Virginia is for YIMBYs: the pro-housing movement spreading across the commonwealth

Wednesday evening, the Arlington County Board approved a zoning change that will allow buildings with four — and in some cases six — units countywide. The legislation, in the works for several years, had support from a swath of established progressive groups, including the NAACP, the Alliance for Housing Solutions, Virginians Organized for Interfaith Community Engagement, and the Sierra Club.

Alongside them were the YIMBYs of Northern Virginia, the first of a growing number of YIMBY organizations sprouting up across Virginia. Jane Green, president and cofounder of the group, has been fighting for housing affordability since 2017, including through a past role with Greater Greater Washington. She acknowledges that such a win wouldn’t have been possible if the YIMBYs had fought the issue alone.

“We bring a lot of renters who are traditionally left out of the decision-making process, but we don’t have the same diversity of incomes and race that other groups bring to the table,” she said. “We are just one piece of this broad, forward-looking, pro-growth, pro-housing coalition. To me, the best thing coming out of this is a real professionalism and leadership that we have learned from our allies.”

Arlington may be a watershed moment for the nascent pro-housing movement in Virginia, showing that it is a force to be taken seriously, turning people out – over 250 people testified on the “Missing Middle” housing bill – and building bridges as well.

YIMBYs of NoVA gets off the ground

It wasn’t always that way. In February 2022, a handful of Arlingtonians showed up at a county board meeting to express their support for a Pentagon City Sector Plan that would allow new housing and retail in a corner of the DC region better known for bland office buildings. Although the plan’s supporters comprised just one in ten people who turned up, the hearing may have marked the first time the Yes In My Backyard (YIMBY) movement shifted from a purely online presence to an in-person force in Virginia.

“At that time we were so proud to have even 10% of the turnout in favor,” said Jane Green, president and cofounder of the YIMBYs of Northern Virginia. “We felt like we showed the community that there were people in support of new housing and growth. Some people see YIMBY as a dirty word — and it can have some baggage, but I think for us it works well and people understand what we’re fighting for. We’re happy to be the people saying yes.”

Since February 2022, such grassroots, volunteer-led chapters affiliated with the national YIMBY Action organization have sprouted up in Hampton Roads and Richmond. Even in Charlottesville and Fredericksburg smaller local groups like Livable Cville and Fifteen Minute Fredericksburg are flirting with similar pro-housing advocacy.

Before this recent wave of YIMBY groups entered the scene much of the fight for inclusive, pro-growth housing policy had been led by nonprofits with full-time staff such as the Coalition for Smarter Growth or even this organization. What remains to be seen is whether the commonwealth’s young YIMBY movement can achieve the political power of their peers in California and New York.

Urban crescent comrades

When Seth Quick moved back to his Hampton Roads home during the pandemic, he found a region that was just as unfriendly to new housing as he remembered from his childhood. As a kid, his family attempted to turn some empty land they owned at the end of their block into townhomes; however, the surrounding residents’ opposition was so vociferous that the project was never approved.

“Everyone was so vitriolic toward us we couldn’t even walk out of the house,” he said. “All of our neighbors were mad that we were going to build more housing and feared we were going to allow poor people to live in our neighborhood.”

The residual sting of that memory is part of the reason he decided to found YIMBY HRVA last May. Armed with roughly 70 supporters and a popular email blast he calls Five Plex Fridays, Quick hopes to make Hampton Roads into a more welcoming region and expand its mixed-use, walkable communities beyond the handful of downtowns that currently support car-free to car-light living.

“There is a lot of opposition to and fear about urban living here, so if we can just do small things to make it easier to build more multifamily like not requiring parking, then that would be a big win,” said Quick. “Housing has become extraordinarily expensive here even for upper middle income families, so we need to ask ourselves if we are making the changes we need to right now to get where we want to be in 20 years?”

Charles Yang, a born and raised Richmonder, never had any inkling of the impact of zoning or housing policy until he moved to the Bay Area for college and witnessed the high housing costs and rates of homelessness that plague the West Coast. When he returned to Central Virginia shortly before the pandemic, he saw both positive potential for the Richmond region to stay affordable as well as worrying signs of a coming California-style cost of living crunch.

That’s why this January he founded RVA YIMBY. Although the chapter is still in its policy formation phase, Yang is certain two of their top issues will be supporting City of Richmond proposals to allow more accessory dwelling units and end mandatory parking minimums. He also hopes to work closely with the region’s existing strong public transit, smart growth, and bike advocacy groups toward an improved urban experience.

State-level strength?

Beyond local and regional advocacy, Yang is explicit about his hope to make it possible to build abundant housing across the commonwealth via Virginia’s General Assembly.

“Everything in Virginia is up for election this fall, so trying to raise housing policy as a top priority is our goal,” he said. “If we want our state to keep growing, then we need to make sure we have enough homes for everyone to live comfortably and affordably.”

Currently YIMBY HRVA is focusing its efforts on the region’s two biggest cities of Norfolk and Virginia Beach. The Mermaid City’s missing middle pattern book is one promising sign of policy progress, but Quick wants Norfolk to remove parking requirements and expand by-right duplexes, quadplexes, and sixplexes to the whole city. In anti-density Virginia Beach, the YIMBYs biggest ask is an expansion of multi-family friendly R5 zoning.

Despite the increased attention Virginia’s housing crisis has received from both Democratic and Republican state officials, Green is less optimistic that YIMBY’s commonwealth-wide coalition can change the way Virginia approaches housing policy. With the passage of Arlington’s missing middle housing plan, the value of local-level advocacy to the pro-housing movement seems clear.

“I am more pessimistic about the viability of state-level organizing than many of my colleagues due to the Dillon Rule and the intransigence of some urban Democrats to allow new neighbors,” she said. “We have a better chance of making reform at the local level, but housing affordability is a statewide issue.”

This article has been updated to reflect that the February 2022 Pentagon City Sector meeting was a. meeting of the Arlington County Board, not the planning commission.