Building Common Ground between Tenant Organizers and Pro-Housing Advocates: The Role of Research

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

Abstract

As the rental housing affordability crisis has intensified in the aftermath of the Great Recession, the Yes in My Backyard (YIMBY) or pro-housing movement and a reinvigorated tenant movement have presented distinct visions of what a progressive housing policy should look like. YIMBYs have campaigned for zoning and land use reforms, including higher density multifamily zoning near transit stops, ending single-family zoning, modernizing building codes, and streamlining approval processes. Tenant movements have fought for tenant protections like rent control and just cause eviction, as well as public investment in social housing. These sets of priorities are not inherently in conflict; indeed, there are many examples of YIMBYs and tenant organizers collaborating to advance complementary, comprehensive solutions. At the same time, YIMBYs and tenant organizers have clashed on occasion, including over fault lines like the stringency of affordability requirements that should attach to upzoned developments and the scope of new construction exemptions under rent control policies. While traditional and online media tends to fixate on these disputes, they often overlook examples of effective cooperation—a gap in public understanding that our roundtable seeks to remedy.

This roundtable will ground attendees in the growing comity among YIMBYs and tenant movements, in the significant tensions that remain, and in what the research says about important empirical questions that have the potential to alternately increase or decrease cohesion. Some of these questions relate to (1) how states and localities can implement tenant protections, including rent regulations, without constraining housing supply; (2) the potential and limits of new market-rate housing to deliver affordability and quality, including to low- and moderate-income households; (3) the role of the public sector in increasing housing supply; and (4) which policies affect, whether positively or negatively, residential displacement. By establishing a shared understanding of the empirical evidence and of what unknowns remain, this roundtable will help the field prioritize future research, policy implementation, and coalition building efforts.

The participating speakers have engaged with contemporary housing policy questions as researchers, senior government officials, grantmakers, advocates, and organizers, advocates. Their orientations toward the YIMBY and tenant movements vary, but they all possess a commitment to building shared understanding of the causes of and potential solutions to the rental housing affordability crisis. The panel features Professor Ingrid Gould Ellen of the NYU Wagner Graduate School of Public Service; Professor Michael Lens of the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs; Tara Raghuveer, Director of the national Tenant Union Federation; and Thomas Silverstein, Executive Director of the Poverty & Race Research Action Council. Solomon Greene, Executive Director of Land & Communities at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, will moderate.  This diverse combination of academic rigor, real world implementation experience, and deep knowledge of the hardships that poor and working class tenants are facing every day ensures a discussion that will continue to influence attendees’ work long after the conference draws to a close.

Policy Area

• Housing, Community Development, and Urban Policy

Moderator

• Solomon J Greene, University of Denver

Organizer

• Thomas Samuel Silverstein, Poverty & Race Research Action Council

Speakers

• Ingrid Gould Ellen, New York University

• Michael C Lens, University of California - Los Angeles

• Thomas Samuel Silverstein, Poverty & Race Research Action Council

• Tara Raghuveer, Tenant Union Federation