Latest news with #NIMBY
ABC News
3 days ago
- Health
- ABC News
ABC Long Read story collection
A deep dive on the issues that matter The Yes In My Backyard movement is lobbying for denser cities and more housing in places people want to work and live and YIMBYs want these homes built yesterday. But the NIMBYs haven't given up yet. By Jane Hutcheon After witnessing my mum's cognitive decline and with dementia now the leading cause of death for Australian women, I can't help but wonder: Will I be among them? By Gary Nunn Sperm donors help many couples conceive, sometimes even becoming part of the family. But what happens if the IVF clinic mixes up the records? By Annie Louey With burnout at unprecedented levels who doesn't dream of stepping away from it all and embracing a career break. But can it solve the problem? By Brett Worthington Anthony Albanese's re-elected government includes a record number of female MPs, but insiders worry there's a long road ahead to promote women to top leadership roles. By Rhiannon Stevens In an age of polarisation and AI, the free online encyclopedia might be more important than you think. By Nick Bryant Some of America's strongest allies are rethinking their relationship as Donald Trump's isolationism threatens to entirely remake the West. By Judith Brett Meet the woman who turned female votes into political dynamite By Gary Nunn Prescriptions for ADHD medications are skyrocketing. How do the treatments on offer stack up?
Time of India
15-07-2025
- Politics
- Time of India
Explained: YIMBY vs NIMBY - Why Barack Obama is calling out liberals on housing hypocrisy
AI generated image TL;DR Obama goes YIMBY: The former US president has embraced the 'Yes In My Backyard' movement, urging more housing construction and zoning reform. Liberal hypocrisy under fire: He's criticising wealthy, progressive communities that oppose new housing—especially affordable and mixed-income units. DNC 2024 spotlight: Obama's push for YIMBYism is now central to the Democratic Party's housing agenda heading into 2025. What's this all about? The US is in the midst of a housing crisis. Sky-high rents, unaffordable homes, and crippling shortages have become daily realities for millions of Americans. Enter: the YIMBY vs NIMBY debate. YIMBY stands for 'Yes In My Backyard'—a movement that wants to relax zoning laws, allow more housing (especially in urban areas), and build up supply. NIMBY, or 'Not In My Backyard,' represents resistance to new development, often from affluent or suburban homeowners who fear property devaluation, increased density, or social change. What makes this a big deal now? Barack Obama—once the patron saint of the liberal elite—has come out swinging against the NIMBY mindset. And he's not pulling punches. Obama's YIMBY Turn: A Long Time Coming Obama's alignment with the YIMBY movement didn't come out of nowhere. In fact, it began during his second term. In 2016, the Obama White House released a little-noticed but now prophetic document: the Housing Development Toolkit. It recommended local governments roll back exclusionary zoning, eliminate parking minimums, and legalise denser housing types like duplexes and apartments. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like 發現這個之後我就不再玩其他遊戲了！ ——大多數遊戲玩家都不知道… 突襲暗影傳奇 立即安裝 Undo At the time, few noticed. But with today's crisis-level housing prices, that document reads like a warning unheeded. What did Obama say? At a closed-door Democratic fundraiser and later during a major speech at the 2024 Democratic National Convention, Obama made his most direct case yet: 'We have to get serious about housing. That means more construction. And yes, that means zoning reform—even when it's politically hard.' He called out 'progressive neighbourhoods' that support liberal causes in theory but block low-income housing projects in practice. In other words: they're pro-diversity, until it moves in next door. Why is this a shot at fellow Democrats? Because many of the most restrictive housing regulations in the US are in deep blue cities—places like San Francisco, New York, and parts of Los Angeles. Obama is essentially saying: you can't claim to care about inequality, climate change, and racial justice while blocking housing near public transit or good schools. YIMBY advocates have long pointed out that opposition to dense, affordable housing often comes cloaked in environmental or aesthetic language—but in practice reinforces segregation and skyrocketing rents. This puts him at odds with parts of the Democratic base: wealthy suburban liberals who vote blue but don't want their single-family neighbourhoods to change. Why now? A few reasons: The youth crisis: Young Americans can't afford to buy homes. Many are drowning in rent or forced to move far from job centres. Housing affordability is a top issue for voters under 40—a key Democratic constituency. Climate and equity : Denser housing near jobs and transit cuts emissions. It also integrates neighbourhoods. Political urgency: With Trump back in power, Democrats are trying to show they offer practical solutions. Housing is now seen as a tangible, winnable fight. How is YIMBYism changing Democratic politics? The Democratic Party is undergoing a housing policy transformation, and Obama's backing gives YIMBYism establishment credibility. Key moments: Kamala Harris' 2024 campaign made YIMBYism a core part of her agenda, pledging federal incentives for cities that reform zoning. Mayors like Karen Bass (LA) and Brandon Johnson (Chicago) are testing pro-housing reforms at the local level. Younger lawmakers, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ro Khanna , have expressed cautious support for YIMBY goals—if paired with tenant protections. There's even talk of conditioning federal infrastructure and transit funds on whether cities allow more housing—a stick-and-carrot approach Obama helped pioneer. So who's still saying 'Not In My Backyard'? NIMBYism isn't gone. In fact, it's alive and well in blue and red states alike. Common arguments include: 'Character of the neighbourhood': A vague but often racially coded argument against multifamily housing. 'Traffic and parking': A perennial excuse to halt development. 'Environmental concerns': Sometimes legitimate—but often used to delay or kill projects. Ironically, some NIMBYs are now rebranding as 'PHIMBYs' (Public Housing In My Backyard), arguing for 100% government-built units only. Critics say this is a clever way to block private development without looking regressive. Bottom line Barack Obama siding with YIMBYs marks a turning point in America's housing debate. It pits him—and now much of the Democratic establishment—against wealthy liberals who've long avoided scrutiny for their role in fuelling inequality. He's not just talking policy. He's talking values. And asking a tough question: Are we serious about justice? Or only when it doesn't mess with our property values? FAQ Q: What's YIMBYism in simple terms? A: It's the belief that we need to build more housing—everywhere—to tackle affordability, segregation, and climate change. Q: What's Obama's stance? A: Strongly pro-YIMBY. He's called for zoning reform, denser housing, and ending liberal double standards on development. Q: Is this a partisan issue? A: Not entirely. There are YIMBYs and NIMBYs in both parties, though Democratic cities tend to face sharper contradictions between rhetoric and reality. Q: Will this fix the housing crisis? A: Not alone. But most economists agree more supply is essential—especially near jobs, transit, and good schools.
Atlantic
14-07-2025
- Politics
- Atlantic
The Biggest Myth About the YIMBY Movement
Over the past year, the conversation about housing affordability went national. Unfortunately, it brought with it all the contentiousness of a local-zoning-board meeting. The Democratic YIMBY ('yes in my backyard') movement argues for reducing restrictions on building in order to increase the number of homes and lower housing prices. This has inspired a furious backlash within the liberal coalition. These critics paint the YIMBY vision as a centrist, pro-business scheme that betrays progressive values. Some of the loudest complaints have come from anti-monopoly advocates, who warn that the abundance agenda is a stalking horse for libertarianism. The fight has been framed in a way that is almost perfectly designed to split the Democratic coalition. But this fight shouldn't even be happening. Antitrust policy and housing abundance are natural allies. Although the pro-housing movement does want to remove a specific set of regulations, this ambition is best understood in the populist, trust-busting mold: as an attack aimed at breaking up a powerful group's capture of the regulatory regime. There is nothing centrist about that. In fact, NIMBY activists and their allies are the ones engaged in a fundamentally conservative project: helping a landowning elite hoard wealth by preserving an unfair status quo. As a progressive YIMBY advocate myself (and a former city-council candidate in Seattle), I have witnessed this dynamic directly. This is more than a mere debate about words. The failure to build homes fuels the cost-of-living crisis, worsens climate outcomes, reinforces geographic segregation, and drives migration of people and political power from blue states to red ones—just as the GOP has veered into authoritarianism. It also fuels the nation's record-high homelessness numbers. Research shows that low housing supply, not drug use or poverty, is the strongest predictor of regional homelessness. People who claim to be progressives but resist efforts to solve the housing problem are hurting their own stated values—and risking their descent into political irrelevance. How did a project revolving around expanding access to affordable housing come to be seen by some on the left as centrist, even conservative? It's partly a matter of historical contingency. The front line of the housing fight has long been in the San Francisco Bay Area, where an old guard of otherwise lefty landowners happens to be the group resisting change. There, the YIMBY movement has allied with a younger, less hippy-coded generation of techies. This has created a misleading impression that NIMBYs are inherently to the left of YIMBYs. If the tech boom had instead started in, say, Dallas, the political tenor of the debate would likely look quite different. The fact that someone who is otherwise on the political left opposes a reform doesn't make their opposition itself progressive. A recent successful legislative change to exempt most new-housing development from the California Environmental Quality Act is a great example. The law has been used to block housing production in California's cities. Yet YIMBY reformers had to overcome pushback from labor-union leaders, who should have recognized that more housing would help their workers. These unions opposed the law's reform because their ability to file frivolous CEQA suits gave them bargaining leverage over builders. Whether reasonable or not, their decision makes it clear that 'opposition from the left' can have less to do with progressive values than with narrow self-interest. Adding to the confusion over where the push for housing abundance falls on the political spectrum is the fact YIMBYs often talk about the need to cut 'red tape,' such as restrictive zoning and procedural rules, to make building homes easier. This rhetoric, along with the movement's focus on supply, can, to some ears, evoke Reagan-era trickle-down economics. Many on the left naturally bristle at this kind of language. 'YIMBY policies satisfied elite consensus, promising workforce housing for tech-sector donors while scratching a deregulatory itch that libertarians had long been trying to reach,' Michael Friedrich wrote last year in The New Republic. But abundance liberals aren't fighting against regulation per se. They're fighting against a specific set of regulations that rich people exploit to rig the housing market against people of more modest means. Their aim is to eliminate these specific tools, not to deregulate in general. Progressive anti-monopoly advocates, for their part, accuse YIMBYs of ignoring the problem of corporate power. Because these critics see corporations as the primary villains in American economic life, they're suspicious of any movement that focuses its energies elsewhere. For example, in a review of Abundance, the discourse-defining book by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, the anti-monopolist Sandeep Vaheesan laments the lack of attention to 'anti-monopoly policies that would rein in the power of the affluent' and criticizes the authors' supposed 'deference to private capital and hostility to public governance.' Jonathan Chait: The coming Democratic civil war In reality, the pro-housing movement aims to unrig the housing market, expand access, bring down prices for consumers, and redistribute power and wealth from the rich to everyone else. In antitrust terms, YIMBYs seek to break the housing cartel's chokehold on supply by using political power to restore market competition. Anti-monopoly thinkers should, if anything, be leading the housing fight, not opposing it. The basic insight of antitrust law is that powerful actors will, if left to their own devices, manipulate markets to kill off competition and enrich themselves. One of the most common ways they do this is by restricting supply to keep prices artificially high. When the global oil cartel OPEC cuts oil production, for example, prices at the pump spike. And when wealthy homeowners use local zoning and other land-use laws to block the addition of apartments, townhomes, and subsidized housing in desirable neighborhoods—in other words, to prevent new competition from entering the housing market—they do the same thing: create artificial scarcity, thereby propping up their property values. Anti-monopolists are not wrong that corporate power tends to be behind the deformations in the modern American economy. And in some cases, corporate wrongdoers really might be part of the housing problem; this is why the Department of Justice and state attorneys general are currently suing the algorithmic price-setting company RealPage for colluding with landlords to raise rents. In general, however, it's landowners who've rigged this particular market, not through private collusion, which is illegal, but through 'regulatory capture,' which is when private groups shape government policy to serve their own economic aims. Sometimes working together, sometimes working separately, NIMBYs have manipulated a web of local laws and requirements—such as exclusionary zoning, minimum lot sizes, and parking minimums—to reduce production of homes. As with any production cap, the result is higher prices for new residents and higher profits for incumbents, and a transfer of wealth and power from buyers and renters to existing owners. Because the First Amendment protects private citizens' right to advocate for government policy, the courts can't stop homeowners from using their power in this way. The only remedy is political pushback. In Northern California, the legacy faction of the left is the problem. But in places as varied as Connecticut and Ohio, or Charlotte and Portland, the housing movement is largely led by progressives. I work in the housing movement in Washington State. This past legislative session, my job was to put together a coalition of nonprofits to push for perhaps the nation's most ambitious rollback of off-street-parking requirements. I worked alongside progressive sponsors in the state Senate and House. The bill that ultimately passed swept away thousands of local rules that had throttled housing-supply growth. From the March 2025 issue: How progressives froze the American dream A similar coalition also helped pass other pro-housing reforms to land-use law in Washington (for example, allowing denser development near public transit). These changes won't solve our state's housing crisis on their own, but they are real, material wins. A few GOP-friendly real-estate-industry groups joined in support, but the backbone of the coalition was progressive: big labor, statewide and local environmental groups, tenants'-rights advocates, and justice-focused nonprofits. Almost all of the same groups have also backed a cap on egregious rent gouging, stricter climate standards for new buildings, and more funding for public and nonprofit housing—hardly a libertarian wish list. This is what a populist antitrust effort in housing looks like: undoing regulatory capture, breaking up economic gatekeeping, and creating a fairer market. And yet, in a spectacular act of projection, NIMBYs accuse housing advocates of conservatism even as they defend the interests of wealthy landowners protecting their cultural and economic turf. This smear campaign is meant to freeze blue-state efforts to help people struggling to afford a place to live. And if the broader left fails to recognize this NIMBY misinformation for what it is, it might work.
ABC News
12-07-2025
- Politics
- ABC News
YIMBYs vs NIMBYs as the battle for affordable housing moves into your backyard
The Yes In My Backyard movement is lobbying for denser cities and more housing in places people want to work and live and YIMBYs want these homes built yesterday. But the NIMBYs haven't given up yet. On a cold June night in Sydney's eastern suburbs dozens of residents, most insulated by navy puffer coats and vests, have piled into the Double Bay Bowling Club to air their concerns at a housing forum. They're not happy that apartments are going up in their suburbs — some of Sydney's most affluent. They're concerned more people will clog the roads and strain infrastructure, especially in an area without a "decent supermarket". They're nervous a six-story "monstrosity" will block their sunlight. They're anxious the "runoff from construction" into the harbour will impact their children who "enjoy sailing". They want legal recourse. A resident who owns multiple investment properties in North Bondi is struggling with interest repayments and land tax and worries the onus is on him as a landlord to make rent more affordable. They're angry "existing homeowners" are being blamed for the housing crisis when the government is allowing migration. "We should move out and accept higher density and unliveable suburbs?" one woman asks into the microphone. "Well excuse me, it's not our fault." The room murmurs in agreement. This small gathering of homeowners and politicians is just one of the many local fronts of resistance to the Albanese government's plan to deliver 1.2 million homes across the country by June 2029. The prime minister recently conceded it is "too hard" to build housing in Australia and promised to cut red tape to help boost supply. While many are saying no to development in their suburbs, there is a growing appetite for "housing abundance" helped by Australia's blossoming Yes In My Backyard (YIMBY) movement. YIMBYs want denser cities, they want more housing in places people want to work and live, and they want them built yesterday. 'Not because of a New York Times bestseller' While rolling back regulations and boosting construction isn't usually associated with those on the left of politics, support for a "liberalism that builds" is gathering momentum globally. It has been helped by the popularity of Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson's book Abundance, in which the authors attempt to reorient progressive politics around the provocation: "can we solve our problems with supply?" Treasurer Jim Chalmers keeps mentioning it, Competition Minister Andrew Leigh has quoted it and Productivity Commission head Danielle Wood even claims she read it "before it was cool". So popular is the book in Australia's political capital that two Canberra bookstores told the Australian Financial Review they'd sold out. Housing Minister Clare O'Neil says her focus is "absolutely on building more homes". "It's been the defining motivation of our Labor government for the last three years — not because of a New York Times bestseller — but because we're working to correct a 40-year failure of governments to build enough of them," she tells the ABC. "So many of the housing issues people face are solved by improving our ability to build more homes at scale. Because more homes means more affordable housing — for renters, first home buyers and downsizers alike." In NSW, the government is attempting to build some 112,000 new homes by overriding council restrictions to allow denser housing near public transport. The state posted the biggest increase in approvals of higher-density housing (apartments, townhouses, terrace and semi-detached houses) in the year to May. Just three of the 171 centres the Minns government is targeting are located in Sydney's east where the housing forum in Double Bay is heating up. Local state member Liberal Kellie Sloane, who is hosting the forum, asks how many people have been doorknocked by a real estate agent and a sea of hands go up. One woman, who lives on Rose Bay's Wilberforce Avenue where 12 owners are asking for $165 million from developers for their properties, says says real estate agents won't leave her alone: "I'm very scared that I'm going to be forced out of my home." A house up the road from her that "couldn't get a nibble at $8 million" sold earlier this year for $16 million. In the 1.6 square kilometres that incorporate these inner-eastern suburbs of Edgecliff, Double Bay and Darling Point population density has remained more or less stagnant for a decade, according to figures provided by CoreLogic to the ABC. Up goes another puffy navy sleeve with a question. Tom, an Edgecliff resident, says there has been a lot of "fair comments" about the need for infrastructure to support more housing but suggests the community could reflect on its history of opposing any infrastructure development. Woollahra residents objected to a train station (chasing an injunction all the way to the High Court) and also opposed a plan to turn a derelict service station into a Woolworths and apartment block. Those in the front rows turn around to take a better squiz at the questioner. Sloane identifies Tom as a member of YIMBY Sydney and thanks him for coming — "we've got to build!" — but she maintains the train station was a bad idea. A suspicion of developers Australia's most beloved, if fictional, NIMBY — The Castle's protagonist Darryl Kerrigan — reminds us of a time when the arguments for and against development were simpler: humble home owners taking on greedy developers, or environmentalists trying to save the trees. But Australia's sprawling YIMBY movement is gaining political power amid a national housing crisis when a mortgage or even affordable rent has become further out of reach. Last month the average house price in Australia surpassed $1 million (Sydney's median house price is predicted to hit $1.8m next year). If you've been lucky enough to overcome the average savings period for a deposit that now often extends beyond a decade, the National Housing Supply and Affordability Council's recent report found that by the end of 2024 it took half of median household income to service a new mortgage. Meanwhile low rental vacancy rates mean people are climbing over each other for the luxury of forking out 33 per cent of median household income to cover a new lease. Affordable rent, attainable mortgages and the ability to live closer to work, family and schools? Tell him he's dreamin'. In Queensland there has historically been suspicion of development, says Travis Jordan of YIMBY group Greater Brisbane. He reckons the state's planning, environment and heritage laws were shaped in the 1990s in reaction to a period of questionable — and in some cases outright corrupt — relationships between politicians and developers when the concerns of communities and local councils were dismissed in favour of demolition and rezoning. Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen, in office from 1968-1987, famously disregarded Brisbane's heritage. His connections with the "white-shoe brigade" of property developers and the midnight destruction of iconic Brisbane landmarks like the Cloudland Ballroom at the hands of the infamous Deen Bros looms large in the memories of Queenslanders. "The people fighting up-zoning are stuck in the '90s and they want their neighbourhoods to be stuck there too," Jordan says. NIMBYs tend to be home owners and home owners tend to be older — Jordan sees a generation in Brisbane who went from fighting for "green bans" in the '80s and '90s to fighting to "save our suburbs". He says opponents of density are contributing to a situation in which many people face a choice between renting in "barely-habitable character homes" with poor energy ratings or getting into the property market hours from their workplace and family. "In Brisbane, it's hard to look at the townhouse ban or how widespread our character housing protections are and think we've got the balance right," he says. "We started by bringing in regulations that stop the worst harms and ended up with ones that — by the Lord Mayor's own admission — stop anything at all." Jordan thinks that future housing is being held to standards that didn't apply to the very housing people want to safeguard. "[NIMBYs will] wax lyrical about a street where every old home looks the same while whinging that every apartment looks the same." 'The climate crisis is a housing crisis' In Queensland frequent flooding has left "whole neighbourhoods unlivable" and people are accepting harder trade-offs, he says. "For a lot of people in Brisbane — especially renters and older people — the climate crisis is a housing crisis." Jordan, a former Greens staffer, rents one of the state's iconic Queenslanders and says they were designed to suit the sunshine state's tropical climate but have now become an impediment to climate-resilient homes. "They're by design near impossible to insulate and drought-proof. Can't cool down in summer and can't stay warm in winter," he says. New housing is often opposed on grounds of preserving something, whether it is heritage, privacy, or as one local mayor at Sydney's Double Bay housing forum described, the ill-defined and apparently static "character" of the community. But for many conservationists, increasing density in cities and stopping the creep of low-density residential development over large areas of land is crucial to preserving something else: biodiversity. A 2023 report from the Queensland Conservation Council found that urban sprawl was fast-tracking the extinction crisis in the state. The council's urban sustainability lead, Jen Hasham, says urban sprawl is the "biggest threat to the unique biodiversity and liveability", particularly in South East Queensland where there is a projected population growth of more than two million people by 2046. "Waterways are being impacted, wildlife, such as our beloved koalas, are being killed and displaced, not just by the initial developments but then the years of infrastructure that has to follow it," she says. Conservationists are supportive of the grassroots YIMBY movement, Hasham says, and Australia needs to "build up, not out" but YIMBYs have found a mixed response from Greens politicians at all levels of government. In Perth the West Australian Greens leader Brad Pettitt recently said that his colleagues on the west coast should relinquish inner-city NIMBYism as "we need to get rid of red tape". In Sydney, Greens councillors have been voting against high density developments, most recently against the Inner West Council's push to have the state government rezone former WestConnex sites, on the grounds the housing wouldn't be 100 per cent public housing. Nevertheless, this month the NSW government announced one of the sites, a slab of land on Sydney's Parramatta Road, would be transformed into 577 apartments, 220 of which will be set aside for essential workers at a discounted rate. (A 2024 Anglicare Australia report looked at more than 45,000 rental listings across a weekend and found just 1.4 per cent were affordable for a nurse, and 0.9 per cent for an early childcare educator.) Izabella Antoniou, one of the Greens councillors who has voted against development, says even if deregulation does lead to a greater supply of housing, it won't help affordability. "We have incentives such as negative gearing and land banking that continue to drive up prices and ensure housing is an investment not a human right," she says. "To deliver genuine affordability, we need targeted interventions such as rent controls, strong inclusionary zoning targets, and the mass building of public housing by governments." Antoniou maintains that government intervention is the only way out of this housing crisis as "private housing developers won't fix a system they're benefiting from". "We need to ensure we're building homes, not investment portfolios," she says. University of Melbourne social policy researcher Max Holleran says the YIMBY movement has come under attack from anti-gentrification progressives who, as Holleran puts it, argue these groups are "merely social justice shells concealing property interests". Unlike housing activists in decades past, YIMBYs are not prioritising the fight to protect existing public housing stock and push against evictions but are instead what Holleran calls "supply-side believers" who are more preoccupied with building more of everything. "They're basically saying 'you're not going to get entirely inclusionary zoning in every neighborhood and you are going to have to work with the developers'," he says. Resistance to the cult of supply-side economics While no one at Double Bay's housing forum is arguing for more public housing, the question of affordability is raised repeatedly — how would a few luxury apartments in such a posh part of the city even help a generation of people locked out of the property market? YIMBYs are clear it isn't a one for one process but instead a game of musical chairs — the multi-million dollar apartments going up in Sydney's exclusive east aren't immediately helping your average Australian with a piddling house deposit. Instead wealthy people who can afford them will move out of older stock and the person who buys that home will move out of theirs and so forth, speeding up the process of low quality stock at the back end of the line devaluing or getting redeveloped. "This is actually really intuitive," says Justin Simon, co-founder of YIMBY Sydney. "New cars start at around $30K and you have used cars right down the price spectrum but when production stopped during COVID-19, those new car customers had to buy used instead, and the price went up dramatically. "The same thing is happening when you don't build new units in Woollahra or [Sydney's] north shore: those people will buy a terrace in Ashfield instead, gut it and turn it into a luxury home. The family they beat at the auction has to move out to Liverpool, and the nurse who was living in Liverpool is now moving to Queensland. "Everyone in this chain would have a better living situation and a shorter commute if we built an extra unit in the eastern suburbs — how transformative would it be if we built tens of thousands?" YIMBYs often point across the ditch to Auckland where studies of a 2016 reform to allow more townhouses and apartments showed an increase in construction and decrease in rents. Simon cites 2019 research from the RBA, which found that every 1 per cent increase in housing supply eventually brings prices down by 2.5 per cent. But the notion that addressing supply will help the housing crisis has its critics. ANZ's chief economist has said focusing on new supply alone "is unlikely to materially improve affordability, even in the medium term". Australian urban planning academics have instead suggested winding back tax breaks like negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount to reinvest into social housing and here at the ABC Michael Janda has written that other policies discourage Australians to free up their capital and spare rooms (including the tax-free status of the family home). A shortage of planners but an excess of planning But others say unlocking supply hasn't happened fast enough. Despite Labor's housing abundance rhetoric, the Liberal Party's housing spokesperson Senator Andrew Bragg isn't impressed and thinks Australia is yet to have a government that fully backs the YIMBY movement. A recent report from the National Housing Supply and Affordability Council found Australia is already likely to miss its target by about 262,000 homes. "Ultimately the numbers aren't moving," Bragg tells the ABC. "I think one of the reasons is that, because too many developments are still being kiboshed and I would say that a lot of the agencies, including federal agencies, have not been effective in actually getting houses or supporting the development of housing." YIMBY Melbourne's Jonathan O'Brien says it can be easy to focus on the headline-grabbing behaviour of NIMBY councillors but behind them sits teams of professional planners. New analysis released today by YIMBY Melbourne, in a new "pro-growth" online journal Inflection Points, claims the number of planners Australia-wide has increased dramatically over the past three decades but key productivity outcomes — including the number of home completions — have only worsened. "We've gone to planning meetings where there have been 40 rejections for a single subdivision and we've had members who have been the sole person speaking in favour of that subdivision," O'Brien says. "Legacy planning is essentially like a set of normative claims, like 'this should go here and this should look like this' but it doesn't actually make anything happen — things usually happen despite planning, not because of it." O'Brien says there's not a shortage of planners but an excess of planning. YIMBY Melbourne's analysis found there are almost nine times as many planners today as there were in 1986. For every planner in 1986, we built more than 50 homes, we now build fewer than 10 homes per planner. The fight for the missing middle Canberra's YIMBY movement took off almost a decade ago with memes — specifically a Facebook page called Bush Capital Memes for Action-Oriented Teens (in reference to Canberra's bus operator Action). Greater Canberra organiser Howard Maclean says it became a place for people to talk about the city's urbanism and established transit in particular as "really core" to how Australian YIMBYs think about housing policy. A meme from a Facebook page called Bush Capital Memes for Action-Oriented Teens. ( Facebook: Bush Capital Memes for Action-Oriented Teens ) Maclean says YIMBYs across the country are not just fighting for more apartments but for what they call the missing middle: a "gentle density" between the urban sprawl of free-standing single family dwellings and large apartment blocks. They want more townhouses, terrace homes, low-rise apartments and multi-occupancy blocks near public transport. From conservation councils, to renting advocacy groups, to architects, to community housing groups Missing Middle Canberra is a coalition for medium-density housing. Its activism has helped along a proposal for planning rules that is currently open to public feedback. Maclean, a member of the Labor party, says these reforms would be the largest single increase in Canberra's zoned capacity in the capital's history, boosting the number of homes that can legally be built in the previously untouchable and "practically sacrosanct" RZ1 (suburban low-density, single-dwelling housing) alone "by at least a factor of four". The reforms have been introduced for consultation, then they could be referred to a legislative committee. "This is a very long and slow process of zoning and supply-side reform to housing," Maclean says. "There are no quick wins and persistence is really key in order to actually see results." The changing faces of YIMBYs and NIMBYs Max Holleran, who wrote the book on YIMBYs, says NIMBYism has become a "dirty word" not just for its parochialism but for its anti-urbanism as it resists density and transport in favour of the white picket fence single-family home streets of suburbia. Holleran has written the YIMBY movement of "disgruntled millennials alarmed by rising rent prices" was founded in San Francisco in 2013 by maths teacher Sonia Trauss who began showing up to zoning and council meetings where she found even modest two or three story apartment buildings under review were opposed for problems such as "casting shadows". He says that developers often build in lower income areas where they face less opposition. "These [residents] might be working a bunch of jobs, English might not be their first language, they might not have a university degree and they don't have the time or energy to go to [planning or council] meetings," he says. The people who would benefit from increased housing stock aren't turning up to housing forums. Or as YIMBY Melbourne's O'Brien puts it: "We are the voice of the most important stakeholder, which is the people who want to live somewhere but can't and the planning process favours incumbents." YIMBY Sydney's Justin Simon says politicians and planners are used to dealing with "a very narrow, very noisy class of people who like to say no" which skews their perceptions of what a community will allow. "We can show those planners and those councillors that actually there is debate within the community on this and if they want to go out on a limb and try really hard to build more housing there will be somebody there who is going to say, like, 'good job'." Simon says NIMBYs shift their arguments depending on the context but the goal is the same: "no new people, and no changes to the urban environment". He's seen people in Leichhardt, just a few kilometres west of the city's CBD, declare their backyards "wildlife corridors". When the Sydney Morning Herald asked the head of the Haberfield Association, who successfully secured his entire suburb as heritage conserved, where young people should live he was stumped, before suggesting Orange (250 km away) or Bathurst (550 km away). "From any person's perspective there can be good or bad things about development, but when you own your home the biggest positive is just not relevant to you, because you're not getting rent increases," Simon says. "That means you can engage in whatever motivated reasoning you like — it's a luxury belief." In one message, seen by the ABC, a man in Sydney's inner west tells YIMBY Sydney he signed up to the movement after he was evicted from his inner west home when his rent went up from $492 to $741 within two years. "Often we're accused of being funded by developers, and that shows there is such a gulf in values that the only reason they could conceive of being a YIMBY is because they're being paid off," Simon says. "This barrier will be immediately familiar to many who've had their parents tell them to 'just move a bit further out'." But while stereotypes about who wants to build more — namely, only developers — aren't adhering as securely to YIMBYs, who now claim a level of ideological and socioeconomic diversity, those rallying to oppose development are also challenging the silhouette of a grouchy, heritage-obsessed crank. Last month dozens of kids in football jerseys and residents gathered in Sydney's inner west to protest a planning proposal lodged by a developer to build 200 apartments on industrial land next to where APIA Leichhardt Football Club trains. Although many of those gathered admitted to the ABC they didn't live in the suburb, they didn't look like your typical NIMBYs — they were young families concerned a new apartment block would force their kids' football club to adjust training hours to avoid noise complaints. They were not thinking about housing density or affordability. They were thinking about a potential disruption to their own lives. Tony Raciti, the club's president and the face of the campaign, insists he is all for housing density. "We'd love to see skyscrapers here," he tells the ABC, gesturing to the suburb's empty skyline. "Love it! No problem!" The caveat? "Not here!" Credits Words: Gina Rushton Editor: Catherine Taylor Illustrations: Kylie Silvester Posted 13m ago 13 minutes ago Sat 12 Jul 2025 at 7:00pm
The Independent
12-07-2025
- Politics
- The Independent
Kemi Badenoch opposes major energy project in her constituency – despite hitting out at nimbyism
Kemi Badenoch has been accused of 'staggering hypocrisy' after privately opposing an energy infrastructure project in her constituency, despite taking aim at the government for not doing enough to tackle nimby blockers. In a letter to constituents last month, seen by The Independent, the Tory leader said she has 'joined six other Conservative MPs from across East Anglia in writing to Ed Miliband to demand a fair and thorough assessment of alternatives to the Norwich to Tilbury pylons project'. She said the project – which passes through her Saffron Waldon constituency – "risks permanent environmental and visual damage, would hurt house prices, disrupt farms, businesses and community spaces". The project will see a new 400 kilovolt electricity transmission line built between Norwich and Tilbury, spanning over 180 kilometres. Mrs Badenoch said she told the energy secretary to consider laying the pylons underground, even though such a move is estimated to cost taxpayers far more. When the Tory leader's office was asked about her opposition to the plans, they claimed 'there is evidence it is just as cost-effective' to put the cables underground. But when asked to provide the evidence, they failed to do so. National Grid sources said that burying the cables would not only be up to seven times more expensive, it would also not meet the requirements of the project. Meanwhile, a report from the Institution of Engineering and Technology said underground cables are, on average, around 4.5 times more expensive than overhead lines. Writing in The Times less than a month ago, Mrs Badenoch said: "Politically, government is increasingly powerless in the face of legal challenges. 'Last week I spoke about the tangle of domestic and international rules that block us building new homes and infrastructure '. And last year, as shadow housing secretary in the weeks after the election, she suggested that new Labour backbenchers would turn into nimbys when they face complaints from voters. 'Many of them have been thinking they'd get into government and concrete over lots of Tory constituencies,' she told the Commons. 'Three weeks ago just 15 per cent of the green belt was in Labour constituencies, now it's 50 per cent. They aren't Tory constituencies now, they are Labour. 'They are now your voters and you're going to have to tell them that you're going to do something that many of you promised locally that you would never do.' Labour MP for Milton Keynes North, Chris Curtis, warned that Mrs Badenoch's decision to oppose the pylon line demonstrates 'the same 'one rule for us' mindset that brought us wild parties in Downing Street while the country suffered in silence'. " Kemi Badenoch is fast becoming the poster child for everything the British public rightly despises about politics', he said. 'She rails against legal blockages in the media while using them at home when it suits her. Voters have had over a decade of being lectured by politicians in Westminster, only to watch them flip flop whenever they could benefit personally or politically. 'It is the same 'one rule for us' mindset that brought us wild parties in Downing Street while the country suffered in silence.' He added: 'But that kind of hypocrisy is not just insulting, it is holding Britain back'. Meanwhile, David Taylor – Labour MP for Hemel Hempstead – said it was 'staggering hypocrisy', warning that Britain 'can't afford more Tory nimbyism when our country's future is on the line.' He said: 'After her government did their best to bankrupt the country, she's joined fellow Tory MPs to block the Tilbury pylons project in her own patch, while the country urgently needs new energy infrastructure to keep the lights on and power new homes. 'This is classic one rule for them, another for everyone else. The Conservatives were in power for 14 years and left us with the worst housebuilding record since the 1920s, a time when pylons hadn't even been invented. 'Now Labour's in government, we're serious about building the infrastructure and homes Britain desperately needs.' A spokesperson for National Grid said: 'We're committed to consulting extensively and listening to the views of communities and stakeholders as we develop and shape our plans. "Our role is to find a way to take the home-grown, more affordable and cleaner energy from where it's generated to where it's needed in our homes, business and public services, and we share our plans with Ofgem to ensure value for money for bill payers. 'We consider all technology options - offshore, underground, and overhead lines - and then balance a range of factors, including what's possible from an engineering and environmental point of view and feedback from local communities. 'The secretary of state for energy security & net zero will then make the final decision, following a recommendation from the Planning Inspectorate, on whether we have got that balance right when considering granting planning permission.' A spokesperson for Mrs Badenoch said: 'She's pushing for the cables to be buried. She's on the record calling for this and that there is evidence it is just as cost effective.'
