Open Letter to Congressman Scott Peters and Calif Senator Akilah Weber: Dem Leaders, Get a Clue: YIMBYism Is NOT Progressive

By Lu Rehling

Question for our elected representatives US Congressman Scott Peters and CA Senator Akilah Weber: Who does this sound like to you when it comes to advocating for changes to housing policy?

• Bypass environmental and safety protections.
• Blame regulations [not developer/corporate greed].
• Apply trickle-down economics [newly applied to the housing market].
• Promote gentrification [driving mid- to lower-income resident out of their homes].
• Encourage short-term rentals [discouraging starter home ownership].
• Off-site affordable housing [so only the entitled enjoy exclusive perks and only with each other].
• Disenfranchise community groups [by waiving reviews and defunding appeals].
• Ignore the needs of disabled and families [prioritizing transport options for the fit and unencumbered].

If your answer is “progressives,” then read your Orwell, because progressive policy instead asks government to tackle inequality and promote social justice. And yet you align with so-called progressive YIMBY Dems.

In fact, Congressman Peters, you co-sponsored and continue to smugly tout the “Build More Housing Near Transit Act” legislation that would enable all of the policies stated above, allowing “by-right” density development: the “right” being to waive height, parking, and safety review requirements.

Of course, being a politician, you also say that you favor “community input,” but that’s NOT in the law that you’ve proposed. And its affordability and building reuse inclusions are minimalist-to-toothless: options, not mandates that developers, laser-focused as usual on their own self-interested goals, can freely ignore.

And, in fact, Senator Weber, you approved passage from committee of SB 79 (“Housing Development: Transit Oriented Development”) that would do the much of the same as Peters’ proposal, similarly without urgently needed and appropriate safeguards.

The YIMBY Dems that you both curry favor with illogically contend that just getting out of the way of business people whose only fealty is to their own bottom lines will somehow magically lead to good outcomes for those struggling to make it: a classic never has/never will proposition.

YIMBYs make it sound so simple, messaging that “the solution to the housing crisis is just to build more housing” and what stands in the way are rules and regs—oh, yeah, and selfish oldsters who hate and fear change, not caring a bit about younger generations.

Time to call BS on that characterization: True progressives have always been all about righting wrongs in the present to improve the future for all. And they know, through both direct experience and documented research, that changes in government policies can focus on keeping existing housing more affordable (NOAH), creating new affordable housing options by repurposing existing commercial buildings (adaptive reuse), and, yes, doing the obvious: directly facilitating and investing in building new housing that is largely or entirely affordable.

That doesn’t need to mean infamous Cabrini-Green style projects, either. Progressives learn from what works, and there are positive models of supportive, community-based affordable housing out there, both in our country and abroad.

So why aren’t you and other Dem leaders looking to those examples and advancing truly progressive approaches to housing? Assuming for now that you’re not plain-and-simple being bought by the corporations that benefit from “anything goes” development, please consider other influences that may be preventing you from being agents of responsible, constructive, effective change when it comes to housing.

One reason may be that you are just not being skeptical enough about your sources of information. For example, Senator Peters, you recently laughably labeled our local Circulate San Diego as an “independent voice,” despite its insider, politically-aligned government consulting contracts and its governing board historically dominated by representatives of real estate interests, contractor affiliates, and others all-too-familiar with the lucrative government/private sector revolving door.

Naturally, Circulate loudly proclaims its mutual admiration society relationship with the NIMBY Dems. Misleadingly, Circulate still tries to act as though it’s just a bunch of grassroots cyclists looking for folks to ride with, same as those who founded the groups that it gobbled up years ago. But that’s like comparing today’s NRA with the original NRA that years ago was mostly known for promoting hunting safety, not AK-47s.

Another reason may be that you are not being thoughtful enough about unintended consequences. For that, you would need to listen to the folks who know firsthand the on-the-ground facts and impacts of predatory development and can testify to the results: not much improvement in affordability but a lot of damage to communities.

Still, you’re not letting those citizen voices budge you from your fixed positions. For example, Senator Weber, one of your spokespersons recently acknowledged in a community group meeting that you are aware of the exceedingly large volume of constituent communications opposing SB 79 that your office has received. Maybe you should not just hear about those messages, but heed them.

Yet one more reason for your wrong-headed stance on housing may be that it’s easier for you to adopt simplistic slogans and join those who attack with nasty (and just plain wrong) NIMBY labeling than to face the systemic challenges and causes of our housing crisis. Both of you support policies and legislation that largely ignore the multiple factors and complexly interacting causes of our housing crisis: interest rates for financing, construction costs and inefficiencies, location desirability, tax policies, landlord consolidation, poorly maintained aging infrastructures, vacation rentals, foreign investments, and so on (including industry lobbyists!). This willful blindness, in turn, seems to justify a “build, baby, build” approach that self-righteously blames only bureaucracies and individual property owners. And, further, it’s an approach that expects grossly inadequate and underfunded public transportation systems to magically rise to meet needs that they are totally unequipped to handle.

Unfortunately, you two, our local Dem leaders, join a host of others in the Dem leadership and pundit class who are buying into YIMBY claims. Those now are often high-mindedly re-packaged as “abundance” ideology, thanks to the influence of podcaster Ezra Klein and despite sound, informed analyses that poke holes in his arguments and his past self-identification as a progressive.

It’s dismaying to hear even political leaders who often have seen through special interest claims when those disadvantage everyday citizens (leaders such as Warren, Harris, and Obama) parroting YIMBY Dem talking points about housing.

So, it’s understandable if you two might find it hard to buck what’s currently trendy in some reaches of your party and that gives you social media cred to boot. But you owe it to those whom you represent to inform yourself of their views as citizens, which should lead you to reconsider your participation in housing policy groupthink.

You could and should do your part to puncture the prevailing delusion that YIMBYism is progressive, when Dem leaders, time to get a clue: YIMBYism is NOT progressive.

Lu Rehling is a resident of the San Diego community of Hillcrest.