The revenge of the D.C. YIMBYs

The revenge of the D.C. YIMBYs

David Alpert's waited a long time for this. As founder of the pro-housing blog Greater Greater Washington, he spent the 2010s on the losing end of NIMBY fights, like when preservationists obstructed McMillan's development.

  • So imagine his glee today, when everyone's talking about building more housing. "That felt like a distant goal," Alpert says.

    • Why it matters: YIMBYs — who'd like to nix single-family zoning — could take the driver's seat in D.C. after Tuesday's election, with both mayoral frontrunners espousing smart growth gospel.

    The big picture: It's a big shift in D.C. politics. Old-guard groups like the Committee of 100 — ally of all things historic and the Height Act — stand to lose influence.

  • Janeese Lewis George pledges the most ambitious housing proposal, earning her endorsements from Alpert and a growing group called DC YIMBYs, putting the democratic socialist on the side of free market liberals.
  • Leftists who once shunned trickle-down logic now agree that more supply lowers prices.
  • "I myself was skeptical of this," JLG wrote in, well, Greater Greater Washington, the left's old boogeyman.
  • "Many Democrats," she wrote, thought it was "progressive to deny" the existence of a housing shortage, "sometimes going so far as to block new construction in the name of affordability."

    • If elected, Lewis George wants to build 72,000 new homes in five years.

  • That's six times the goal of downtown's favored candidate, Kenyan McDuffie. He says "there's no way" that'll happen during D.C.'s economic slowdown.
  • McDuffie's got a fan in "super-YIMBY" journalist Matthew Yglesias, who says only his business-friendly reforms would juice the construction industry, and actually get things built.

    • "If the mayor does not prioritize the growth of this sector," Yglesias wrote recently, "it will not have housing growth."

    Between the lines: The thing is, not long ago, the Alperts and Yglesiases would be backing the same candidate.

  • But in a D.C. where the would-be leaders all sound pro-density, the divides are increasingly over who do you trust more?

    • What's ahead: The biggest fight will be over six-plexes.

  • YIMBYs want to legalize six-unit apartments everywhere, whether that's between the Tudor houses of Northwest or Hillcrest's bungalows.
  • The avenue to end single-family-only zoning would be through D.C.'s Comprehensive Plan, a bible-like planning book that the mayor gets to revise and send to the D.C. Council.

    • Recently, urbanists panned the Bowser administration's "unambitious" draft changes.

  • "The next mayor could step in," says DC YIMBY advocate Dennis Sendros, and decide, "we want to go in another direction."

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