By Tim Redmiond
Januaryy 21, 2024
This one is weird: I thought the main Yimby argument was that more housing, including more market-rate housing, will eventually bring down rents. That’s the central reason that the state is mandating so much new housing—because a housing shortage, which can best be solved by the private sector, drives costs up for everyone.
By Cade Cannedy
Jan 8, 2024
YIMBYs and NIMBYs, a tale far less old and far more annoying than Cain and Abel, is a perfect fit for a post-pandemic, cyberurbanized California.
For those unaware, a NIMBY is an aging white couple in a coastal community using racially coded arguments to oppose an affordable housing project that threatens to bring in “ruckus.” A YIMBY, on the other hand, is someone on Twitter yelling indecipherably about how legalizing 5-over-1 single staircases is the only way your children will avoid homelessness in California.
By TIM REDMOND
JANUARY 2, 2024
We love letters to the editor. Here’s one from someone who actually knows the answer to a question I raised:
In “Peskin, Chan want to know if SF can sue the state over impossible housing rules,” Tim Redmond asks, “Could a San Francisco citizen, or organization [as distinguished from San Francisco itself], sue? ‘That,’ said Peskin, ‘is a very good question.’”
By Chronicle readers
Dec 24, 2023
Regarding “The battle over S.F. Supervisor Dean Preston’s housing record is heating up again” (San Francisco, SFChronicle.com, Dec. 20): This discourse has been manipulated by YIMBY groups to distort San Francisco Supervisor Dean Preston’s genuine intentions and unjustly vilify his approach.
Recent reports dissecting Preston’s housing record have been selectively crafted to cast shadows on his efforts.
By Dan Walters
December 17, 2023
For years, California’s state government has been playing whac-a-mole to persuade – or compel – local officials to become more receptive to housing development needed to close an immense gap between supply and demand that drives up living costs and contributes to the state’s very high poverty and homelessness rates.
By Thomas Elias
December 11, 2023
California’s top officials and the bureaucrats who back them up persist in telling us there’s a massive housing shortage in this state, amounting to something between 1.8 million and 3 million units (over five years, they’ve used varying figures within that range).
Even in the midst of the building boom, not enough units are going up to satisfy the shortage, while prices and rents remain too high for most of those who would like to move to new quarters, even for many so-called affordable units.