Guide to California's YIMBY Movement

How many organizations does it take to build a house in our backyards?

One of the most influential political movements in California has no leader. Instead, it has many standard bearers carrying the torch. United by a shared vision of abundant housing affordable to all, they march onward, more or less in lockstep.

This post explores the YIMBY movement across California. It is the second post in a three-part series exploring the YIMBY movement as it exists today. The first post focused on YIMBYism in the Bay Area, and the last post will focus on the national movement. Future posts will cover California’s housing movement, of which YIMBYism is just one faction.

Whether you’re looking for a place to plug in or simply trying to make sense of this evolving landscape, consider this your map to the frontier of the pro-housing movement.¹

Most of my personal housing organizing experience has been based in the Bay Area and there are a lot of organizations overall, so I will almost certainly forget some or describe others imperfectly. If I do, please drop a note in the comments so I can improve the guide!

Statewide

Across the state, a variety of YIMBY organizations collaborate at all levels of government.

YIMBY Action (YA) is a chapter-based organization with more than 54 chapters across the Country. Volunteer “leads” drive YA chapters with support by paid staff from the umbrella organization. In California alone, YA has 20 chapters scattered across the state, with the highest density (hehe 2x) in the Bay Area. The organization started as volunteer collective “SF BARF,” the San Francisco Bay Area Renters Federation, in 2014. In 2017, SF BARF split into several organizations, YIMBY Action the largest among them.

YA began adopting other budding YIMBY organizations and seeding new ones around California with its scalable volunteer “leads”-based model. It’s an ideologically diverse organization, with identity-based chapters like Latinx YIMBY sitting alongside issue-based chapters like Urban Environmentalists and geography-based chapters with a range of flavors reflecting local political environments. Chapters in different parts of the state have broad latitude to define their own political strategy. And new ones keep forming: Last year, YA helped volunteers organize Los Angeles YIMBY, CA’s newest local chapter. Today, YIMBY Action serves as a network for local chapter organizing across the state and country, supporting chapters by sharing resources, communications channels, money, and staff support.

YIMBY Law is the 501(c)(3) sister organization of YIMBY Action, both of which spun out of SF BARF.² Technically the 501(c)(3) is called “Yes In My Backyard,” which funds YIMBY Law and supports implementation and education work at YIMBY Action. YIMBY Law focuses primarily on advocacy litigation to support implementation of state housing laws. Though they will happily sue any city violating state housing laws, YIMBY Law’s motto has long been “Sue the suburbs,” emphasizing their mission to end exclusionary zoning and streamline permitting policies in high-cost areas.³ They’re based in California with increasingly national legal ambitions.

California Housing Defense Fund (Cal HDF, formerly known as “CaRLA,” the California Renter’s Legal Advocacy and Education Fund. The name was so far from its acronym they had to change it!) started as the legal advocacy arm of SF BARF in 2015. Today, Cal HDF aspires to be the legal arm of the YIMBY movement in California (compared to YIMBY Law’s national ambitions). YIMBY Law formed separately from Cal HDF in 2017 in part due to differences among leadership, but they also fill different niches for legal advocacy: YIMBY Law partners with outside counsel to take on cases, sometimes to define case law and sometimes to make a political point that can motivate legislative changes. Whereas the Cal HDF team consists of in-house lawyers who flag legal issues for cities with administrative enforcement letters and sue when necessary to create favorable case law for housing.⁴ Today, both organizations work closely on enforcing state housing law through the Campaign for Fair Housing Elements.

California YIMBY became an independent organization in 2017 to focus on state legislative advocacy, yet another SF BARF spinoff. California YIMBY focuses almost exclusively on state legislation, compared to YIMBY Action’s focus on local chapter organizing. As a 501(c)(4), CA YIMBY can pursue more direct lobbying than YIMBY Law. Some of their major successes include SB 35/423, streamlining environmental review for infill housing; AB 2097, eliminating parking requirements near transit; and layers of reforms to promote accessory dwelling units that have resulted in more than 20,000 ADUs being built across the state annually. Though it is independent, California YIMBY regularly taps into YIMBY Action’s network to mobilize support for state legislation and the organizations share communications channels. Confusingly, CA YIMBY also does some of its own chapter organizing, and YIMBY Action sometimes does statewide legislative advocacy. However, the two organizations can be broadly understood as: California YIMBY does grass-tops statewide legislative advocacy, while YIMBY Action does grassroots local chapter-based advocacy.

Housing Action Coalition (HAC) has become a housing development trade advocacy group for the YIMBY movement. They started in 1999 as a spinoff of SPUR in the Bay Area, but the organization increasingly focuses on state legislation and parts of Southern California as well. Compared to YIMBY Action, whose membership includes a broad base of California residents, and California YIMBY, which is more staff driven, HAC’s members primarily come from the development community: developers, architects, land use lawyers, construction unions, general contractors, and the like. HAC serves as a coalition space for the various entities that contribute to housing development across California, with a 501(c)(3) arm for local community organizing and a 501(c)(4) arm for statewide political advocacy. To make everything a bit more jumbled, HAC often partners with local YA chapters to support its member’s projects and local legislation, partners with other statewide groups to sponsor state housing legislation, and partners with legal advocacy groups on lawsuits to enforce state housing law.

Prosperity California is the newest edition to the YIMBY pantheon, Prosperity California was founded at the end of 2024 by former CA YIMBY staff to focus on a more holistic approach to YIMBYism. Not just housing, also transportation, energy, workforce development, the gamut of good things we need to create a prosperous California. They aim to provide a coalition space between the housing movement and other issue-based coalitions, particularly environmental and labor groups.

Regional

Throughout the state, a handful of regional organizations operate independently of any umbrella YIMBY organization. In my last post, I covered East Bay for Everyone, which organizes primarily in Alameda County and secondarily in Contra Costa, two Bay Area counties. I also described Generation Housing, which operates in the northern counties of the Bay Area, Napa and Sonoma. But there are more!

Abundant Housing LA (AHLA) operates throughout Los Angeles County and its 88 cities. AHLA began meeting in 2015 in part inspired by the rise of SF BARF. They mobilized in response to Measure S, a 2017 ballot measure that would have de facto created a multi-family development moratorium in LA, which AHLA helped defeat by a 70-30 margin. The organization incorporated as a 501(c)(3) shortly afterward to support housing in response to the widespread anti-housing culture demonstrated by the Measure S debate.

AHLA has their own network of 20 chapters throughout the Los Angeles metropolitan area, which operate independently of YIMBY Action’s chapter network. But the group works closely with other statewide and regional YIMBY organizations on enforcing state laws. And it has expanded its coalitions to include organizations not yet formally associated with the YIMBY movement, like the Southern California Association of Nonprofit Housing (SCANPH) or service providers like United Way Bay Area, which help it navigate the challenging LA political landscape.

People for Housing OC, a smaller organization founded in 2017 by two Orange County residents, started when its founders learned about YIMBYism at a 2016 conference for Southern California governments. People for Housing had an interesting path of development: They started as a volunteer group, hired a staff of one under the fiscal sponsorship of Charitable Ventures of Orange County in 2018, became a sponsored YIMBY Action Chapter in 2020, and amicably split off again to become a standalone organization in 2022 working under the local nonprofit OneOC. People for Housing split from YA in part because the fragmented governments (34 separate cities) of Orange County made recruiting and retaining volunteer leads much more difficult than in the more urban areas YA primarily operates. Currently, a two-person staff team currently leads People for Housing OC’s advocacy, which focuses on projects and policies to produce more affordable workforce and first-time homebuyers housing. Its funding comes from a combination of professional members, consisting primarily of developers, architects, and law firms, as well as healthcare foundations. As a result, People for Housing emphasizes the role of housing as a social determinant of health more than other YIMBY orgs in its messaging.

Circulate San Diego works at the intersection of transportation and housing policy. They began in 2014 after two transit-focused orgs, WalkSanDiego and Move San Diego, merged to more holistically change policy around public transit, street safety, and land use. Circulate SD has a more professionally trained staff than most other YIMBY orgs, consisting of planners and lawyers. The team has two divisions, a research and advocacy division and a fee-for-service consulting arm that helps local jurisdictions do public outreach. Because of their technical proficiency, the org also works on local, regional, and state legislation, most recently taking on the California Coastal Commission’s consistent obstruction of new housing.

The YIMBY Democrats of San Diego fill a unique niche in California and maybe the country, a YIMBY-aligned group embedded as a club of the San Diego County Democratic Party. Launched in 2018, the YIMBY Democrats largely align with Circulate SD, advancing public transit and housing of all kinds, but they can be much more explicitly political as an organ of the Democratic Party. They’re led by volunteers with a grassroots organizing base. Because it is an internal part of the Democratic party, Democratic candidates seek out the YIMBY Democrats’s endorsement and proactively work to articulate a pro-housing message to appeal to the group, increasing their direct influence in the heavily democratic local politics of the region.⁵

I’m surely missing some independent regional organizations in California’s YIMBY movement. If you know of any that should be added, drop them in the comments!

Academic Think Tanks

Academic think tanks across the state contribute to the intellectual backbone of the YIMBY movement. They all produce research regularly used by YIMBYs to justify their policy goals.

UC Berkeley’s Terner Center for Housing Innovation produces research on a range of urbanist topics related to housing, land use, sustainability, transportation, and finance. Founded in 2015, their research regularly covers the impacts of new state laws or spurs their passage. Recent high-impact findings include research into the economic impacts of “inclusionary” zoning and policy changes to make smaller “missing middle” multi-family housing financially feasible. 2017 research from the Terner Center on policies to increase building of accessory dwelling units helped influence California YIMBY to pass a spate of laws that led ADU production across the state to rise from a few dozen units annually to more than 20,000/year.

UCLA’s Lewis Center fills a similar niche in Southern California to the Terner Center in the North, though the Lewis Center focuses more on regional issues specific to the Los Angeles area. Still, because of the size of the LA region, the Lewis Center’s work has an impact on statewide policy making. They’ve done groundbreaking work demonstrating the impacts and imperfections of fair housing laws in California and the failures of Los Angeles to equitably rezone for denser housing throughout the city, among many other issues.

Both the Terner Center and Lewis Center have an advocacy bent behind their research. The organizations approach questions with open inquiry, but they often have goals: Increase infill housing production, address financial barriers to development, enable more homes near transit, and other objectives aligned with those of the housing movement.⁶

YIMBY-affiliated trade groups

A handful of political groups sponsor YIMBY organizations, partner with YIMBY groups on legislation, and generally support pro-housing stances. Though not 100% aligned with YIMBY organizations on every issue, these partners form an essential part of the YIMBY coalition as it exists today.

In recent years, the California Carpenters Union has supported major pro-housing legislation alongside YIMBY orgs. The Carpenters are a sort of omni-union, with members who do most parts of the development process, not just wood working. They have at times diverged from the Building and Construction Trades, a separate coalition of construction industry unions. The Carpenters were a long time member of the Trades, but policy differences led them to separate in recent years. The split became apparent in 2022 when the Carpenters Union supported prevailing wage requirements in AB 2011, a major state housing upzoning and streamlining bill, whereas the Trades wanted stricter skilled and trained requirements.⁷ As a result of the division, the Carpenters left the Trades and became an independent political force.

The dynamics between union organizations and YIMBY political development deserves an entire article unto itself, as the history has changed rapidly. Read the footnote to get the gist.⁸

Though less politically powerful than the union groups, the California Building Industry Association (CBIA) often supports YIMBY legislation and donates to some of the nonprofits. However, most YIMBY groups focus their energy on promoting infill development, new housing within preexisting cities that increases density. The Building Industry Association sometimes supports infill housing, but their membership consists mostly of sprawl developers building new single-family subdivisions on undeveloped land. As a 501(c)(6) tax exempt business league, CBIA can engage directly in elections, which makes it the most influential developer group in the state. Tension sometimes arises when YIMBY groups like Greenbelt Alliance or Urban Environmentalists oppose new exurban developments that the Building Industry Association supports.

The Council of Infill Builders is a developer trade group that aligns more closely with YIMBY goals of increasing density and affordability in existing neighborhoods. They have regional chapters and a statewide umbrella organization, which hosts educational events, promotes best practices, advocates for local policy change, and supports state legislation that promotes infill housing. As a 501(c)(3), the Infill Builders have limits on their ability to directly engage in political activity, which makes them less powerful than the Building Industry Association.

Californians for Homeownership (C4H) is a realtors-aligned nonprofit that works to address California’s housing crisis by enforcing state laws to promote access to housing. They’ve filed lawsuits throughout the state to uphold the law, parallel with the work of YIMBY Law and Cal HDF. C4H is more proactively pro-housing than the realtors groups that provide most of their funding—a great asset to the YIMBY movement, which has sometimes clashed with the realtors in other arenas. Though they are not really a trade group, I’ve put them here due to their affiliations.

I covered the influential YIMBY-aligned Bay Area Council in my Guide to the Bay Area YIMBY Movement. The California Chamber of Commerce and other business groups regularly endorse YIMBY legislation, but they are not as involved in on-the-ground organizing or advocacy.

In Conclusion

There are tradeoffs to the overlapping, multi-faceted organizations of California’s YIMBY movement.

On one hand, the YIMBY movement effectively builds a wide base of support. The movement fills a range of political niches, making it resilient to change. YIMBY Action leads political organizing, California YIMBY leads statewide legislative advocacy, YIMBY Law and Cal HDF tag team law enforcement, Housing Action Coalition interfaces with developers, Prosperity California expands the tent, regional groups like Abundant Housing LA build deeper relationships with local communities, and so on. It’s an ecosystem.

On the other hand, the organizations sometimes struggle coordinating to reach shared goals. For example, the statewide YIMBY emergency response to Los Angeles’s recent fires was duplicative and ineffective. At least six different groups work on YIMBY legislation at the state level, with overlapping jurisdictions! Tensions sometimes arise when organizations encroach on each others’ focus areas.

However, YIMBYs have broad public appeal, demonstrated by a powerful ecosystem of volunteers and donors. Most of the YIMBY groups share communications channels and coalition spaces together. They collaborate on major campaigns and advance the same legislative goals throughout the state. To succeed, it’s important the organizations continue working together around their shared vision. Powerful distributed networks can create powerful political movements.

The organization I work for, the Housing Leadership Council, is not a YIMBY organization, but we benefit from partnerships. Our local YIMBY chapter, Peninsula for Everyone, is extremely effective at mobilizing its members to support affordable housing. YIMBY legal advocacy groups help hold our cities accountable in ways we can’t, statewide groups advance impactful legislation that transforms our local rules. We trade strategies with groups in other parts of the state. HLC grows stronger because we connect with our neighboring YIMBY organizations, celebrate each other’s victories, exchange and improve ideas.

All our backyards are connected, and the housing movement becomes stronger when YIMBYs build community.

Thank you to Sonja Trauss from YIMBY Law, Laura Foote from YIMBY Action, Dylan Casey from Cal HDF, Aaron Eckhouse from CA YIMBY, Robyn Leslie from Prosperity California, Leonora Camner from Abundant Housing LA, Elizabeth Hansburg from People for Housing OC, Colin Parent from Circulate San Diego, and countless other volunteers for helping inform this piece and my overall knowledge of YIMBYism.

1. My descriptions of the political dispositions of these organizations are all snapshots in time from early 2025. Most of the organizations I’ve described did not exist ten years ago. A few didn’t exist ten months ago! Changes in leadership can cause organizations to change their political disposition. Many will restructure or evolve, split, or merge. Despite its growing influence, YIMBYism remains new.

2. 501(c)(3) organizations serve public education purposes, with rules restricting engagement in political organizing. 501(c)(4) organizations can engage in direct political advocacy.

3. SF BARF, YIMBY Law’s precursor essentially reinvented a 1980s state law everyone had forgotten about, the Housing Accountability Act, by suing my hometown, Lafayette, CA, in 2015 for shrinking a housing proposal. More recently, YIMBY Law has further defined case law around the Housing Accountability Act, successfully defending objective rules in Newport Beach, blocking a downzoning in Culver City, and guaranteeing approval of several 100% affordable developments in Los Angeles’s single-family zones.

4. Cal HDF has upheld the constitutionality of the Housing Accountability Act in a case against the City of San Mateo and extended its reach to charter cities in a suit against Huntington Beach, complementing YIMBY Law’s work. Cal HDF has had other precedent-setting victories, forcing San Francisco to allow ADUs and La Cañada Flintridge to post a $14 million bond if they wanted to appeal a housing project denial—which caused the city to back down. YIMBY Law, Cal HDF, and Realtors-aligned Californians for Homeownership worked together to sue cities around the Bay Area for housing element noncompliance.

5. I’m frankly surprised the YIMBY Democrats of San Diego’s model hasn’t spread more widely. Though YIMBYism has bipartisan support, most YIMBYs live in Democratic-led cities.

6. I covered SPUR Urbanist, a Bay Area-centered think tank which influences state legislation, in my Guide to the Bay Area YIMBY Movement. Don’t worry SPUR, you are known and you are loved!

7. “Skilled and trained” labor requirements mandate exclusive use of union labor, whereas prevailing wage requirements set a high wage that does not necessarily limit developers to use unions. In many parts of the state, the union workforce is simply too small to meet demands of construction, so skilled and trained requirements led to extensive delays and cost increases.

8. To summarize the YIMBY-Union relationship: In 2018, California’s omni-construction union, the Building and Construction Trades supported SB 827, the flagship YIMBY bill in California at the time. Way back then, the Carpenters were a part of the Trades. SB 827 would have upzoned for denser housing near transit stops, among other pro-housing rule changes, with no labor requirements attached. Since then, new leadership in the Trades has demanded housing legislation include stronger labor requirements than those in SB 827, requirements that some housing advocates argue often make development infeasible—ultimately resulting in fewer union jobs overall. In 2022, YIMBYs and some labor groups, most prominently the Carpenters, struck a grand bargain to use more flexible labor standards than those demanded by the Trades, which helped contribute to the Carpenters-Trades split.