Does Political Message Matter or Not?

YIMBYism is not immune to the Matt Yglesias critique of online politics

remember friends, no person of color has ever opposed new development

The Yes In My BackYard movement advocates for loosening regulatory barriers to building new housing in an effort to expand access and increase affordability. Matt Yglesias is one of the most prominent YIMBYs in the media and functions as something of a fulcrum for their politics in online spaces. And he is in the habit of insisting that there’s no substantive disagreement with YIMBYs that comes from people who also advocate for housing abundance, and I think that’s wrong in really crucial ways.

There’s a tendency, in this era, to either overemphasize what happens on the internet when it comes to political messaging or to dismiss it entirely - either Facebook gave Donald Trump the presidency, or social media has no impact on politics at all; either we’re looking out and mistaking our Twitter feeds for public opinion, or we act like there’s no consequences for how people engage politically online and we can all just act like the cool kids lobbing one-liners for the rest of our lives. I am well aware that there is a whole world of YIMBYism away from the internet, but either online organizing matters or it doesn’t - if it does, then the way that online YIMBYs act is worth critiquing, and if it doesn’t, then they might as well shut up. And what makes me immensely tired, as someone who believes in an agenda of housing abundance, is that online YIMBYism seems molded in exactly the Yglesian image: mixing stridency of message with existential glibness, a shit-eating, look-at-me unseriousness, the superiority that emerges from having a FRED account and a simplistic view of politics.

I’m afraid that, yes, I’m talking about distributed opinion here, what you’ll find on Reddit or Twitter or (I’m guessing) YIMBY TikTok, and my perception is thus contestable. Feel free to contest it. Certainly, though, I’m not alone among broadly-sympathetic people in feeling that YIMBY culture is toxic - this has become something of a meta-discussion of its own - and many believe that online YIMBYs spend immense amounts of time antagonizing those who might become supporters and that their dogged fixation on elevating themselves in the in-group by adopting needlessly extreme rhetoric hurts their ability to influence the out-group. (Indeed, many by now cliched critiques of 21st-century socialist politics map perfectly onto YIMBYism.) Hating YIMBYs while loving housing has become a meme, and not for no reason.

Just ask Yglesias.

The YIMBY movement annoys a lot of people who are highly engaged with politics because we are living in a time of intense political polarization, and YIMBYism is not aligned with either pole.

This is him playing to his base. Personally, if it had indeed been proven true to me that my online political tendency annoyed a lot of people, I would amend it to say “The YIMBY movement annoys a lot of people,” and proceed from there: what is the steelman position for why many people hold some sympathy for housing deregulation but find YIMBYs so distasteful? If “a lot of people” are annoyed by us, might not the problem be… us? Might there be something to these complaints, given how cross-ideological they are? The Tao of Matty Glesias is that you never have to ask these questions. Your view of the world comes predigested, and that certainty fuels the kind of self-esteem that lets your buzz around for several decades wondering why everyone’s always mad at you. (I know the feeling.) I don’t want Yglesias to have zero self-esteem, mind you. I just wish his was taxed at a significantly higher level than it currently is and redistributed to people in need.

As I said, Yglesias spends a lot of time insisting that there are no substantive critiques of YIMBYism, as in the quote above. This is risible on two levels: first, that’s not remotely true, and second, there is no one on earth who is less entitled to say that only substance matters, not message.

The most important critique of YIMBYism is that inside-outside dynamic: the online culture of YIMBYism creates an addiction to sneering that elevates one in the pecking order at r/jackingofftozoningreform but which hurts you when trying to convince people who have legitimate worries about new construction. One result of the white-knuckled attachment to being smug in the Yglesias style, among YIMBYs, is that there is no way to talk to people who have valid concerns about what housing development will do in their neighborhoods. The existence of legitimate alternative opinion pops the bubble of invincibility. But there are NIMBY messages that are compelling to many. I am thinking right now of a movement leader I encountered doing work in tenant activism in Brooklyn. (I didn’t do anti-development stuff myself, really, for the record.) I won’t name her but she’s notoriously aggressive and consistently effective. Here’s a gloss on what she, as a Black woman and the head of a largely-Black local organizing group, frequently says to Black people in central Brooklyn in her outreach:

Rich white people have bought land in this neighborhood. Rich white developers want to put up high rises on that land, and if they sell it on to a landlord that landlord will be rich and white. They’ll knock down buildings you’ve known for your whole life and physically transform your neighborhood. The people who live in those buildings will almost all be rich and white. They’ll change the way the neighborhood feels and looks, and instead of seeing faces that look like yours, you’ll see the faces of white people, the same white people who cross the street to avoid you. And there’s a good chance that they’ll bring with them white businesses where you won’t feel comfortable and drive out the ones you’ve loved all your life.

Now because I think we need a housing abundance movement, for the good of everyone, I think this overall attitude is misguided. But I’ve found - in person, that is, because I’ve actually talked one-on-one with people who feel this way - that it’s hard to rebut this particular argument. It’s hard to rebut because every individual claim is indisputably true. It is true that the developers are all rich and white. It is true that the kinds of landlords who take over new construction are all rich and white. They will indeed knock down buildings longtime residents have become used to. The residents in new construction in Brooklyn are dramatically more likely to be high-income and white than in the neighborhoods said new construction lies in, and anyway, whether white brown or purple, they will be new and thus change the makeup of the area. The experience of living among these new residents, if YIMBYs are successful and there are always new high rises going up, will indeed be to make the “feel” of the neighborhood significantly different, and that feeling will be shaped by race and class. And while I’m convinced by the empirical literature that many gentrification claims are loose and inaccurate, it’s also definitely a possibility that new businesses that cater to an upscale white customer base will drive out beloved legacy businesses.

(For the record, I have been begging media YIMBYs to write a piece that considers NIMBYs of color for years, to considerable antagonism and no success.)

I believe that there are ways to address these concerns, although to a certain degree we all have to accept that our lived spaces are always evolving and there’s no stopping that. (The goal, of course, is to empower people of color and lower-income people such that changes to their neighborhoods are less threatening.) But to address such concerns in a constructive way - especially in places where local activists can push various levers to block development - we have to acknowledge that these people have legitimate points of view. For all of his writing on this issue, Yglesias never seems interested in extending even the limpest olive branch in the face of other people’s fears - instead, he just keeps writing pieces with titles like “YIMBYs Keep Winning” and “Yet another study confirms YIMBYs are right about everything” and “Yes, My Penis is in My Hand as I Write This.” This YIMBY dedication to self-celebration, which extends far further than Yglesias, is like something I’ve never seen. I grew up in a very political household, I’ve been involved in local politics for forever, I’m politically engaged as part of my profession, and yet I’ve never seen anything like the level of constant self-celebration that the YIMBYs engage in. Technocratic liberals celebrated Obama’s election less fervently than YIMBYs will celebrate a minor zoning reform in Poughkeepsie. But, OK, fine - while you’re celebrating, think of that Brooklyn activist and how effective she is at rallying people against various projects. What’s your approach to addressing her concerns? I have my own response to that argument, and it starts with respect and acknowledging potential harm. The trouble with the Yglesias shtick is that you’re so married to disrespect as a basic mode of being that it’s hard to proceed in earnest.

Here is a legitimate difficulty for YIMBYs: yes, more construction leads to lower rents, and we desperately need to lower rents in this housing crisis. But new construction doesn’t immediately result in lower rents for anyone. Indeed, because in many instances new buildings are going to have higher rents than existing ones, immediately after construction the average rent of the area is likely to nominally go up. In time, absolutely, more construction will result in lower rents! But this process is slow-moving and diffuse, especially given that people are typically locked into one-or-two-year leases that set the price they’re going to pay for a long time. Meanwhile, the demolition of old buildings is immediately visible, the big ugly buildings going up are immediately visible, and the new white faces are immediately visible. I think that this is the biggest difficulty when it comes to changing the minds of local residents - the fact that the downward pressure on rents is mostly invisible and takes time to build while the physical transformation of neighborhoods is impossible to miss. All that’s just to say that we have to do politics; we have to advocate, we have to inform. But you can’t do that if you spend all your time doing cartwheels telling everybody that YIMBYism is winning because you’re so much smarter and betterer than everyone else.

I would also argue that YIMBYs have let a second-order concern (their war with NIMBYs) overwhelm their actual first-order concern (making housing more affordable). Consider Airbnb. For one thing, there’s broad resistance among zoning-reform types to acknowledging the fact that Airbnb raises housing costs, despite a lot of empirical research to that effect. The issue seems to be that YIMBYs don’t want to muddy the message that what’s needed is zoning reform to encourage more construction. I find this frustrating; there’s absolutely no reason to think that we can’t both pursue zoning reform and acknowledge that high-priced short-term rentals, often illegal, suck up supply and put upward pressure on rents. But if you dig around a little in these communities on Reddit and Twitter, you’ll find that it goes deeper than that. You’ll sometimes find, for example, people mocking homeowners for kicking up a local fuss about noise complaints dealing with Airbnb guests, who have zero incentive to treat the local area with respect. Those homeowners are often mocked as NIMBYs. But what on earth does complaining about people breaking local noise ordinances have to do with housing abundance through regulatory reform? Nothing - except that YIMBYism has developed a cultural distaste for incumbent homeowners as such, regardless of the scenario.

The proposed I-685 project in North Carolina (which is already choked with highways, for the record) has been opposed by residents who fear the noise pollution, air pollution, and destruction of undeveloped green spaces that it would entail. Predictably, they’ve been derided as NIMBYs. But why on earth would a movement for affordable housing have a reflexive stance on building more interstate highways? Based on what principle? Based only on the principle that what local residents oppose should be supported, ipso facto, regardless of merit. That’s unhealthy on multiple levels.

Again, take it from Yglesias himself,

Social media is truly social in the sense that it features incredible pressures to form in-groups and out-groups and then to conform to your in-group. Unless you like and admire Cotton and Pompeo and want to be known to the world as a follower of Cotton-Pompeo Thought, it is not very compelling to speak up in favor of a minority viewpoint among scientists. Why spend your day in nasty fights on Twitter when you could be doing science?

To his credit, this perfectly describes a clear and pernicious internet tendency. To his discredit, he rabidly rejects the idea that it pertains to his people, to his tendency. Or to him. And yet! How does Yglesias deal with informed, good-faith pushback from someone with a legitimate point of view?

“Okay well I’m glad we agree.” Totally nonresponsive, impossibly patronizing, and all from King YIMBY, who fancies himself a wonk but who can’t find his way around an argument from someone with local knowledge without defaulting to his smartest man in the world act. It’s transparently the case that Yglesias’s interlocutor here simply knows more about the local situation in San Francisco than Yglesias, which is always a sure precursor to his snark. (You can check his Twitter and see for yourself.) This happens constantly in online YIMBY spaces: people with greater local knowledge are bullied because local knowledge invites complications and complications challenge the purity of the message. Local knowledge like, say, that in New York City opposition to building is almost invariably led by low-and-middle income people of color, not the rich white NIMBYs that are the preferred target.

And then there’s the schizoid reality of Yglesias being the one to tell people that messaging doesn’t matter. The incredible thing about Yglesias’s recent line on YIMBYism is that it literally amounts to “it doesn’t matter how you wage politics, what matters is being right.” And not only is this transparently dopey, just political nihilism, it’s amazing in that he is also the most prominent face of popularism, a political school that holds that being right makes no difference if messaging is not strategic. Yglesias has spent the last three years, for example, castigating socialists and BlackLivesMatter and groups like Sunrise for unrealistic messaging that supposedly harms the broader progressive cause. Popularism, also associated with Dem pollster David Shor, suggests that Democrats should identify what issues are popular and campaign on that, then shut up about the unpopular stuff. The ins and outs of this have been debated to death; my position remains that of course we have to be strategic and have good messaging, but also the whole point of politics is to make your moral positions popular with others. Yglesias says

you should encourage candidates to embrace popular progressive causes and allow them to make tactical retreats from fights where conservatives have public opinion on their side.

And yet Yglesias is explicitly opposed to the very concept of local control of housing regulation as such! He’s said so many times. Now, I ask you: if you polled people on the question, “Should local communities have some regulatory input on what new construction gets built in those communities?,” what percentage of people would say yes? Like 75% at least, right? Higher? So what is Yglesias doing here? How is he following his own popularist advice?

Like it or not - and I think he’s the kind of person to simultaneously love and hate that he’s as influential as he is - Yglesias is a profoundly influential figure in YIMBY spaces. We know he has the ear of the White House chief of staff. If your fundamental political vision is that you shouldn’t do political advocacy in a way that might make candidates and politicians on your side adopt unpopular standards, and you know that you have a direct line to the sitting President of the United States, what are you doing making grandiose arguments against local control in housing regulation? I make my share of criticisms of activists too, but mine don’t come wrapped up in a premise about politics that insists that we never do anything unpopular while making maximalist arguments for my own personal favorite issue. Yglesias’s stance is quite literally “popularism for thee, but not for me,” that everyone else has to have message discipline and focus on what’s popular and not rock the boat too much, while he unthinkingly insists that people in a given place should have literally no say whatsoever over what gets built in that place. Turns out that popularism only ever applies to other people.

The logic that Yglesias laid out above about the in-group social dynamics of online politics indeed applies to YIMBYs, and it has exactly the deleterious effects that he says it does. I would appreciate it if he would apply this thinking about other people’s online political groups to his own. Because it describes the online YIMBY space perfectly.