For years, the Yimbytown conference was an ideologically safe space where liberal young professionals could talk to other liberal young professionals about the particular problems of cities with a lot of liberal young professionals: not enough bike lanes and transit, too many restrictive zoning laws.<\/p>\n

The event began in 2016 in Boulder, Colo., and has ever since revolved around a coalition of left and center Democrats who want to make America\u2019s neighborhoods less exclusive and its housing more dense. (YIMBY, a pro-housing movement that is increasingly an identity, stands for \u201cYes in my backyard.\u201d)<\/p>\n

But the vibes and crowd were surprisingly different at this year\u2019s meeting, which was held at the University of Texas at Austin in February. In addition to vegan lunches and name tags with preferred pronouns, the conference included \u2014 even celebrated \u2014 a group that had until recently been unwelcome: red-state Republicans.<\/p>\n

The first day featured a speech on changing zoning laws by Greg Gianforte, the Republican governor of Montana, who last year signed a housing package that YIMBYs now refer to as \u201cthe Montana Miracle.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Day 2 kicked off with a panel on solutions to Texas\u2019s rising housing costs. One of the speakers was a Republican legislator in Texas who, in addition to being an advocate for loosening land-use regulations, has pushed for a near-total ban on abortions.<\/p>\n

Anyone who missed these discussions might have instead gone to the panel on bipartisanship where Republican housing reformers from Arizona and Montana talked with a Democratic state senator from Vermont. Or noticed the list of sponsors that, in addition to foundations like Open Philanthropy and Arnold Ventures, included conservative and libertarian organizations like the Mercatus Center, the American Enterprise Institute and the Pacific Legal Foundation.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere aren\u2019t many ideologically diverse spaces in American civil life at the moment, and one of the pillars of the conference was the idea of a big tent,\u201d said Liz McGehee, one of Yimbytown\u2019s organizers. \u201cThe more we can find areas of agreement, the more we can adjust to each other with less fear, and maybe that will help drive down the polarization.\u201d<\/p>\n

Housing, Framed Two Ways<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n
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As the lack of available and affordable housing has become one of America\u2019s defining economic issues, it is increasingly a political problem. Politicians from both parties have found themselves inundated by constituents who have been priced out of ownership, forced into long commutes, and embittered by rising rents and multiplying homeless encampments.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Legislators in states including California, Minnesota, Montana, New York, Oregon, and Texas have reached for a similar basket of solutions. Invariably, they revolve around loosening zoning and development laws to speed construction, expanding renter protections for tenants and increasing funding for subsidized housing.<\/p>\n
In plenty of places across the country \u2014 particularly blue states, where land use tends to be more heavily regulated \u2014 there is serious and organized opposition to these policies. Especially at a local level, voters have blocked developments of all sizes. (In many places, the divide over what to do about housing comes down to homeowners versus renters, rather than breaking along more typical political lines.)<\/p>\n
And not all of these housing measures would be considered bipartisan. Republican legislators tend to be leery of price caps like rent control. Democratic legislators often push for streamlining measures to be paired with new funds for subsidized housing, for instance.<\/p>\n
But since the highest-impact policies revolve around increasing the pace of building to backfill the decades-old housing shortage that is the root of America\u2019s housing woes, there is still plenty of overlap. So much so that two frequently opposing think tanks \u2014 the American Enterprise Institute and the Progressive Policy Institute \u2014 recently hosted a joint event in Washington on increasing housing supply.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome issues become a horseshoe,\u201d said Cody Vasut, a Republican member of the Texas House of Representatives\u2019 Freedom Caucus, using a very Texas analogy. \u201cWe have different views of government but sometimes we arrive at the same conclusion.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Housing has several features that make it an ideal issue for bipartisanship, said Jake Grumbach, a public policy professor at the University of California, Berkeley. Housing laws are hyperlocal and so don\u2019t get much attention from national parties, which tend to push toward polarization. The subject is full of dense and wonky material that gets litigated through binder-thick planning reports instead of sound bites. It\u2019s also hard to weaponize, since someone\u2019s position on housing can be framed in ways that hew to either party\u2019s ideology.<\/p>\n
Take, for instance, the YIMBY mantra of allowing taller buildings and reducing the permitting hurdles to build them. Is this, as many Democrats say, a way to create more affordable housing, reduce neighborhood segregation and give low-income households access to high-amenity areas and schools?<\/p>\n
Or is it, as Republicans say, a pro-business means of reducing regulation and enhancing property rights by giving landowners the freedom to develop housing?<\/p>\n
Is it, somehow, both?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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At this year\u2019s Yimbytown, the message was that the political framing doesn\u2019t really matter as long as you pass the bill.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Consider Montana, which last year passed a package of new laws that essentially ended single-family zoning by allowing backyard homes and duplexes on most lots in the state. Or Arizona, where a bipartisan group of legislators passed similar changes this week.<\/p>\n
These laws followed, and in some cases were modeled on, state-level zoning changes that have already swept through legislatures in California and Oregon dominated by Democrats. To sell them in more conservative territory, advocates who had worked behind the scenes in Arizona and Montana gave tips to other Yimbytown attendees. They suggested hiring both liberal and conservative lobbyists and crafting pitches that lean into each party\u2019s politics.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can focus on approaching a lot of the Republicans who are concerned about how zoning impacts property rights, how zoning is going to affect our communities and how they\u2019re growing,\u201d said Kendall Cotton, the chief executive of the Frontier Institute, a free-market think tank in Helena, Mont. \u201cAnd then other groups that have connections on the left can talk to those folks about the climate change impacts of zoning, and building denser, more walkable cities, and the social justice end of it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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In an interview after the panel, Mr. Cotton talked about one of housing\u2019s most divisive subjects: single-family zoning, or laws that ban duplexes and apartments in certain neighborhoods and now define suburban character across large swaths of America. When legislators in blue states have moved to curb single-family zoning laws in the name of equity and the environment, conservatives have assailed them for trying to destroy what former President Donald J. Trump once called the \u201cSuburban Lifestyle Dream<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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So when Montana tried to change zoning at the state level, advocates like Mr. Cotton took a different tack. To sell legislators on the plan, Mr. Cotton said he would pull out photos of cities like Missoula in the frontier days, when the streets were a jumble of one-room shotgun houses, duplexes and triplexes.<\/p>\n
Today, like most of America, the city\u2019s landscape involves a sprawl of subdivisions built around cars. How to revive the free spirit of that frontier past?<\/p>\n
\u201cEND CALIFORNIA-STYLE ZONING,\u201d according to a flyer Mr. Cotton distributed to Republican legislators, which also called for them to \u201cRestore the right to build.\u201d<\/p>\n
A More Widespread Problem<\/h2>\n
Pitches like that one would have been unimaginable at the first Yimbytown eight years ago in Boulder, which was a glorified party of amateurs whose programming included an event at a beer garden where drunk people riffed about housing policy in haiku. This year\u2019s conference had 600 attendees and featured a talk with Julian Castro, the former secretary of housing and urban development, a sign of the movement\u2019s increasing professionalization and influence.<\/p>\n
In the years between, as the YIMBY movement grew from a blue-city curiosity to a fund-raising and legislative force, the central conflict at Yimbytown remained the movement\u2019s difficulty working with hard-left political organizations that have protested several events and view a \u201cpro-housing\u201d agenda as a progressive-sounding wrapper on trickle-down Reaganism. This continued in Austin: During the morning panel on the Texas Legislature, a group of protesters disrupted the conversation to assail the \u201cpro-capitalist\u201d speakers and chant \u201creal affordable housing now\u201d before being shooed out the door.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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But when it comes to the brass tacks of moving bills, legislators from the right have turned out to be important partners. As the impact of rising costs has moved further up the income ladder and beyond a relative handful of tech-centric cities, Republicans in red states have become just as eager to show they are working on one of their constituents\u2019 biggest problems. At the same time, many YIMBY groups have become focused on bypassing city councils and instead passing state-level legislation \u2014 which in most places is impossible without Republican votes.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you\u2019re dealing with an issue that is as busted as housing is and where it\u2019s affecting as many people as it is, you don\u2019t really have the privilege of caring about what signal you\u2019re sending,\u201d said Henry Honorof, the director of the Welcoming Neighbors Network, a national umbrella organization for state and local YIMBY groups. \u201cYou care about getting something accomplished, and that means you have to be much more open to working with people that are often uncomfortable to work with.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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The conference was still an overwhelmingly center-left crowd, with panels on antiracism, building public housing and expanding tenants\u2019 rights. But there was a sense among many attendees that they were building something distinct, a coalition with members from both parties.<\/p>\n
Right or left, many of the conference attendees were young people in their prime homebuying years. They also tended to be people whose interest in politics was sparked by economic policy. Whichever party they identified with, they shared a collective belief that what America needs most is \u201cabundance,\u201d a new buzzword to denote a broader pro-growth mind-set of which YIMBYism is part.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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\u201cWhat\u2019s so exciting is this supply side coalition that is emerging,\u201d Mr. Cotton said. \u201cThere\u2019s a group of people, Republicans and Democrats, who want to slow down growth \u2014 they\u2019re preservationists, they\u2019re protectionists. And there is the other side of things which says let\u2019s build things again.\u201d<\/p>\n
Getting Things Done Quietly<\/h2>\n
Even so, many of the housing, climate change and social justice advocates who have long made up the bulk of the conference\u2019s roster were deeply uncomfortable with the idea of sitting next to people whose name tags identified them as employees of conservative groups like Americans for Prosperity, backed by the Koch Network. Most refused to talk about their reservations on the record or publicly at the conference. They didn\u2019t want to undermine red-state YIMBYs.<\/p>\n
But in side conversations and at bar gatherings, they expressed their angst. YIMBYism is supposed to be about making cities more welcoming by reducing housing costs, one person pointed out, and wondered: If you work with a legislator to make housing more plentiful, then that legislator goes and votes for a law to prevent transgender people from using bathrooms, is that really welcoming?<\/p>\n
The under-the-radar evolution in housing laws sweeping across the states is one of the few areas of policy where both the right and left can claim an ideological victory. And yet in today\u2019s charged environment, winning with a partner you otherwise disagree with is often considered losing. Which is the reality both sides are worried they\u2019ll one day have to grapple with, even as they quietly get things done.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have a great fear that land use and property rights will get coded left,\u201d said Chance Weldon, the director of litigation at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank in Austin. \u201cThat would be a tragedy, because we have been on the right side of this issue for a long time. But in a polarized environment, a lot of times people will support or oppose something just because of who\u2019s attached to it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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