The revenge of the D.C. YIMBYs
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Construction at the once-stalled McMillan Reservoir site in 2024. Photo: Al Drago/Getty Images
David Alpert's waited a long time for this. As founder of the pro-housing blog Greater Greater Washington, he spent the 2010s on the losing end of NIMBY fights, like when preservationists obstructed McMillan's development.
- So imagine his glee today, when everyone's talking about building more housing. "That felt like a distant goal," Alpert says.
Why it matters: YIMBYs — who'd like to nix single-family zoning — could take the driver's seat in D.C. after Tuesday's election, with both mayoral frontrunners espousing smart growth gospel.
The big picture: It's a big shift in D.C. politics. Old-guard groups like the Committee of 100 — ally of all things historic and the Height Act — stand to lose influence.
- Janeese Lewis George pledges the most ambitious housing proposal, earning her endorsements from Alpert and a growing group called DC YIMBYs, putting the democratic socialist on the side of free market liberals.
- Leftists who once shunned trickle-down logic now agree that more supply lowers prices.
- "I myself was skeptical of this," JLG wrote in, well, Greater Greater Washington, the left's old boogeyman.
- "Many Democrats," she wrote, thought it was "progressive to deny" the existence of a housing shortage, "sometimes going so far as to block new construction in the name of affordability."
If elected, Lewis George wants to build 72,000 new homes in five years.
- That's six times the goal of downtown's favored candidate, Kenyan McDuffie. He says "there's no way" that'll happen during D.C.'s economic slowdown.
- McDuffie's got a fan in "super-YIMBY" journalist Matthew Yglesias, who says only his business-friendly reforms would juice the construction industry, and actually get things built.
"If the mayor does not prioritize the growth of this sector," Yglesias wrote recently, "it will not have housing growth."
Between the lines: The thing is, not long ago, the Alperts and Yglesiases would be backing the same candidate.
- But in a D.C. where the would-be leaders all sound pro-density, the divides are increasingly over who do you trust more?
What's ahead: The biggest fight will be over six-plexes.
- YIMBYs want to legalize six-unit apartments everywhere, whether that's between the Tudor houses of Northwest or Hillcrest's bungalows.
- The avenue to end single-family-only zoning would be through D.C.'s Comprehensive Plan, a bible-like planning book that the mayor gets to revise and send to the D.C. Council.
Recently, urbanists panned the Bowser administration's "unambitious" draft changes.
- "The next mayor could step in," says DC YIMBY advocate Dennis Sendros, and decide, "we want to go in another direction."
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