The Laundry, an event space in the Mission, resembled a YIMBY convention on Monday night: Members of YIMBY Democrats for America, YIMBY Action, and SF YIMBY crowded into the industrial space at 26th and Mission.
And what those YIMBYs wanted, it became clear, was more: More housing, more transit, more green energy and more YIMBYs.
“We are in a war with fascism,” said Armand Domalewski, to a standing-room-only crowd of a couple hundred YIMBYs, dropping a Star Wars reference as he kicked off the evening. “As Andor reminded me, either you want to fight or you want to win. And people in this room, we want to fucking win.”
The comparison between gun-toting guerillas and the largely upwardly mobile, young YIMBYs — focused more on zoning reform than revolution — was fodder to the hundred-strong room.
“No spoilers!” yelled a voice from the crowd.
Thus started a night of networking, socializing, and a surprise live taping of YIMBY Democrats for America’s new podcast, Radio Abundance.
“Thank you for fulfilling every middle-aged white man’s dream of hosting a live podcast,” co-host Steve Boyle said, as he kicked off the recording.
Boyle and Domalewski played the dual roles as event and podcast hosts. They’re the executive director and cofounder, respectively, of YIMBY Democrats for America, (formerly known as YIMBYs for Harris, and essentially a national platform for YIMBY ideas).
The podcast’s title — and the name of the event, “Abundance Happy Hour” — references the book Abundance by journalists Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson.
Published in March, the book is a manifesto that calls for the United States — Democrats in particular — to build a liberalism that, well, builds. Housing, sure, but also more investment in science, technology and transit.
The evening’s star panelist was Derek Kaufman, who worked on policies like the Child Tax Credit during the Biden administration. He is the founder and CEO of the Inclusive Abundance Initiative, a nonpartisan group that aims to connect policy researchers with lawmakers to “shape America’s future through an abundance-focused agenda”.
The crowd — mostly thirty-something housing nerds, tech nerds, or both — quoted Klein and Thompson’s book off the cuff. There were calls to “create abundance and fight scarcity.” and derision for “Marin County liberals” (code word for Democrats who fight development). A copy of Abundance was on display behind the check-in table.
The live recording featured nearly a dozen panelists from the who’s-who of Bay Area YIMBYs: Laura Foote, the executive director of YIMBY Action, and Giselle Hale, the former mayor of Redwood City. Jokes abounded about ADUs, small, secondary units on properties that are easier to build now because of state legislation.
“Do you know what a LAFCo is?” one panelist, Muhammad Alameldin, a senior policy advisor for California YIMBY, said, citing an obscure local, regulatory body. The move sparked groans from the audience.
At moments, the event felt almost like a victory lap. “We won the Democratic Party last year,” said Joe Sangirardi, part of a YIMBY-endorsed slate that won a majority of seats on the local party organ known as the Democratic County Central committee, or DCCC.
YIMBY-affiliated candidates have also, slowly, gained a majority on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. And Mayor Daniel Lurie just released an ambitious upzoning plan for the city’s westside — though that plan still has months to go before supervisors decide whether to adopt it. Now, Sangirardi added, upzoning is breaking through in a way that it hasn’t before, and pro-housing Democrats are “ruffling feathers at the state party”.
Panelists had their own, often moving stories about how housing costs had held them back. They detailed nabbing rent-controlled units. They described friends leaving because they couldn’t afford rent. Attendees echoed their sentiments: “I’ve been here 10 years, and I’ve seen friends move away,” said one attendee, who now lives in Glen Park.
The event ended with one last rallying cry — to join every group in attendance, recruit friends, and email Mayor Lurie in support of upzoning.
“That’s one hell of an act. What do you call it?”
“The SF Dems!”
Feckless tools.
Excellent.
… Fecklesscent, agreed.
Awesome. Given how bad the housing shortage is in the Bay Area I’m surprised there are still so many people fighting new housing construction here. It would probably take 100,000 new apartments around the Bay to get rents back to decent levels.
I think I’d rather live with the zombies lounging about than with these people.
Maybe that whole squalor = anti-gentrification thing isn’t such a terrible idea.
Yo bros! – there is an “Abundance” of $400K-$600K condos in SOMA.
There’s this website called redfin.
Surely at your $250K a year salary you can swing that. Bro.
Yuh know,
With so many downers at this point in My Simulation I wanted to add some people having fun and chose this group for last night to counter-balance events down the street at Manny’s.
Then again, this could actually be Base Reality and I’m in Big trouble.
Go Giants !!
h.
armand is an internet bully.
I’m OK with high rises and density, but given the glut of empty market rate units, I would only permit 100% Below Market Rate units to be built. I care nothing about preserving scenic views, but I want to discourage the displacement from gentrification. Does that make me a YIMBY or NIMBY?
As someone who recently moved, the fact that you believe there is a glut of empty market rate units is insane. It was hard to find anything at all that met my needs, and in the end I was not able to find a place in the area that I had hoped to live in. This city probably needs at least 2 or 3 times the amount of housing that it currently has for everyone who wants to live here to be able to.
It makes you a NIMBY because the YIMBY have been about selling out to developers rather than your focus on prioritizing low-incomes, where the housing market (and the service industry in general) is feeling it most and is most resource bound.
YIMBY is nothing but a developer propaganda effort to “grassroots-tize” their graft.
Qui bono? Developers, developers, developers. Rent controlled units get a market rate re-do and entire neighborhoods are gentrified like the Western Addition suffered during the original upzoning rounds. YIMBY’s are useful idiots more than not, a few of them realize what they’re supporting and do so anyway.
I despise Ezra Klein. He didn’t coin the phrase “abundance mentality”, but he’s given it the sheen of neoliberal credibility. It’s just a euphemism, fellas. It’s pro-corporate, nothing more. It’s the same type of liberalism exemplified by the Pelosis and the Schumers. It’s the same tech bros, the same housing and construction companies that put money in Willie Brown’s coffers, the same gentrifying forces, trying to evict the working class once and for all.
THEY’RE NOT INTERESTED IN HOUSING FOR ALL. It’s housing for the wealthy, for all the new money AI bros hoping for a piece of SF only to abandon it when that bubble bursts, too. You know who stays behind? The natives. While tech decided it was no longer convenient for them to stick around, the natives stayed.
Why do people never learn the lesson? They will abandon SF, too. We won’t. WE are the reliable tax base, not them. The city belongs to US. Stop catering to locusts who exist only to jack up the rents while they consume every available resource, before moving on to cheaper places like Texas.
These idiots are pawns of the Billionaire developer agenda. Gentrifying morons.