Housing can be a divisive issue. What some people consider too little, others find too much—and the result is a statewide housing shortage. California YIMBY (Yes In My Back Yard), a nonprofit organization dedicated to advocating for an increase in fair and equitable housing, placed Marin, Napa and Sonoma counties on its 2023 list of the 10 most underproducing counties in the state (2,3 and 6, respectively when it comes to housing-conversion rates)—and the North Bay continues to lag. CA YIMBY, however, along with local chapters, is working to change minds as well as rules, and proposals for new projects are on the rise.
“We need to build all types of housing for all types of people,” says Matthew Lewis, CA YIMBY’s director of communications. He believes people should be able to live close to their workplaces, and if they can’t find housing—whether it’s unaffordable or unavailable—they have no choice but to find homes elsewhere and drive long distances to their jobs, creating traffic congestion and air pollution. Increasing the housing stock, he argues, would allow people such as teachers, healthcare workers and restaurant employees to stay in the communities where they work, raise their children there, support the local economy and reduce traffic. Beyond the working population, “People move, change jobs, have children, grow old,” he says. And as their lives change, they require different types of housing to accommodate diverse needs and incomes. “You definitely need subsidized affordable housing,” he says, but just 10% of the population is low income or no income, and the entire population should be considered.
Many places have a history of resistance to anything other than single-family homes—the term NIMBY, or not in my backyard, is a pejorative reference to residents who oppose change in their neighborhoods. “Most communities have made it illegal to build multifamily houses,” says Lewis, and permitting problems and exorbitant fees are barriers to new construction as well. “These are known problems with known solutions and an unwillingness to make change. There’s so much communities can do if they want to,” he says. He advocates for permitting the number of buildings on a property to go up to 10 units in some areas and allowing fourplexes on a single-family lot. “You don’t need apartment towers to solve the housing crisis,” he says, explaining that duplexes and fourplexes would allow an increase of 10 to 15%, and adding them a few at a time would allow them to blend into the community gradually…