for pro-housing initiatives.<\/p>\n

The Habitat Co. is also getting support from outlets like Chicago YIMBY<\/a> \u2014 a website covering Chicagoland construction and real estate from a pro-growth perspective \u2014 for projects like 43Green<\/a>, a mixed-use development with 99 residential units (50 of them affordable) in Chicago\u2019s Bronzeville neighborhood (shown above).<\/p>\n

As recently as five years ago, \u201cI don\u2019t remember any positive reaction to development and density \u2014 even when the need was there and the lease-up was obviously going to be there,\u201d Head said. \u201cFuture renters of market-rate housing don\u2019t typically go to public meetings to advocate for the 40-story building they\u2019re going to live in, but I\u2019ve definitely seen that in the last couple of years. There\u2019s a sense of policy and a spirit of community behind it. It\u2019s refreshing.\u201d<\/p>\n

David Block, director of development for Chicago-based Evergreen Real Estate Group, which has been developing and building housing for every income level since 1999, is also seeing greater public acceptance of his firm\u2019s projects \u2014 especially the affordable ones.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cFive, six, seven years ago, I would go into a neighborhood meeting or zoning meeting bracing for everybody to be screaming at me about what a terrible thing I was doing to their community by building housing for the people who sweep the floors in the kids\u2019 schools or serve coffee in the local Starbucks,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019ve been pleasantly surprised, recently, that the conversations are much more positive, with people saying: \u2018We\u2019re really glad you\u2019re building affordable housing here.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

As the housing crisis weighs on nearly every community in the United States, the YIMBY movement\u2014which emerged about 10 years ago as a fledgling counter-voice to the louder, better-established \u201cNot In My Back Yard\u201d movement\u2014is coming into its own.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Advocating for local housing solutions and removing barriers to building, disparate YIMBY groups in cities from coast to coast have helped push through pro-housing initiatives in their own backyards\u2013in places like California, where the housing crisis is particularly severe, and in progressive cities like Minneapolis; Seattle; and Portland, Oregon.<\/p>\n

The movement is growing because nearly everyone knows someone who\u2019s struggling to find a home or pay the rent, said Christopher Ptomey, executive director of the Urban Land Institute\u2019s Terwilliger Center for Housing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cMore and more, there\u2019s an understanding that when you prevent housing from being developed, you\u2019re part of the problem,\u201d Ptomey said.\u00a0 \u201cYou can\u2019t just close your eyes to it anymore and say: \u2018My neighborhood is too important to be part of the solution.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Click <\/em>here<\/em><\/a> to sign up to receive multifamily and apartment news like this article in your inbox every weekday.<\/em><\/p>\n

This item was originally posted here: Read More<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This article is the first in a series looking at how a push for greater density in cities across the … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":9935,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1066,457],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9934","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-posts","category-construction-dive","generate-columns","tablet-grid-50","mobile-grid-100","grid-parent","grid-33"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/essential.construction\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9934","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/essential.construction\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/essential.construction\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essential.construction\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9934"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/essential.construction\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9934\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essential.construction\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/essential.construction\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essential.construction\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essential.construction\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}