The YIMBY movement is at a crossroads. On the one hand, 2026 is poised to be a banner year for small-lot housing legislation, with 25 state legislatures considering bills with total or partial alignment with AEI Housing Center Playbooks. The YIMBY movement has quickly learned how to frame the issue: move reforms up to the state level, simplify rules, and build broad cross-partisan coalitions that treat housing abundance as pro-family and pro-opportunity, not a cultural statement.
On the other hand, the politics of housing supply remain difficult. President Trump has expressed concern about policies that might drive housing prices down – a poor outcome for homeowners. This gives pro-homes advocates a tricky needle to thread: how do we build more homes and increase affordability, without triggering fears of a housing market crash or political backlash?
As to the first point, it would be difficult for a few hundred thousand extra starter homes per year to instigate a crash in a market with 85 million homes. Consider Houston, one of the nation's largest and most affordable cities. Houston metro area has seen home prices appreciate by 132% since 2012, as compared to 150% nationally and 176%, 192%, and 224% for Los Angeles, Atlanta, and Phoenix respectively. It adopted small-lot policies applicable to a large area around its downtown in 1998 and expanded citywide in 2013. The result was the construction of 80,000 small-lot homes since 2010, with Goldilocks results: prices neither declining nor rising too fast.
Regarding backlash, some in the YIMBY movement “suggest a focus on building apartment buildings in urban settings near transit stops while avoiding new developments in single-family neighborhoods, which are sometimes viewed as politically untouchable”, adding “those will be able to house way more people than single-family homes, and they will make a bigger dent in the affordability crisis.”
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