The YIMBY breakthrough that everybody is buzzed about has delivered results to the City of Aukland, New Zealand. Unlike other major New Zealand cities, Aukland bit the YIMBY bullet in 2016 and trashed much of the city’s restrictive zoning. Today, resulting from the relaxed zoning bylaws, a home construction boom appears to have caused that city’s housing prices to flatten. Meantime, in other large NZ municipalities, housing prices continue to climb.
Cities are climbing on the YIMBY bandwagon. It would seem only necessary to free builders to allow them to build. The thinking, and possibly Aukland’s action, has shown that in the fullness of time, the free marketplace may very well successfully modify the city’s housing market to allow many more homes Try: New Zealand Housing Adventures: From Kiwibuild Disaster To De-Zoning Heaven?
Will YIMBY enterprise modify city housing in beneficial ways? Quite possibly, but then again . . .
As defeated NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) warriors abandon upzoned neighbourhoods to find more exclusive single-family pastures, housing developers and builders will be able to support the profit dreams of multiplex landlords.
Entrepreneurs will be looking to outbid prospective new single homeowners in order to build or modify double, quadruple, even sixtuple housing units on a property that had previously allowed one. Yummy new income for landlords developing multiplexes! The nature of this future ownership shift on the health of the city is as yet unclear.
Large municipalities such as Toronto, Ontario are signing on to ‘upzoning’ and ‘densification.’ In Toronto’s case, as much as 70% of the city’s land previously zoned for single dwellings may become available to support multiple housing units. Read more in THE GLOBE AND MAIL: ‘A start’: Toronto multiplex policy aimed at boosting housing welcomed by observers
So housing prices may flatten. But what about those individuals and families who already can’t afford life in an expensive city — even with the duplexes, triplexes and sixplexes? Will prices actually do better than flatten? Will they fall? An article from British Columbia’s capital city in the Times Colonist, projects what an Aukland future would look like in British Columbia.
That article concludes that a YIMBY-ized marketplace may work wonders to provide housing for a ‘missing middle’ class. Lower incomes? New social housing is still badly needed, please and thank you. Read more in the Times Colonist: Missing affordability? The promise and pitfalls of densifying single-family lots
