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But you've made the larger point of the article: The oligarchy that funds the YIMBY movement uses it as a political tool to slander and fight anti-oligarchy activists. Just moments after pointing to seemingly neutral, technical legislation on the minutiae of zoning reform, you descended into crazed mudslinging against tenants rights advocates and socialists.
Addendum:
I looked up Red Bridge Strategies and find no evidence they have opposed affordable housing developments. What I do see them supporting:[1]
* Yes on H! Rent Control for Pasadena
* Yes on M! Empty Homes Tax
* Tax on $10M Real Estate Sales to Fund Social Housing
* Gross Receipts Tax on Large Corps to Fund Homeless Services
and so on. These are all genuinely progressive/socialist positions consistent with promoting working class affordable housing and opposing landlords.
It seems like you've just been taken by this well-funded right wing disinformation campaign. I hope you can see the larger point of the article that this is indeed a coordinated political strategy designed to radicalize people like you (and tech industry professionals generally) into fighting to defend the oligarchy and undermine the kind of populist progressive movement we see Bernie/AOC trying to start up again lately, and that folks like Preston genuinely were a part of.
- The real estate lobby funds CA YIMBY and YIMBY candidates, not socialists.
- Dean Preston was a major tenants rights attorney who authored key legislation protecting tenants from evictions, not a landlord.
>What began as the Yes In My Backyard (YIMBY) project’s narrow focus on zoning reform evolved into a sweeping pro-growth, neoliberal, and socially moderate brand of politics. “Abundance!” now serves as a rallying cry for a new kind of Democrat: techno-optimistic, skeptical of government, and supportive of a welfare state only when it comes with harsh restrictions.
There was a time when progressive social housing and market rate development advocates were united against NIMBY zoning rules. But these more conservative forces have come to dominate Yimby (through enormous amounts of funding) and direct its ire more generally against progressives that see oligarchy, not just zoning, as the primary problem in our society.
The answer is staring us right in the face.
It’s a catchy slogan and pulling tens of thousands even in deep red MAGA country.
https://www.sltrib.com/news/politics/2025/04/13/fighting-oli...
https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2025-04-12/bernie-san...
Or did you know the National Bureau of Economic Research just published a study concluding “Supply Constraints Do Not Explain House Price and Quantity Growth Across U.S. Cities”?[1] Directly contradicting the YIMBY narrative that all we need to do is unleash market rate supply.
Simple economics tells us that when you have a boom town with strong demand from white collar professionals migrating in, driving up incomes, they will outbid lower income folks for market rate units ten out of ten times. Per the law of supply and demand, all of that demand needs to be satisfied before market prices even have a chance of declining to affordable levels - and that’s only if the real estate industry decides it is profitable to keep building. Older units get renovated into luxury units as well.
That creates a real scalability problem for cities because you get a labor shortage. That drives up the cost of everything: education, restaurants, and you guessed it, construction itself.
That’s why social housing is such an international standard. Without affordable working class housing, the local economy becomes dysfunctional. And it echoes the debate we had about socialized medicine some years ago, the solution favored by pretty much all other developed countries, but always said to be too expensive or impractical to be done here, the richest country on the planet.
But we’re beginning to see some cracks in the narrative. And it clarifies why these right wing movements find the Abundance agenda so appealing.
[1] https://www.frbsf.org/wp-content/uploads/wp2025-06.pdf