Latest news with #YIMBY
Yahoo
15-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Housing is dividing California Democrats — so Newsom stepped in
SACRAMENTO, California — In the space of two minutes, Gov. Gavin Newsom reordered a political standoff over California's housing crisis. The governor on Wednesday threw his weight behind a push to turbocharge housing construction statewide by slashing local restrictions and environmental reviews. With divisions among legislative Democrats imperiling a package of bills, Newsom announced during a news conference that he would instead advance those policy changes through the budget, over which he has considerably more leverage. 'Enough,' Newsom said, after pointing to housing as the biggest issue facing California. 'This is a crisis. If you care about your kids, you care about getting this done, this is the biggest opportunity to do something big and bold.' With that move, Newsom put his imprimatur on a debate over how much to ease housing development — even in cities wary of fast growth. For years, slashing barriers to construction has been the state's core strategy for bringing down exorbitant rents and home prices that have put home ownership further out of reach for many people and undermined Democrats' political standing on an issue of paramount importance to cost-strained voters. Pro-housing activists and their legislative allies have collided with lawmakers, unions, and environmental groups who warn that in its race to build, California is abandoning hard-won labor and environmental protections for laws that have produced mixed or minimal results. 'To go taking these large swings and then not even giving them a chance to work — we think that's a little reckless,' said Chris Hannan, executive director of a collection of unions called the State Building and Construction Trades Council of California. Democratic state lawmakers this spring split on a series of housing votes that killed one bill and exposed gaping intraparty fractures. But Newsom's intervention could be decisive. By moving to enact changes through the budget, he could circumvent legislative obstacles like hostile committee chairs, and he will hold considerable leverage over lawmakers intent on securing their spending priorities. His public backing of the legislation flips a familiar dynamic in which he's useds his veto power to thwart lawmakers on automation, immigration, and spending bills. Supporters cast the moment in make-or-break terms as Democratic leaders lean into an affordability message to win back voters who have drifted away from the party and to lower-cost states, bolstering Republican attacks on California's liberal governance. The bills 'ask a simple question,' said California YIMBY CEO Brian Hanlon, whose group has driven pro-housing development policies in Sacramento. 'Will the California Legislature rise to meet the scale of the housing crisis, or push California families to states that do build?' That message has taken on additional urgency after Democrats lost winnable races to Republicans last year as Trump made gains in both staunchly blue coastal counties and purple inland battlegrounds. 'Our constituents are demanding it. Look at the election results in November,' said Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, an Oakland Democrat who is both carrying a leading bill and shepherding a larger affordability package. 'I think there's far greater risk in not solving the problem than there is in not appeasing your groups so as to not upset the apple cart.' Rise of the YIMBYs Newsom's embrace of the pro-development agenda illustrates the power of California's housing-focused 'YIMBY,' or Yes In My Backyard, movement, whose champions have harnessed deep public frustration with rents and home prices to push through changes to local zoning rules, relaxed statewide building regulations and other proposals to make it faster and easier to build. They're tapping into a moment embodied by Ezra Klein's 'abundance' push — which Newsom enthusiastically trumpeted when he hosted Klein on his podcast — and fueled by alarm among elected Democrats that California's housing costs are driving away voters. The underlying politics have shifted dramatically in the last decade as a cohort of Democratic state lawmakers began pushing bills to build more, faster — a fix Vice President Kamala Harris echoed for bringing down costs at the Democratic National Convention last summer — even when that meant defying labor unions, environmental groups, and homeowners who have long thwarted efforts to plan for and construct multi-family homes. Behind the legislation is an ascendant network of groups funded substantially by young tech industry workers that have spent millions on lobbying and elections while organizing priced-out Bay Area liberals to show up to public meetings and advocate for housing developments. Pro-housing Democrats began by reshaping San Francisco politics, and then won seats in the state Legislature. 'Nowadays you can't go to Senate Housing or Assembly Housing (committee) without hearing about some sort of streamlining package or bill,' said Christopher Martin, policy director for Housing California. 'There's a lot more political capital, there's a lot more that's possible in this world in large part because the crisis has gotten so tough for people — not just for low-income folks but for folks who are earning good salaries.' After early setbacks — Democratic infighting doomed a nationally watched 2020 bill to build near transit, and an influential construction union group thwarted a series of proposals — pro-housing lawmakers have been on a winning streak. They broke through the labor impasse by peeling off union groups like carpenters, sending Newsom bills to expedite development in commercial corridors and in cities trailing their state-mandated housing goals. Now, the Legislature is debating a package of bills that would expedite building apartment complexes in urban hubs and limit reviews under a landmark environmental measure, the California Environmental Quality Act, that had long been considered politically sacrosanct as beneficiaries like unions and environmental groups fight to protect it. 'CEQA has been like the sacred cow,' Wicks said. 'When I introduced the bill I was like: 'OK, am I just going to get clobbered now?'' In housing, Wicks and like-minded lawmakers have had a consistent ally in Newsom, who campaigned for office in 2018 vowing to build 3.5 million more housing units by 2025. In addition to signing a spate of bills, the governor has been aggressive in challenging cities and counties that, in his view, have actively resisted planning for more housing. California remains drastically behind Newsom's 2018 campaign goal, however, with state data showing fewer than 500,000 units completed between 2019 and 2023 — the majority in the 'above moderate income' price range. That shortfall and an attendant homelessness crisis could haunt the governor, whose final term ends at the end of next year, if he runs for president in 2028. Growing dissent Yet that formidable pro-development coalition has run into Democratic dissent. One bill from state Sen. Scott Wiener, a potential successor to Rep. Nancy Pelosi, has already been voted down, and Wiener had to push two more through votes over the opposition of Democratic committee chairs, a rarity in Sacramento that speaks to the issue's continued volatility. 'It implicates so many different interests and anxieties and goals,' Wiener said in an interview. 'You have people who don't want to see change in their neighborhoods versus people who do want to see change, you have fights about labor standards, you have environmental justice advocates, there's just so many angles that it's inherently contentious.' State Sen. Aisha Wahab, who chairs the Senate Housing Committee and favors more projections for renters and lower-income Californians, unsuccessfully sought to block Wiener's bills. Wahab said in an interview that she supports building more housing, but that it must be affordable — and she warned a flurry of recent housing laws have done little to reduce costs while enriching housing developers. It is time, Wahab said, to pause an agenda that looks 'suspiciously like what we are seeing at the federal government, where deregulation is their goal to ensure profitability.' 'If these sweetheart deals for developers are not creating affordable housing,' Wahab said, 'why are we continuing this path forward?' Construction unions fighting the bills have made common cause with affordable housing advocates who want guarantees of less-expensive units and from environmental justice groups who warn that rollbacks would expose low-income residents to pollution at the moment the Trump administration is moving to slash climate protections. 'We know we cannot rely right now on the federal government,' said Grecia Orozco, a staff attorney for the Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment. 'California needs to step in and say: No, we need to be a leader here, we need to protect the communities that are most vulnerable.' Local warning signs California's biggest cities have also illustrated cautionary tales about the risk of political backlash over policies to ramp up housing construction. In Los Angeles, Mayor Karen Bass reversed herself and diluted her order to speed up housing production in the wake of devastating wildfires, saying she wanted to protect existing tenants, including those in rent-controlled units. Housing advocates lamented a lost opportunity. But Bass' recalibration reflected deeper fears about gentrification and altering the character of neighborhoods that have long fueled more skepticism to dense housing in Los Angeles compared to the Bay Area. Those concerns have taken outsize importance as Los Angeles works to rebuild areas incinerated by wildfires, to the point that Newsom himself has denied allegations he's colluding with developers to put apartments in affluent neighborhoods like the Palisades. In San Diego, city officials last month moved to roll back a policy that built on state law to allow more accessory dwelling units on single lots, arguing it had been abused by developers. Former state senate President Pro Tem Toni Atkins, who represented San Diego and authored ambitious housing legislation that effectively ended single-family zoning throughout California, said in an interview that her city's recent missteps showed the risks of 'bad development,' recounting gargantuan projects bereft of green space or transit connections in earlier decades. 'There was a backlash in San Diego,' Atkins said. 'Really, it took a long time to come back from that.' But Atkins is still leaning into housing, making it the centerpiece of her 2026 governor campaign with an assist from the same carpenters' unions that have flexed their muscles in the Legislature. Meanwhile, Steve Hilton, a Republican candidate for governor, has accused Democrats of waging a 'war on single-family homes' — reminders that housing politics will continue to dominate and divide long after Newsom is gone. 'It will be my number-one issue,' Atkins said, 'because I think if people don't have an affordable place to live, you can't really do anything else.'
Politico
15-05-2025
- Business
- Politico
Housing is dividing California Democrats — so Newsom stepped in
SACRAMENTO, California — In the space of two minutes, Gov. Gavin Newsom reordered a political standoff over California's housing crisis. The governor on Wednesday threw his weight behind a push to turbocharge housing construction statewide by slashing local restrictions and environmental reviews. With divisions among legislative Democrats imperiling a package of bills, Newsom announced during a news conference that he would instead advance those policy changes through the budget, over which he has considerably more leverage. 'Enough,' Newsom said, after pointing to housing as the biggest issue facing California. 'This is a crisis. If you care about your kids, you care about getting this done, this is the biggest opportunity to do something big and bold.' With that move, Newsom put his imprimatur on a debate over how much to ease housing development — even in cities wary of fast growth. For years, slashing barriers to construction has been the state's core strategy for bringing down exorbitant rents and home prices that have put home ownership further out of reach for many people and undermined Democrats' political standing on an issue of paramount importance to cost-strained voters. Pro-housing activists and their legislative allies have collided with lawmakers, unions, and environmental groups who warn that in its race to build, California is abandoning hard-won labor and environmental protections for laws that have produced mixed or minimal results. 'To go taking these large swings and then not even giving them a chance to work — we think that's a little reckless,' said Chris Hannan, executive director of a collection of unions called the State Building and Construction Trades Council of California. Democratic state lawmakers this spring split on a series of housing votes that killed one bill and exposed gaping intraparty fractures. But Newsom's intervention could be decisive. By moving to enact changes through the budget, he could circumvent legislative obstacles like hostile committee chairs, and he will hold considerable leverage over lawmakers intent on securing their spending priorities. His public backing of the legislation flips a familiar dynamic in which he's useds his veto power to thwart lawmakers on automation, immigration, and spending bills. Supporters cast the moment in make-or-break terms as Democratic leaders lean into an affordability message to win back voters who have drifted away from the party and to lower-cost states, bolstering Republican attacks on California's liberal governance. The bills 'ask a simple question,' said California YIMBY CEO Brian Hanlon, whose group has driven pro-housing development policies in Sacramento. 'Will the California Legislature rise to meet the scale of the housing crisis, or push California families to states that do build?' That message has taken on additional urgency after Democrats lost winnable races to Republicans last year as Trump made gains in both staunchly blue coastal counties and purple inland battlegrounds. 'Our constituents are demanding it. Look at the election results in November,' said Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, an Oakland Democrat who is both carrying a leading bill and shepherding a larger affordability package. 'I think there's far greater risk in not solving the problem than there is in not appeasing your groups so as to not upset the apple cart.' Rise of the YIMBYs Newsom's embrace of the pro-development agenda illustrates the power of California's housing-focused 'YIMBY,' or Yes In My Backyard, movement, whose champions have harnessed deep public frustration with rents and home prices to push through changes to local zoning rules, relaxed statewide building regulations and other proposals to make it faster and easier to build. They're tapping into a moment embodied by Ezra Klein's 'abundance' push — which Newsom enthusiastically trumpeted when he hosted Klein on his podcast — and fueled by alarm among elected Democrats that California's housing costs are driving away voters. The underlying politics have shifted dramatically in the last decade as a cohort of Democratic state lawmakers began pushing bills to build more, faster — a fix Vice President Kamala Harris echoed for bringing down costs at the Democratic National Convention last summer — even when that meant defying labor unions, environmental groups, and homeowners who have long thwarted efforts to plan for and construct multi-family homes. Behind the legislation is an ascendant network of groups funded substantially by young tech industry workers that have spent millions on lobbying and elections while organizing priced-out Bay Area liberals to show up to public meetings and advocate for housing developments. Pro-housing Democrats began by reshaping San Francisco politics, and then won seats in the state Legislature. 'Nowadays you can't go to Senate Housing or Assembly Housing (committee) without hearing about some sort of streamlining package or bill,' said Christopher Martin, policy director for Housing California. 'There's a lot more political capital, there's a lot more that's possible in this world in large part because the crisis has gotten so tough for people — not just for low-income folks but for folks who are earning good salaries.' After early setbacks — Democratic infighting doomed a nationally watched 2020 bill to build near transit, and an influential construction union group thwarted a series of proposals — pro-housing lawmakers have been on a winning streak. They broke through the labor impasse by peeling off union groups like carpenters, sending Newsom bills to expedite development in commercial corridors and in cities trailing their state-mandated housing goals. Now, the Legislature is debating a package of bills that would expedite building apartment complexes in urban hubs and limit reviews under a landmark environmental measure, the California Environmental Quality Act, that had long been considered politically sacrosanct as beneficiaries like unions and environmental groups fight to protect it. 'CEQA has been like the sacred cow,' Wicks said. 'When I introduced the bill I was like: 'OK, am I just going to get clobbered now?'' In housing, Wicks and like-minded lawmakers have had a consistent ally in Newsom, who campaigned for office in 2018 vowing to build 3.5 million more housing units by 2025. In addition to signing a spate of bills, the governor has been aggressive in challenging cities and counties that, in his view, have actively resisted planning for more housing. California remains drastically behind Newsom's 2018 campaign goal, however, with state data showing fewer than 500,000 units completed between 2019 and 2023 — the majority in the 'above moderate income' price range. That shortfall and an attendant homelessness crisis could haunt the governor, whose final term ends at the end of next year, if he runs for president in 2028. Growing dissent Yet that formidable pro-development coalition has run into Democratic dissent. One bill from state Sen. Scott Wiener, a potential successor to Rep. Nancy Pelosi, has already been voted down, and Wiener had to push two more through votes over the opposition of Democratic committee chairs, a rarity in Sacramento that speaks to the issue's continued volatility. 'It implicates so many different interests and anxieties and goals,' Wiener said in an interview. 'You have people who don't want to see change in their neighborhoods versus people who do want to see change, you have fights about labor standards, you have environmental justice advocates, there's just so many angles that it's inherently contentious.' State Sen. Aisha Wahab, who chairs the Senate Housing Committee and favors more projections for renters and lower-income Californians, unsuccessfully sought to block Wiener's bills. Wahab said in an interview that she supports building more housing, but that it must be affordable — and she warned a flurry of recent housing laws have done little to reduce costs while enriching housing developers. It is time, Wahab said, to pause an agenda that looks 'suspiciously like what we are seeing at the federal government, where deregulation is their goal to ensure profitability.' 'If these sweetheart deals for developers are not creating affordable housing,' Wahab said, 'why are we continuing this path forward?' Construction unions fighting the bills have made common cause with affordable housing advocates who want guarantees of less-expensive units and from environmental justice groups who warn that rollbacks would expose low-income residents to pollution at the moment the Trump administration is moving to slash climate protections. 'We know we cannot rely right now on the federal government,' said Grecia Orozco, a staff attorney for the Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment. 'California needs to step in and say: No, we need to be a leader here, we need to protect the communities that are most vulnerable.' Local warning signs California's biggest cities have also illustrated cautionary tales about the risk of political backlash over policies to ramp up housing construction. In Los Angeles, Mayor Karen Bass reversed herself and diluted her order to speed up housing production in the wake of devastating wildfires, saying she wanted to protect existing tenants, including those in rent-controlled units. Housing advocates lamented a lost opportunity. But Bass' recalibration reflected deeper fears about gentrification and altering the character of neighborhoods that have long fueled more skepticism to dense housing in Los Angeles compared to the Bay Area. Those concerns have taken outsize importance as Los Angeles works to rebuild areas incinerated by wildfires, to the point that Newsom himself has denied allegations he's colluding with developers to put apartments in affluent neighborhoods like the Palisades. In San Diego, city officials last month moved to roll back a policy that built on state law to allow more accessory dwelling units on single lots, arguing it had been abused by developers. Former state senate President Pro Tem Toni Atkins, who represented San Diego and authored ambitious housing legislation that effectively ended single-family zoning throughout California, said in an interview that her city's recent missteps showed the risks of 'bad development,' recounting gargantuan projects bereft of green space or transit connections in earlier decades. 'There was a backlash in San Diego,' Atkins said. 'Really, it took a long time to come back from that.' But Atkins is still leaning into housing, making it the centerpiece of her 2026 governor campaign with an assist from the same carpenters' unions that have flexed their muscles in the Legislature. Meanwhile, Steve Hilton, a Republican candidate for governor, has accused Democrats of waging a 'war on single-family homes' — reminders that housing politics will continue to dominate and divide long after Newsom is gone. 'It will be my number-one issue,' Atkins said, 'because I think if people don't have an affordable place to live, you can't really do anything else.'
Yahoo
09-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
How Colorado's housing-supply politics contradict the ‘abundance' narrative
Gov. Jared Polis speaks about a sweeping housing policy that was set to be introduced in the Legislature, in March 2023 at the state Capitol in Denver. (Sara Wilson/Colorado Newsline) Colorado's 2025 legislative session, which ended Wednesday, was another mixed bag for those who want to make it easier to build more housing units and solve the state's affordability crisis. Connecting the news in Colorado to the big picture. It's been three years since Gov. Jared Polis embraced the YIMBY movement — short for 'Yes In My Back Yard' — and made 'More Housing Now' a signature goal of his second term. Polis' first big YIMBY priority was an audacious 2023 bill to reform land use policies and require higher-density development across the state, including by abolishing single-family zoning in Colorado's most populous cities and towns. That proposal landed like a lead balloon in the state Legislature, where it was gradually watered down before being killed entirely in the final days of the 2023 session. In the wake of the bill's defeat, proponents have revived parts of it in piecemeal fashion, successfully passing bills last year to require higher-density housing near transit stops, legalize the construction of accessory dwelling units in most circumstances, and prohibit local minimum parking requirements. But resistance to YIMBY policies has remained strong. Skeptical lawmakers have stripped reform legislation of enforcement mechanisms, and local officials in several large Colorado municipalities have signaled they won't comply with some of the new requirements. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX The latest YIMBY disappointment came this week with the defeat of House Bill 25-1169, which would have overridden local zoning codes to presumptively allow faith-based organizations and educational institutions to build multifamily housing developments on their land. The bill, dubbed the 'Yes In God's Back Yard' measure, passed the state House of Representatives in March but stalled in the final days of the legislative session as its sponsors acknowledged it lacked enough votes in the Senate. The YIGBY bill had a lot in common with other housing bills taken up by the General Assembly in the last few years. Its sponsors included two of the statehouse's most progressive lawmakers in Sen. Julie Gonzales and Rep. Javier Mabrey, both Denver Democrats. It was backed by a long list of environmental, labor and social justice organizations. It passed the House over opposition from Republicans and a handful of moderate Democrats, and faced hurdles in the Senate, where the business lobby and a larger bloc of centrist lawmakers tend to exert their influence. This has become a familiar pattern in Colorado politics. But it's notably at odds with many of the presumptions of an intraparty debate currently flaring up among Democrats and left-leaning commentators at the national level, as they seek a path forward after a stinging defeat in the 2024 election. A loose affiliation of pundits and politicians, critical of what they see as certain shortcomings of Democratic governance, have sought to articulate an alternative approach under the banner of 'abundance.' The buzzword was the title of an October 2024 conference held in Washington, D.C., by influential centrist organizations like the Niskanen Center and the Breakthrough Institute, as well as a best-selling book this year by liberal authors Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson. Abundance, in short, encompasses what Klein also calls 'a liberalism that builds' — more housing to bring down rents and home prices, more industry to create jobs and protect supply chains, more clean energy and transit infrastructure to reduce climate pollution. This vision has resonated with some powerful Democrats: Klein was invited to be a guest at U.S. Senate Democrats' annual retreat this week, Axios reported, and Polis himself has described his governing philosophy as an effort to bring the 'abundance agenda' to Colorado. Blame for the failure to build, in the abundance crowd's telling, often falls on what Klein and like-minded pundits have taken to calling simply 'the groups' — an epithet of sorts for labor unions, environmental nonprofits and other organizations on the Democratic Party's progressive left wing. 'The groups,' they say, have stood in the way of progress on key issues by saddling Democratic policy initiatives with unpopular ideological goals, or by erecting too many regulatory or procedural barriers via legislation and the courts. But if three years of battles over housing policy at the Colorado statehouse have proved anything, it's that 'the groups' can be willing, enthusiastic members of the YIMBY coalition, and political obstacles to a drastic increase in housing supply are far more likely to be found on the right and center of the political spectrum than the left. Beginning with the ambitious 2023 land use bill, virtually every YIMBY-endorsed housing proposal taken up by lawmakers lately has enjoyed the support of a loose network of climate and environmental advocacy groups that includes the Southwest Energy Efficiency Project, Conservation Colorado, the Colorado Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council, 350 Colorado and others. Other progressive groups focused on economic policy or social justice — 9to5 Colorado, the Bell Policy Center, the Colorado Fiscal Institute, the League of Women Voters, Servicios de la Raza, Together Colorado and many more — have also frequently lobbied for the bills, records show. The most vocal and consistent opponent of these measures has been the Colorado Municipal League, the organization representing the governments of the state's 271 cities and towns. In a few cases, influential business groups and local chambers of commerce have supported some of the changes, but in many others they have opposed, sought to amend or taken no position, according to lobbying records. In floor and committee votes, Republican lawmakers have been nearly unanimously opposed to the most sweeping changes, while skepticism from Democratic moderates has repeatedly resulted in concessions, including the multiple exemptions granted to mountain towns like those represented by state Sen. Dylan Roberts and House Speaker Julie McCluskie. Though a handful of exceptions and ideological cross-currents may exist, the broad political alignment on these issues could hardly be clearer. As Polis and other advocates for 'More Housing Now' continue to pursue that goal, their allies and their opponents are easy to spot — and in Colorado, at least, the abundance crowd seems to have it exactly backwards. The Trendline offers analysis on public policy in Colorado. Articles explore ways to think about the news based on research, history and other important context, helping Coloradans connect the headlines to the big picture. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
Fox News
07-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Fox News
NFL TO DC: Ben Domenech Weighs in on Clash Between Liberal NIMBYs and YIMBYs
Ben Domenech, Fox News Contributor and host of the Fox podcast The Big Ben Show, produced by none other than The Guy Benson Show 's own Christine, joined show today to recount his latest behind-the-scenes adventures with his new producer. Domenech also weighed in on the DC stadium debate, calling out liberal critics as part of the ongoing clash between 'YIMBYs and the NIMBYs.' He reacted to Trump's proposed 'Hollywood tariffs' aimed at bringing film production back to America and laughed at the irony of Pete Buttigieg bemoaning overregulation (regulations he himself imposed at the DOT). Listen to the full interview at the link below! Listen to the full interview below: Listen to the full podcast below:
The Age
23-04-2025
- Business
- The Age
How building more apartments could make these rich Melbourne suburbs more inclusive
Building more apartments in some of Melbourne's most affluent postcodes would desegregate rich suburbs and allow more middle-class people to live in desirable locations, a new analysis by advocates of higher density living suggests. But prominent planners have criticised the Victorian government's activity centre scheme, and say it won't deliver the affordable housing it promises but will instead radically alter Melbourne's cultural heritage. RMIT University Emeritus Professor Michael Buxton last week told an inquiry into new planning rules that the government had held 'secretive' consultation into key changes that would allow greater housing density and fewer avenues for community and council objections. The Allan government has unveiled 60 planned activity centres, which are slated for higher-density living as part of the plan to encourage developers to build hundreds of thousands of new homes. New data shows that most of the activity centres are slated for wealthy suburbs with very little socioeconomic diversity. However, they also include areas around Dandenong, which are more disadvantaged. Of the 50 recently announced activity centres, 60 per cent are located in the richest 10 per cent of the state's local government areas, such as the suburbs of Brighton, Camberwell, Hampton, Hawthorn, Kew Junction, Malvern, Prahran, Glen Huntly and Sandringham. More than 90 per cent of the activity centres are within the top 50 per cent of advantaged areas, based on the Australia Bureau of Statistics' index of relative socioeconomic disadvantage. Asanka Epa, a Melbourne organiser from pro-housing advocacy group YIMBY (Yes In My Backyard), analysed Victoria's scheme and found the activity centres are slated for areas that middle-class people had been locked out of, particularly in the inner east.
