Guide to the National YIMBY Movement: Base-Building Organizations
Abundant housing from sea to shining sea
A movement aiming to transform America has spread nationwide over the last decade. Their networks sprawl into nearly every state and major city, shifting the political environment across parties and regions. I speak not of far-right apocalyptic evangelicals, nor of lefty doomer environmentalists, but of a more optimistic phenomenon: The ideologically diverse pro-housing “Yes In My BackYard” YIMBYs.
This post is the third in a series exploring the YIMBY movement. The first post focused on YIMBYism in the Bay Area, the next on California’s YIMBYism, and we have now reached the national level, which will take a few articles to fully explore. To read an intro to YIMBYism for the uninitiated, check out my Guide to the Bay Area Housing Movement, which has a summary early on.
Today I’ll cover three organizations using different tactics to support YIMBYism across the country: Welcoming Neighbors Network, YIMBY Action, and Strong Towns.1 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.2
Power Over Housing + Intro to the National YIMBY Organizations
Housing policy remains first and foremost a state and local issue. The federal government influences housing through demand subsidies like section 8 housing vouchers and mortgage lending standards as well as production subsidies like the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit program. But the federal constitution does not mention housing specifically or land use more broadly, so states have direct authority. Until recently, most states delegated most land use authority to local governments, cities and towns.
As a result, Welcoming Neighbors Network, YIMBY Action, and Strong Towns are all member- or chapter-based organizations who do on-the-ground organizing and advocacy in cities and states, which control most housing rules. Each of these organizations advances pro-housing policies with different strategies, affiliating with the YIMBY label to different degrees. They share cross-party appeal, with chapters mobilizing members and passing legislation in blue, red, and purple states.
These groups form the foundation of power for YIMBY policymaking, a foundation that builds broad consensus for pro-housing policies and generates the pool of volunteers and professional staff who propel the movement forward.
Welcoming Neighbors Network
Welcoming Neighbors Network (WNN) is a loose, well, network of independent organizations who work on state and local legislative advocacy for pro-housing policies. Members range in size and scope—some are not even primarily housing organizations!—but all have a few shared characteristics:
Independent organizations with their own nonprofit corporations, board of directors, and leadership teams focused on policy advocacy
Pro-housing, willing to support a range of housing options in alignment with WNN’s mission
Committed to follow best practices for campaign and strategy and contribute back to the WNN coalition
Some of the largest state and local housing organizations in the Country participate in the Welcoming Neighbors Network, including Open New York, AURA (an Austin, TX-based housing org), and Greater Greater Washington. In my prior housing movement guides, I’ve covered East Bay for Everyone, Abundant Housing LA, and California YIMBY, three California-based WNN members.
WNN has more than 45 different member orgs across 29 states, which benefit from peer learning, shared educational resources, and policymaking opportunities provided by the network. Staff provide support as a sort of incubator-accelerator hybrid for nascent housing groups or longstanding orgs seeking to get into housing policy advocacy; they also serve as pro bono consultants for legislative efforts, connecting members to partners and resources.
The organization developed over several years, formally launching in 2022 after a get together of statewide housing orgs the day before the annual YIMBYTown conference in Portland. It’s a member-led organization with two tiers of membership: full members, who support each other through peer learning, and associate members, who receive access to shared resources and networks but don’t have capacity to invest in supporting each other as much. WNN’s membership is mostly concentrated in the Northeast and West, with far less presence in the South and Midwest. More on this later!
WNN-influenced campaigns have promulgated legislation to streamline accessory dwelling units, legalize apartments near transit and in commercial zones, restore middle housing options in all residential zones, reduce or eliminate parking minimums, and reform building codes, leading to legislative change in dozens of states and cities.
Find a WNN member near you to plug into policy advocacy!
YIMBY Action
YIMBY Action’s chapters are like Welcoming Neighbors Network’s members, with local leadership and, often, unique brands. Some YIMBY Action chapters have YIMBY in the name, while others use “Abundant [place name]”, “[place name] For Everyone,” “Pro-housing [place name],” or another format.
However, YIMBY Action chapters all work under the umbrella organization of YIMBY Action, without their own incorporations. This frees the local chapters from the burdens of filing their own taxes and other compliance paperwork. YIMBY Action chapters are also exclusively pro-housing, whereas WNN chapters might do housing advocacy along with other urbanist or environmental issues.
YIMBY Action provides its chapters with financial support, training resources, and some in-house staff assistance, as well as shared communication networks that facilitate peer learning. I covered YIMBY Action extensively in my Guide to California’s Housing Movement, commentary that broadly applies to YIMBY Action’s national presence as well.
Many of YIMBY Action’s chapters focus on local project-based advocacy for specific housing developments just as much as local and state legislative advocacy. It’s first and foremost a base-building organization, expanding the YIMBY movement into new places and gathering recruits to the cause that it then funnels up the ladder of engagement.
The organization is growing rapidly, responding to inbound requests from nascent groups all over the country: Though it was founded in California and has its largest presence there, YIMBY Action has expanded rapidly up the West Coast and down into parts of the South and MidWest. There are currently over 70 YA chapters in 25 states.
Find a YIMBY Action chapter near you to support local, regional, and statewide organizing!
Interaction of Welcoming Neighbors Network and YIMBY Action
The maps of Welcoming Neighbors Network members and YIMBY Action chapters have interesting areas of overlap and divergence. I regularly thought about a tweet by Matthew Yglesias while writing this piece:
Welcoming Neighbors Network has deep roots in the Northeast and across the West, whereas YIMBY Action covers most of the South and parts of the Midwest (both have a strong presence on the West Coast).
My hypotheses for the different distributions:
The independent nonprofit organizations comprising WNN membership tend to develop in the highest-cost areas that most urgently need land use reforms. Most Northeastern and Western US states have faced decades-long housing shortages that gave rise to independent organizations earlier than in other places. Many of WNN’s members formed prior to 2017, before YIMBY Action formally incorporated.
YIMBY Action’s model is designed to respond to nascent groups seeking to start chapters, which grow political power for abundant housing. As housing prices spiked across the country during and after the pandemic, YIMBY Action has been responding to interest from burgeoning groups.
Organization building occurs organically, often much less intentionally than we think in hindsight. Growth that appears to be part of a grand coordinated strategy often reflects coincidental circumstances. The cleverness of both YIMBY Action and WNN’s models is that they are prepared to capitalize on “favorable” circumstances for community organizing whenever they arise, increasingly throughout the country.3
When they overlap, YIMBY Action chapters and WNN member organizations have symbiotic relationships. In California, YIMBY Action’s local chapters build a strong base of support, using easily accessible project-based advocacy to bring in new advocates and mobilize older ones. Statewide and regional WNN members, like California YIMBY and Abundant Housing LA, regularly call upon YIMBY Action volunteers to support their legislative advocacy, providing a reliable political base with which to pressure decision makers—or elect new ones.
It’s not all roses when the major YIMBY orgs of CA disagree on messaging and political strategy, but their shared vision usually papers over differences for most activists.
Strong Towns: The YIMBY Pro-Housing Third Rail
Even including Strong Towns on a list of national YIMBY organizations is controversial: Their founder, Charles Marohn, has critiqued YIMBY approaches. But he also has friendly conversations with prominent YIMBYs—he’s a nice guy!
Still, Strong Towns consistently advocates for more homes in all neighborhoods. Marohn has said he agrees with YIMBYs 90-95% of the time. Though they don’t operate under the YIMBY banner, Strong Towns is important enough to the pro-housing conversation I think it’s worth including them here.4
Strong Towns arose in 2008 from the writings of Marohn about why cities were going broke and what they must do about it. Among Strong Towns’s great insights, the organization demonstrates how pre-WWII development patterns—those we would define today as mixed-use, walkable neighborhoods—provide more value to cities in multiple ways.
Strong Towns argues that the “Suburban Experiment” is bankrupting cities. Development patterns consisting of large lots spread far apart and only connected via cars can’t fund the infrastructure it depends on. To be financially viable, cities must rethink the way they’ve been developing, providing a potential avenue to revitalize local economies in struggling communities. It’s more than just a housing organization: Strong Towns’s housing platform connects transportation and financial perspectives, demonstrating that density and well-planned growth can solve many problems.
Compared to other YIMBY orgs, Strong Towns takes an incrementalist approach. They advocate that “the next increment should be allowed, by right, in every neighborhood in America.” In modern suburbia, which constitutes most of the housing stock in cities today, Strong Towns argues the next increment of development looks like “gentle density,” strategies such as allowing backyard cottages and single-family home conversion to duplex or triplex by right. In denser areas, they advocate for other policy changes like eliminating minimum lot size requirements, minimum setbacks, and parking mandates, legally allowing the apartments, condos, and townhomes reminiscent of the city blocks YIMBYs know and love. In the future, as land values increase, these areas would be ready again for the next increment of development.
YIMBY Action, with its origins in San Francisco, sometimes uses stronger rhetoric. They don’t say New York needs to happen everywhere, but they might argue New York-intensity development should be allowed anywhere, at any time. Strong Towns explicitly says “None of the primary goals of urbanists require building New York City everywhere.”
These disagreements don’t seem very big outside of rhetoric.5 Strong Towns argues that cities “mature” gradually, and some already dense cities could look more like NYC sooner than later if they continue allowing the next increment of growth for long enough. For example, per the Strong Towns logic, zoning and policy changes could support San Francisco looking a lot more like NYC, even if not everywhere else needs to do the same right away.
It’s noteworthy what Strong Towns actually says the problems are: “Almost all American cities put up a huge number of regulatory barriers to redevelopment of existing urban lots.” Strong Towns’s housing page says “Restrictive housing policies have also prevented people from collectively building the prospering cities they desire.” This sounds a lot like YIMBYism with softer rhetoric, a gentler framing for a gentler approach.
Part of the Strong Towns ”incremental density” ethos likely comes from its Midwestern origins and center of gravity. Compared to the highest-cost coastal areas, housing economics differ in the Midwest, where decades of economic stagnation in much of the huge region have led to high vacancy rates and deteriorating housing stock. Even if the suburbs of Chicago upzoned to allow NYC-level densities tomorrow, they probably wouldn’t get built in most places anytime soon because Chicago’s population has shrunk for decades. The political drama of radical zoning changes wouldn’t be worth it when the same benefit can be achieved with more incremental shifts.
Caption: Map of “Local Conversations,” the Strong Towns version of local chapters.
I’ve focused so much on the framing and rhetoric of Strong Towns because the organization focuses more on communication and media than other pro-housing groups. Staff spend as much time developing tools like its Housing-Ready City toolkit, a guide to local zoning and permitting reform, as actual on-the-ground organizing.
However, in the past two years, Strong Towns has fleshed out its chapter-based “Local Conversation” program to nurture local groups as effective organizers and advocates for Strong Towns values, supporting campaigns from street safety to housing reform. Local Conversations are semi-autonomous collectives, which receive less formal organizing support than Welcoming Neighbors Network or YIMBY Action provide. However, because of how widespread and successful its “conversations”-based model has been, Strong Towns deserves a spot in the guide of major pro-housing organizations shifting the narrative around allowing new homes in everyone’s backyards.
Find a Strong Towns Local Conversation near you to join the movement!
In Conclusion
Whatever they call themselves, America’s national pro-housing organizations are building something beautiful, a movement focused on providing abundant housing for all. Vibrant, thriving cities and towns. Values-based communities of people committed to changing the world for the better. YIMBYs will best succeed when their flagship organizations build a movement together.6
Special thanks to Henry Honorof, Sonja Trauss, and Karen Douglas for providing extensive feedback on this piece. Any errors here are my own; any compelling insights or new tidbits likely come from my conversations with them. I wouldn’t be able to accurately describe the pro-housing movement without learning from its leaders.
Future posts will dig deeper into some of the national think tanks that formulate YIMBY policy, like Up For Growth, and the regional organizations who do on-the-ground work around the country.
My descriptions of the makeup of these organizations are all snapshots in time from early 2025. Most of the organizations I describe did not exist ten years 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 nascent.
“Favorable” in quotes because the circumstances that often motivate the founding of a housing group are housing scarcity.
I’ll do a podcast with you about this article Charles!
YIMBY groups and StrongTowns have one major area of disagreement, the degree to which “financialization” causes high housing costs. StrongTowns identifies financialization of housing as a major driver of high costs, whereas YIMBYs tend to view financialization as a minor variable relative to supply constraints. Rather than entering the debate here, I’ll reiterate that both orgs broadly agree on the value of increased housing supply as a pre-requisite to making housing more affordable.
In writing this, I made the painful decision to cut a section about New Urbanism, another branch of the pro-housing movement, but I wanted to shoutout this Seth Zeren summary of YIMBYs vs New Urbanists vs Strong Towns. Seth posits an axis of beliefs between New Urbanists, YIMBYs, and Strong Towns that helps illustrate their similarities and differences. He writes about the movements “I think seeing each other as siblings–sometimes in competition, sometimes in alliance, but fundamentally in the same family, will help us learn from and teach each other so that our overall shared objectives of great cities, towns, and neighborhoods can be realized.” I agree!
Appreciate the shoutout Jeremy!
Great write up, Jeremy!