The YIMBY movement is being touted as a major solution to the shortage of affordable housing. YIMBY stands for “Yes In My Backyard,” the opposite of NIMBY. YIMBY would alter zoning codes that favor or require single-family housing, to make it easier to free land to build apartments, especially affordable ones, and remove other obstacles.
on YIMBY strategies, and our former colleague . I don’t want to throw too much cold water on YIMBY, which can help. But we should be clear that it is only a small part of the solution.
The housing shortage is massive, and curing it will take a lot more than YIMBY. Let’s begin by acknowledging that the era of mass cheap housing after World War II was exceptional, and that repeating those benign economic tailwinds will be impossible. In those days, the federal government promoted affordable homeownership via cheap VA and FHA-insured mortgages.
Even more importantly, federal highway programs opened inexpensive farmland near cities to housing development. Lots that had lately been pastures were dirt cheap, which made the homes affordable. The homeownership rate increased from 43.
6 percent in 1940 to 63.3 percent in 1965. The great suburban migration, in turn, took the price pressure off of rental units in cities.
In addition, federal public-housing programs added over a million units of affordable housing. And for good measure, many cities continued the rent control that was enacted as part of WWII price controls. So both rental apartment.
