Why The YIMBY Pro-Housing Movement Is So Excited About Kamala Harris

“It’s safe to be a YIMBY. It’s good to be a YIMBY. Kamala Harris is a YIMBY,” said a co-founder of YIMBYs for Harris.

While some Democrats were basking in the “joy” that Vice President Kamala Harris has brought to the campaign trail and running mate Tim Walz’s put-downs of Donald Trump’s “weird” antics, a select group of politically engaged pro-housing activists who are part of the self-described “Yes in My Backyard” (YIMBY) movement were celebrating something a little more prosaic: Harris’ promise, in a mid-August stump speech, to “take down barriers and cut red tape” that block housing construction and see 3 million new homes built in her first term as president.

The promise, and its high profile at the convention, amounted to a coming-out party for YIMBYism within the Democratic Party, as an idea long embraced by some of the party’s leading thinkers finally met its political moment.

“This is the root cause of expensive rent,” said Bharat Ramamurti, who served as the deputy director of the National Economic Council under President Joe Biden. “I think the core idea of increasing supply and looking at ways the federal government can do that has been the mainstream Democratic position.”

So what elevated it to the top of Harris’ agenda? Politics. Housing costs are a mainstream political issue in a way they simply weren’t during President Barack Obama’s tenure and are a key issue in the swing states of Nevada and Arizona, where rent and home prices have spiked since the coronavirus pandemic.

“The need for more housing is existential in Nevada,” Zach Conine, the Nevada state treasurer, told HuffPost in a phone interview. “It’s existential in Las Vegas, in Reno and in small towns across the state. From a Nevada perspective, anything you can do that increases supply is certainly worth considering making an investment in.”