What's at stake?
The Yes-In-My-Backyard movement, or YIMBY,has grown as more people have pegged California’s extreme housing affordability issues on a fraught, bureaucratic system that makes it nearly impossible to build more homes.
Fresno seems like the rare California city where you’re more likely to see residents clamoring for more housing in older neighborhoods, than not. (Except, maybe in Old Fig. Or the San Joaquin River Bluffs.)
So, it might be surprising that the Yes-In-My-Backyard movement, or YIMBY, hasn’t quite taken off here, just yet.
The movement has grown as more people have pegged California’s extreme housing affordability issues on a fraught, bureaucratic system that makes it nearly impossible to build more homes. Their guiding philosophy is simple: Make it easier to build housing, and especially housing in walkable neighborhoods and California will become more affordable.
Drew Phelps – a Fresno-based consultant for suburban developers, (yes, that’s right) – is hoping to bring that energy to the Central Valley.
Last month, he helped to co-host the first meeting of Central Valley YIMBY, attracting around 20 people – mostly urban planners and housing professionals – to talk about building a new pro-housing coalition.
Given his background, he comes at it admittedly from a suburban perspective, with a resume including stints at Granville Homes and Woodside Homes, but he said his goal is to build a big tent, from people like himself to tenant advocacy groups and affordable housing developers.
“You know we want to have a lot of different perspectives, even different political perspectives. I think that’s what makes YIMBY such a strong and attractive movement to me,” he added.
He assured me, though, that even though his own frustrations with the system come from the challenges in building small lots on the fringe of cities, he’s looking forward to digging more into why it’s been so hard for developers to embrace more infill housing, too.
After all, that’s primarily what CA YIMBY as a lobbying force has been best at – reducing regulations on building accessory dwelling units, or ADUs, eliminating zoning restrictions to build higher-density housing near transit in walkable neighborhoods and eliminating single-family zoning so that more duplexes and triplexes can be built amongst the craftsman homes of California’s streetcar suburbs and beyond.
And he sees the new Central Valley chapter, focused on Fresno, Madera, Tulare, and Kings Counties – as key to helping get those new state laws implemented locally, in a way that still reflects valley preferences.
“My best friend lives in Portland and lives car free. I would love to be able to live that sort of lifestyle, you know,” Phelps said, adding that he lives as a renter in the Tower District, the city’s most walkable neighborhood.
“But I understand that’s not the exact lifestyle for all of our neighborhoods here in the Central Valley, and maybe at least not in the short term.”
He blamed cities’ reliance on developers to shoulder the costs of aging infrastructure and complicated processes for investors to build even a small triplex or fourplex as major barriers to building more homes in older neighborhoods.
“There are plenty of times I’ve seen where you’re asked to replace, you know, 500 linear feet of a 100-year-old sewer main, right? And it’s reimbursable, but that’s a cost that you have to front,” he explained.
But Central Valley YIMBY might differ from the state group’s approach in one big area – their stance on suburban development.
“I think that’s one where you’re going to get a mix of perspectives from our membership, right?” Phelps responded, when asked directly about it.
The state’s YIMBY lobby has often been quite vocal in their opposition to suburban sprawl, even backing bills in the state legislature that would make it harder to build especially in exurban areas outside of cities, something akin to Tesoro Viejo or Friant Ranch.
They also decided on “no recommendation” for Proposition 45, which has been billed as a CEQA-reform measure that could make it easier to build suburban housing, showing how the group is split when it comes to reforms that primarily make it easier to build sprawl.
Would Central Valley YIMBY back SEDA, Fresno’s controversial Southeast Development Area specific plan, which has garnered a lot of opposition from community groups clamoring for more infill housing?
“I would say we’re too new,” he said. But he didn’t rule out the possibility of the group weighing in after six months or a year, after the group has developed more of their footing.
“I would see YIMBY’s role being holding the city to account for the density they’ve committed to and really helping bridge the gap between okay, how can we bring in some standards that help meet that density, and try to be the catalyst for those projects moving forward.”
He stressed that he didn’t want the nascent Central Valley group to just represent his own policy positions, though.
The state’s YIMBY group has also found success in getting litigious – and pushing the state to use its own legal powers – to punish cities and counties who aren’t building enough housing.
Phelps said he could see the Central Valley group wading in those waters, too.
He said he’s worried about the chilling effect that projects like the beleaguered apartments on Herndon and Prospect near the River Bluffs that were only approved last October after a Fresno County judge forced the City of Fresno to approve them.
But mostly, he’s hoping that Central Valley YIMBY will become a big enough tent to create a strong enough political force that future politicians will be vying for their endorsement.
