Joe Lovinger, Reporter at The Real Deal, talks about how new development in urban areas can ease rising home prices and why a movement to build more properties is being met with opposition.

Opening Bell

Rising Home Prices Are Sparking Debate Over the YIMBY Movement

Welcome back to Cheddars, Opening bell for decades, States like California have built fewer homes than it needs to keep up with its growing population, leaving residents to compete over scarce housing and you guessed it pay more those in favor of new construction. Also known as Nimbys say that the best way to tackle rising home prices and homelessness is to make it easier to build housing of all types. However, their opponents called Nimbys say that the focus should be on affordable housing and that too much construction can increase traffic and gentrification here to discuss is joe loving er reporter at the Real Deal, joe. Can you just explain and breakdown Nimbyism and nimbyism what it is exactly? Sure. Hi Alicia, thank you so much for having me on, essentially, nimbyism, nimbyism are two different ways of looking at how to manage the growth of a city or a neighborhood. Um So, Nimbyism stands for not in my backyard, and these are folks who tend to favor uh lower density development and more community input in what gets built in their neighborhoods. Um um buddhism on the other hand, sort of says, no, we have such a dire shortage of housing that we just need to build more housing of all sorts, high income, low income um people need places to live, and if we increase the housing stock, then um that will bring prices down and allow um you know, people to actually afford homeownership, I mean, it seems like essentially, obviously trying to tackle the same problems, but from two different kinds of perspectives here, what factors does one need to consider when deciding whether a nimby ism or nimbyism approach is beneficial for their relative area. Right, well, I think that's an important piece of this to keep in mind is that while these two sides of the debate have very different opinions, they both think that their preferred method for managing the growth of a neighborhood is the best one. Um so these fights tend to get very, very heated. Um you tend to see more nimby thought in suburban neighborhoods or places with um fewer high rises, you know, less dense development because people worry that more development might hurt their property values or might overtax the infrastructure of their neighborhoods. Meanwhile, in more high flying cities, you get folks who say, well this is new york city, we should be able to build huge super tall buildings even if they're only luxury apartments in those buildings that will increase the overall stock and help lower income people afford a house of their own. So, again, you know, these are fights that play out every day and you see um weird sort of crossover where people who are otherwise very progressive in their political beliefs might opt for the nimby point of view and more conservative um political thinkers might actually favor nimbyism even though you don't necessarily um otherwise correlate on their political stances, interesting with that. What kind of housing situations do americans kind of most commonly see in cities and towns and how does inventory and zoning really play a role there. Yeah, well, zoning codes um while they are incredible on the um, they actually, you know, have a huge impact on the skyline on our neighborhood, on the things that we see every day. They essentially say what types of buildings you can build in certain plots of land. Um and so they were initially conceived to sort of separate um, manufacturing plants from single family houses from apartments. Um what what um we sort of say about zoning codes is that they make it very expensive and overly restrictive um, to build more housing because if you can only build a single family home on a plot of land, then you can't build a duplex with two families or a triplex or you know, an apartment building. Um, and so zoning codes sort of lay out how a whole neighborhood will look. Um and it's, that is sort of the forefront of this battle right now is is um b is trying to, you know, loosen up zoning codes and nobody is trying to say, no, we need to keep this very strict regimentation of where we can build what and where, how do the kind of community culture, these, you know, different ideals than have a layer of impact on public policy. Yeah, that's, and so public policy is really where um you get the most dramatic sort of uh, confrontations that that that show how intense people feel about these issues. Um, every single municipality, every city, every town handles land use a little bit differently. So it's hard to say one overarching, um you know, the way that this always plays out, but in new york city where I live and where I cover real estate for the real deal, um a lot of these nimby versus zombie fights play out in community board meetings. And what ends up happening is, a developer says, I want to build, you know, a 60 unit apartment on this plot of land where there's currently a gas station and nimbys will say, no, this is a beloved gas station or you're not going to have enough affordable units in that apartment building and they'll bring these concerns to the community board and they'll all sort of hash it out there. Um and it's, it's a very involved long process. I've spent many long nights at these meetings listening to people um fight this out. Yeah. Uh speaking of kind of impact or resulting um, you know, impact, um, bees have, have helped pass California's law that ex expedited housing approvals and cities that have failed to kind of meet state mandated housing goals. I'm curious, you know, with that in context and in mind, what could it rise in nimbyism mean for, you know, the housing market and, you know, I think of new york city to your point there, I'm here in new york as well in an overall city planning. Yeah, well it's it's interesting over the past few years we've seen nimbyism um and um be groups really make up a lot of the organizational and financial ground that um nimby groups, uh the lead that nimby groups initially had on them. Um and we've seen more, we'll call it um be friendly policies from local governments who are saying, you know, housing is just so expensive, nobody can afford a place to live, we need to build more. Um and we've seen um be groups um grow and and and try to influence public policy whether that's through campaign contributions or showing up to these community board meetings um and really pushing local elected officials to not just say, you know, We are we we love this building, we need to land market and protect it, even if that means foregoing 80 apartment buildings that could be built on it. Um You know, so yeah, you're right that um buddhism has seen a lot of growth um in in the ways that it it's ideas and tenants are supported by public servants, but at the same time it's important to remember that, you know, when you live in a community and you see it every day and you really care about your local bookstore or your local coffee shop. People are very motivated to protect these things that they value in their communities. Um So it's by no means a done fight and it plays out every single day. I agree. I think it's gonna continue to play out, but now we have some education and context behind it. Nimbyism and nimbyism joe really appreciate your insight, joe loving er reporter at the Real Deal.