California’s housing crisis is worsened by restrictive zoning policies.
Measure J/R/D in Davis harms the city’s housing supply and affordability.
As California’s housing crisis deepens, a familiar accusation echoes across city council chambers, planning meetings, and neighborhood listservs: that the YIMBY (Yes In My Backyard) movement is nothing more than a front for greedy developers.
In Davis, this claim is often deployed against anyone who questions Measure J/R/D or advocates for new housing projects on the periphery or infill sites. Critics argue that behind every call for more housing lurks a developer’s wallet.
But this narrative—convenient though it may be—is both misleading and intellectually lazy. It erases the grassroots origins of YIMBYism, ignores the movement’s progressive policy agenda, and conflates aligned outcomes with aligned motivations.
More importantly, on a local level, such debates have allowed cities like Davis to hide from the hard truth: our housing shortage is largely self-inflicted, and the policies defended in the name of anti-developer purity have helped make Davis one of the most exclusionary communities in California.
YIMBY organizing didn’t start in a boardroom—it started with people priced out of their communities. In San Francisco, Oakland, and Los Angeles, it was renters, young workers, environmentalists, and displaced families who rallied to demand more housing—particularly near jobs, schools, and transit. They were reacting to spiraling rents, chronic homelessness, and land-use laws that made it illegal to build anything but single-family homes in huge swaths of urban California.
In Davis, we face the same crisis, only dressed in different language. Here, exclusionary policies like Measure J/R/D give a small, often older and wealthier subset of voters veto power over nearly all new housing on the city’s edges—no matter how thoughtfully planned or desperately needed. The result? An artificial housing shortage, stagnating school enrollment, and a generation of UC Davis students and working families priced out of the very community they support.
Yes, developers support YIMBY policies like zoning reform or streamlined permitting—but that doesn’t mean the movement is run by developers. Developers want to build to make money. YIMBYs want to build because housing scarcity hurts everyone but the already housed.
In Davis, you don’t need to look far to see the difference. Local YIMBY-aligned advocates—including renters, students, and young professionals—have spoken out for more multifamily housing, missing middle development, and projects that include affordable units and sustainability mandates. These are not developer priorities. They are community priorities—and they’re often resisted by the same anti-growth voices who claim to be fighting developer influence.
Opponents frequently say: Follow the money. And they’re right—we should. But if you do, the results are surprising.
California YIMBY and other statewide YIMBY organizations are funded by philanthropic foundations, not developers. Their major donors include the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Open Philanthropy, and the Ford Foundation—organizations known for supporting equity, public health, education, and criminal justice reform. These funders believe, correctly, that housing is a justice issue.
Meanwhile, there’s little to no evidence that large developers are driving YIMBY campaigns in Davis. In fact, developers often oppose the very affordability and inclusionary zoning requirements that YIMBYs support.
Measure J/R/D was originally pitched as a way to control sprawl and protect farmland. But in practice, it has become a powerful tool for exclusion. It allows voters—most of whom already own homes—to decide whether new housing can exist. And over the last 20+ years, it has blocked almost every project proposed under its constraints.
Who benefits from this system? Not developers. And certainly not renters, students, or working families. The main beneficiaries are existing homeowners, who enjoy rising property values, restricted competition, and a veto over any growth that might shift the city’s demographics.
It’s tempting to imagine that California’s housing crisis is caused by a cartoon villain: the greedy developer. But that lets communities like Davis off the hook.
The real obstacles to housing in Davis are local policies and voter preferences that restrict supply, inflate costs, and entrench inequality. These policies are often defended under the guise of “anti-developer” sentiment. But in practice, they have created a system where only the already wealthy can afford to live here.
Meanwhile, young people, families of color, lower-income residents, and many UC Davis students are pushed out or locked out.
YIMBYism isn’t perfect, and it must remain committed to racial and economic justice. But it offers a path forward—one rooted in the recognition that housing is a human need, not a luxury good. That means reforming exclusionary zoning. That means saying yes to housing—especially infill and walkable, transit-oriented neighborhoods. And that means reevaluating Measure J/R/D, not defending it with tired anti-developer tropes.
If we want Davis to be a diverse, inclusive, and sustainable city—not just a haven for the already fortunate—we need to stop attacking the messengers and start confronting the policies keeping our doors closed.
Sources (adapted and expanded):
[1] Lens, M. (2020). Quoted in Vox’s Why Is California So Unaffordable?
[2] California YIMBY. “Policy Platform.” https://cayimby.org/policy/
[3] YIMBY Action. “Legislative Priorities.” https://yimbyaction.org/
[4] California YIMBY. “Support for Social Housing.” https://cayimby.org/social-housing/
[5] Chan Zuckerberg Initiative Grants Database. https://chanzuckerberg.com/
[6] Open Philanthropy Grants. https://www.openphilanthropy.org/
[7] CBIA Legislative Tracker. https://cbia.org/legislation/
[8] “Affordable Housing Projects Blocked by Lawsuits.” Los Angeles Times, 2023.
[9] UC Davis Office of Budget & Institutional Analysis. “Enrollment Trends.”
[10] City of Davis Housing Element, 2021–2029. https://cityofdavis.org
I was Yimby before Yimby was a thing and I’ve never received anything from any developer.
So what you are saying is that you have been wrong about measure J for 20 years.
I think I’ve explained my changed position on Measure J
I forget please remind me?
At one point I unequivocally supported Measure J, now I support a revised version of Measure J.
Still part of the problem
I wouldnt say “part of the problem”. The upside of measure J is that developers cant build just whatever they want… and that HAS to no small part, kept them from just plastering more single-family developments to the horizon… to that extent, having SOME guardrails on the machine IS a good thing.
The “follow the money” kind of machine that has caused so much sprawl is the alignment of cities who really would like to collect development fees with the developers who would really like developments approved. Thats the “housing ponzi scheme” that has been so well documented by strong towns.
Being an advocate for a revised version of meausre J that provides a pathway for “good development” while preserving our ability to say no to bad developments, makes inherrent sense.
So how is that Measure J thing working out? Are we getting better projects or fewer projects?
As it stands right now, it works very well at blocking projects. It doesn’t seem to produce better projects and it seems to result in less housing. So unless you are Ron O, that’s not a good outcome.
David: If your “better version” of Nishi had passed, it would likely be under construction without any access to UCD.
As it is, that seems to be the holdup regarding the version that did pass.
(Yes, I already realize that the original version had fake commercial space so that they could avoid Affordable housing requirements.)
But I will say that I actually agree with the “anti-choice Ron” on here, as I’ve seen you do nothing but criticize Measure J for the 10 years or so I’ve been looking at the Vanguard.
At least the anti-choice and pro-choice Rons don’t try to talk out of both sides of our mouths, so to speak. Apparently, Rons wouldn’t make good politicians.
That’s one way to look at it. The other way to look at it is that we don’t have the housing the way it passed, and we are in need of that housing.
DG say: “At one point I unequivocally supported Measure J, now I support a revised version of Measure J.”
That really isn’t a thing. It’s fine to support axing Measure J and supporting a new measure. But there’s no such thing as a ‘revised Measure J’. That’s a political con job to support something and not define it, which is what CC keeps doing. That why low brain voters can say, ‘they want what I want’ and they fill in the blank in their own minds.
Fair but probably a little to much about semantics.
DG say: “we don’t have the housing the way it passed”
You mean *overwhelmingly* ?
I didn’t but point taken
As David himself notes in this article, it’s largely the technology (and real estate) industries that have created non-profits – which then do the “dirty work” on behalf of those funding them. (Not as much from developers.)
Must be a “coincidence” that one of the funders is named “Zuckerberg”.
The technology industry created the “housing shortage” in the first place. Of course they have an interest in fighting the communities they’ve impacted.
YIMBYs are absolutely paid shills – don’t let the fake non-profit setup fool you.
Actual “grass roots” organizations usually don’t even have a budget, attorneys on staff, corporate/business sponsorship.
https://www.housingisahumanright.org/selling-off-california-exposes-corporate-yimbys-ties-to-big-tech-and-big-real-estate/
Total BS on the YIMBY thing. Just look at here in Davis the way developers has used/paid students by: 1) Paying them to go door-to-door; 2) Contributing to Young Democrats on campus in exchange for reading off a script to Council; 3) Buying them pizza in exchange for testimony. That’s just here in Davis. Philothropic organizations? That’s how corporations wield political influence. I know you are not that naive, but I’m surprised you are naive enough to think that we’re buying you gas lighting device.
Hasn’t been very effective and I don’t agree that’s using students. I asked them once about paying canvassers, they responded that the students would do it for free, but then they would get accused on being cheap, they felt they could not win on the issue and thought it was better to compensate the students.
Uh huh