Last week, Reason.tv (the multimedia outlet of Reason Magazine) published a video about San Francisco’s YIMBY movement. The video describes the decades of underdevelopment in San Francisco as the result of community activism intended to limit the supply of new construction. As a result, San Francisco’s housing market is severely supply-constrained, and outrageously expensive. The problem has gotten so bad that pro-development, “YIMBY” organizations such as SFBARF and Grow San Francisco have sprung up to counter the anti-development forces.
It’s great to see Reason taking notice of the YIMBY movement, and we’d love to see more attention paid to urbanism at libertarian sites. Three of us at Market Urbanism attended the first nationwide YIMBY conference in Boulder that the video mentions, and we’ll be sharing our thoughts on the conference soon.
(h/t Jake Thomas at the Market Urbanism facebook group)