Bypassing NIMBYs to Get More Built
How governments are emboldening developers to forge ahead despite opposition.
Housing advocates blame decades worth of NIMBYism, in large part, for causing the acute housing shortages that have driven up the costs of both single-family homes and rents.
The housing situation is so critical that state governments have begun passing legislation to circumvent local zoning rules designed to prevent or segregate multifamily development, and they are launching programs that incentivize and help developers fund affordable and supportive multifamily projects—even if they are unpopular with the neighbors.
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California leads in housing reforms
Some local governments are streamlining the permitting process and reducing or eliminating fees for specific types of projects. San Diego, for example, is addressing various fees and requirements for affordable and transit-oriented housing in order to accelerate development. Effective July 2026, California’s SB79 also aims to accelerate housing development near transit stops by allowing for increased building heights and densities and overriding some local zoning.
According to the California Department of Housing and Community Development, the state needs to produce approximately 2.5 million new housing units, or more than 180,000 new units annually, by 2030 to meet demand and address the severe housing shortage. Of this total, an estimated 1 million units need to be affordable for lower-income households.
But over the past decade, production has averaged fewer than 80,000 units annually for all types of housing and current housing production has dropped well below that number. Approximately 40,000 shovel-ready units of affordable-housing projects, which rely primarily on low-income housing tax credits, are delayed or on hold due to lack of additional funding.This delay occurred after state lawmakers passed legislation to allow affordable housing projects to bypass onerous local approval processes, dramatically increasing competition for LIHTCs. While it’s now easier to get projects through local approvals and acquire this financing, a report from Cal Matters noted that developers typically can’t apply for federal funds until all other financial holes are plugged, wherein lies the problem.
Rents have stabilized and even dropped in cities like Denver, Austin and Minneapolis because so much housing of all types was built, said Matthew Lewis, director of communications for California YIMBY.
“We need more homes than we can produce in the next five years,” he said, citing a 30-year NIMBY movement that throttled housing production throughout California and other states as well. “We’re so much further behind than I think most people understand.”
Over those decades, projects were quietly killed by planning departments and public officials or by developers who looked at the politics and realized it would never get approved, Lewis said. In cities like Huntington Beach, Palo Alto or Mill Valley, nothing is allowed, so nothing gets proposed.
“In California, opposition by NIMBYs is not about stopping affordable housing—they don’t want any new housing in their neighborhoods,” Lewis continued. Common complaints range from increased traffic and limited parking to impact on schools and “it will block my view.”
“The state is passing laws left and right to force cities to allow more homes to be built and remove the ability of local NIMBYs to block housing,” Lewis added. “That’s our mission.”
Originally launched in 1969, the California Housing Element Law, which requires all cities and counties to create a certified plan for meeting the housing needs of all income levels, was updated by legislation in 2017 and 2018 to strengthen enforcement. This plan includes identifying adequate sites for new development.
As of March 25, 2026, 15 cities and counties are still noncompliant, including Huntington Beach, San Bernardino, Malibu, Norwalk and Merced County. Cities failing to comply or obtain a certified plan are subject to a Builder’s Remedy, which allows developers to bypass local zoning laws if they include a percentage of affordable housing in projects. Noncompliant cities also face lawsuits by developers or the state and fines can be severe.
The state also launched funding incentives, like Homekey, which provided $12 billion for developers to acquire commercial buildings to reposition as supportive housing for homeless and mentally disabled individuals and veterans. Irvine, Calif.-based Jamboree Housing, for example, has secured more than $120 million in Homekey funds to develop seven projects with 475 supportive housing units.
In addition, the CDHCD estimates that about $1.8 billion is available this year to help fill affordable-housing funding gaps. California lawmakers also are considering a $10 billion bond initiative for the 2026 ballot to help developers move forward on such projects, reported the California Council for Affordable Housing.
YIMBYism gaining traction in Northeast
But NIMBYis isn’t just a California problem. It’s affecting housing affordability nationwide and is especially acute in affluent Northeastern suburban communities like New York’s Westchester County and around Boston.
In Westchester, the median home sale for a single-family home is about $980,000 and condominiums nearly $500,000. An apartment vacancy rate of just 1.9 percent has sent rents soaring to between $2,500 to $4,000 per month, according to Tim Foley, executive vice president of the Building & Realty Institute of Hudson Valley, a trade association that advocates on behalf of the real estate industry in the region, which is long been a hotbed for NIMBYism. Community resistance has downsized and delayed projects for decades, costing the region thousands of housing units over time.
“What typically happens is you don’t ever get your proposal rejected, or at least it’s relatively rare for the proposal to be rejected outright,” he said, noting how, in one Westchester community, it took two decades to build 35 units. “What is a much more common scenario is to just drag it out to the point where it either just never happens at all, the developer gives up or it’s in limbo.”
Recently, however, county government is confronting NIMBYism by making a huge push to create more housing at all income levels. The county has published a comprehensive housing needs assessment, which identified a 21,000-unit shortage to meet current demand. A report by the Regional Plan Association and the Westchester County Association projected this shortage to grow to between 44,000 and 77,000 by 2040.
The county also launched initiatives to fund or support housing development. It deployed $90 million of federal ARPA funds to provide gap financing to affordable housing projects—enough to build 1,300 affordable units.
It also deployed a Housing Implementation Fund to invest in infrastructure in communities that want to build housing but lack the sewer, water or transportation systems to support it.
The county also launched the New Homes Land Acquisition Program, which has appropriated $200 million in capital funds over the last seven years to help municipalities and nonprofit developers acquire land for housing.
Westchester’s Industrial Development Agency also is providing tax-exempt financing, PILOT agreements and other financial benefits to support construction of affordable and workforce housing. These incentives give local developers a path forward when margins are too thin to pencil. Since 2018, the IDA has approved 26 projects with 339 affordable housing units for this funding resource.
Additionally, a Landlord Tenant Assistance Program has provided $7 million in grants to public housing authorities and small property owners to make capital improvements that improve the safety and livability of existing buildings.
With 81 percent of the county’s housing built prior to 1979, new housing development is beginning to catch fire in some Westchester communities, particularly the larger urban areas like New Rochelle, White Plains, Yonkers and Mount Vernon, noted Foley.
Driven by rezoning and a streamlined approval process, 4,500 units, for example, were created in New Rochelle since 2020. As a result of new supply, the city’s rents stabilized and dropped 2 percent, according to Foley.
In addition, a $2.5 billion mixed-use development that includes 3,200 apartment homes with affordable units, 229,000 square feet of retail and six acres of open space is replacing the defunct District Galleria mall in White Plains. Foley noted that including community services or amenities like open space can go a long way in helping developers to secure community acceptance.
Interestingly, some relatively wealthy villages, like Pelham and Croton-on-Hudson, also have been moving the needle in terms of new multifamily housing production, Foley continued, noting Pelham recently completed 127 units, of which six are designated as affordable. “But we have other affluent communities, where if you mention the word ‘housing’ at all, it’s time to get out the torches and pitchforks.”
Massachusetts ending long-standing NIMBY defenses
The Boston region also suffers from a shortage of housing, especially affordable housing, as well as exceptionally high home values, low vacancy, high rents and community resistance to any type of multifamily development. The median home price in the Boston-Cambridge market is about $1.5 million, while the apartment vacancy is below 1 percent and rents range between $3,342 for one-bedroom units to $4,300 for two bedrooms.
A combination of zoning rules, onerous permitting processes and regulatory hurdles has inflated the cost of building and bottlenecked new development. As a result, supply has lagged demand and now an estimated 121,000 units are needed to stabilize and roll back rents.
As a result, community opposition to housing production is reversing and local governments are making changes to accommodate developers.
In a poll by Abundant Housing Massachusetts, a statewide network of pro-housing organizers dedicated to affecting policy change, 45 percent of respondents said the cost of housing was their main concern. Furthermore, 84 percent said legislators should take action to address the cost and shortage of housing. Fifty-eight percent of respondents supported legislative candidates who prioritize expanding housing supply compared to 38 percent who favored preserving the local status quo.
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Last year, the Cambridge City Council took a historic step to end a decades-old exclusionary zoning ordinance that had segregated apartment construction from single-family neighborhoods, replacing it with an inclusionary one that allows four-story multifamily projects to be built citywide by right, and up to six stories for larger projects with inclusionary housing. City staff estimated that this could result in 10 times as many new homes created by 2040. The new zoning, which requires that 20 percent of new projects be affordable units, grants 100 percent affordable projects a height and density bonus, allowing them to build up to nine stories.
AHMA was crucial in mobilizing public and political support to achieve the council’s 8 to 1 vote on this issue, according to Executive Director Jesse Kanson-Benanav.
The state also passed Chapter 40B, which requires a minimum of 10 percent of new projects to be affordable. This came on the heels of a statewide housing plan, “A Home for Everyone,” which identifies the challenges contributing to the housing crisis in Massachusetts, lays out strategies to make housing abundant and affordable for everyone and identifies the need for an additional 222,000 housing units statewide by 2035 to end the housing crisis.
The state’s Smart Growth Zoning Act (Chapter 40R) incentivizes cities and towns to adopt zoning that allows higher density housing “as of-right” (no special permit required) and to require at least 20 percent of projects to be affordable, support mixed-use development, streamline permitting and provide a predictable review process.
In addition, the state passed the MBTA Communities Act (Section 3A of the Zoning Act) in 2021, which requires 177 cities and towns in Massachusetts served by the MBTA rail system to create at least one district of reasonable size where multifamily housing is permitted as of right. The law aims to increase housing near transit, with deadlines for compliance and penalties for non-compliance starting to take effect this year. As a result, there now are about 100,000, transit-oriented units under development or in the pipeline statewide, he said.
Midwest housing production stymied by ‘classism’
In recent years, Chicago has begun up-zoning areas of the city to allow more multifamily and residential mixed-use development “by right,” But the current environment discourages non-by-right development and provides many opportunities for veto and lawsuits by any local group opposed to change, said Alex Montero, chairperson at Strong Towns Chicago, a community action group fighting to expand the types of housing that can be built by right across the city, two-thirds of which is restricted to single-family homes.
Like other major cities, Chicago is suffering from a housing shortage and rising costs. The median sales price for a home in Chicago in March 2026 was approximately $410,000, up 5.1 percent year-over-year, according to Redfin. The national average asking rent for apartments was $1,758 in April 2026, according to Yardi Matrix.
Illinois overall has an existing housing shortage of 142,000 units and needs to build 227,000 new homes over the next five years to keep pace with demand, according to research by the Illinois Economic Policy Institute and Project for Middle Class Renewal at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
“That means roughly 45,000 new homes a year, which is more than double the five-year average of about 19,000 built annually statewide between 2019 and 2024,” Montero pointed out.
Montero said that NIMBYism is the number one reason for the region’s housing shortage, noting continuous opposition to housing projects can get them stuck in negotiations for years before being abandoned or scaled back. “NIMBYism is often driven by racism and classism,” he contended, “but ‘neighborhood character’ and ‘density’ are frequently used as coded language for keeping lower-income families and people of color out of wealthier neighborhoods.”
“Organized opponents throw out contradictory objections and see what sticks. For example, it’s common for opponents to claim that it will both lower (blight) and raise (gentrify) local property values and that new residents will be poor criminals and privileged transplants,” Montero added. “It’s incredibly difficult to persuade people opposed to new housing to accept it. Large projects eventually approved are because voices in favor of the project are as loud as the opposition.”
Montero’s organization is one of the loudest voices pushing back against NIMBYism, organizing neighbors who recognize the value of attainable housing to show up in support of proposed housing projects in their neighborhoods and pushing for reforms to expand the types of housing that can be built by right.
Cities and neighborhoods serious about housing are changing their zoning rules to expand what can be built by-right, Montero continued. His organization was instrumental in gaining support for Chicago’s Broadway Upzoning ordinance, which allows high-density, mixed-use development along a 2.6-mile stretch of Broadway. The plan is aimed at creating affordable housing, improving transit access and supporting businesses, but faced considerable backlash including a lawsuit.
Other cities are exploring ways to streamline permitting and approvals and change their restrictive building codes to enable more small-lot development by-right to be built within a reasonable timeframe.
“Access to housing is the foundation of resilient places and social mobility,” he stressed, “but our cities have treated new housing like a nuisance rather than a necessary public good.”
For example, many cities have largely ignored the state’s Affordable Housing Planning and Appeal Act of 2003, a mandate requiring municipalities that fall below 10 percent affordable housing stock to submit an affordable-housing plan every five years. Just 560 affordable units have been created statewide since enacted, Montero noted.
Population growth squeezes Sun Belt capacity
Regions with growing populations in the South and Southwest also are struggling with unprecedented housing shortages due to soaring in-migration of new residents.
The Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area is a prime example. With no state income tax and a business-friendly environment, the DFW region has experienced an influx of corporate relocations and a population explosion since 2020, adding 1.2 million residents to bring population to about 8.5 million.
As a result, housing costs are rising quickly. In March, the average single-family home sold for $350,000 to $495,000 depending on the neighborhood, up 13.8 percent year-over-year, reported Redfin. The average apartment rent, according to Zillow, is $1,910 per month,
A report from the state comptroller estimated that Texas is short an estimated 306,000 homes statewide, with DFW alone needing tens of thousands of additional units annually just to keep pace with population and job growth, said Bryan Tony, executive director of the Dallas Housing Coalition, noting that 46,000 affordable units for households earning less than 50 percent of area median income ($52,000) are needed, according to Dallas’ Child Poverty Action Lab.
DFW has been one of the most active housing production markets in the country, delivering well over 150,000 units over the past five years, largely driven by multifamily development, Tony added. However, most of that production has not closed the supply gap for low- and moderate-income households.
To stabilize rents, we need to increase housing supply at all price points, but most importantly for households making less than 80 percent AMI and less than 50 percent AMI, where the greatest shortages exist, Tony continued.
“Workforce housing (80 to 120 percent AMI) is significantly restrained, particularly for teachers, first responders and service workers, so development will need to be focused in this area as well,” Tony said. “Right now, we are not developing enough housing at any of these levels, especially not at the lowest income tiers, where subsidies or policy intervention are required.”
What current development patterns are desperately missing is a wider variety of housing types, including duplexes, triplexes, smaller multifamily apartments, condos and townhomes and accessory dwelling units, he continued. “This would increase the home supply for people of all incomes and stages of life, making it easier for diverse populations to find affordable living options that suit their needs.”
