YIMBYism Gains Ground: How 3 States Are Addressing The Housing Shortage

Before she landed an affordable apartment in the San Francisco suburb of Burlingame, Lorena Gonzalez was crashing at a relative’s house, where she shared a bedroom with her 18-year-old son. And before that, Gonzalez rented an apartment so far from her job that the commute could take three hours.

“I work in the city, and the commute was really killing me,” says Gonzalez, who works at a San Francisco hospital as a radiology technologist assistant.

That all changed this year when Gonzalez landed a two-bedroom unit at a new workforce housing project. She pays $2,049 for her place and estimates she’d pay more than twice as much to live in a market-rate apartment in a similar location.

Gonzalez lives at Eucalyptus Grove, a new workforce housing project built by CRP Affordable Housing & Community Development. Units at the project are doled out by lottery to applicants who make less than 70% of the Bay Area’s median income. The sheer number of applicants illustrates the area’s housing squeeze. 

“For 69 apartments, we’ll have 3,000 applications, easily,” says Paul Salib, CEO of CRP Affordable Housing.

The Burlingame project is part of California’s push to increase housing by allowing for more density near transit stops. It’s just one initiative that reflects a nationwide trend on rethinking zoning or building codes in order to boost housing supply. In Massachusetts, advocates for housing affordability hope to spur homebuilding by shrinking minimum lot sizes. In Florida, a state law overriding municipal objections has led to a spate of development of affordable rental units.

The state-by-state moves to roll back regulations on new development reflect a stark reality: U.S. home prices are setting one record after another, and housing affordability has emerged as a hot political topic. Economists and housing advocates agree the answer is more homes, more housing supply. But building homes isn’t easy — the nation’s most expensive housing markets are running short of land, and the thousands of municipalities that can say yay or nay to new development tend not to welcome new construction.

“There’s no magic-bullet policy that will solve affordability,” says Brad Hunter of Hunter Housing Economics. “But there are things local governments could do to make it easier for homebuilders to deliver more homes.”

In many cases, homebuilders must jump through approval processes that are “excessive,” says Amy Tomasso, vice president at Ivory Innovations, a housing affordability nonprofit at the University of Utah. “There are too many regulations. There’s too much red tape.”

However, a number of states and cities are trying a variety of ways to encourage building. When it comes to spurring housing supply, Tomasso says, “It’s a good moment.”

Roots of the housing shortage

In recent decades, NIMBYism, the acronym for “not in my backyard,” has defined development patterns. Americans love their homes, and they’re not always keen on new development nearby. (The pro-development response is known as YIMBYism, or “yes, in my backyard.”)

The inclination to say no to new development has played out as new home construction has fallen off a cliff over the past 15 years.

“Where did all the houses go? The answer is they were never built at all,” Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson wrote last year in Abundance, a book that brought new attention to the housing shortage.

The result? Fully 50% of American renters and 24% of homeowners devote 30% or more of their income to housing, according to the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies — a level the organization defines as “cost-burdened.” The squeeze is especially dramatic in high-priced markets such as Northern California. In Silicon Valley, the typical home cost $1.9 million in the third quarter of 2025, according to the National Association of Realtors. In the San Francisco-Oakland market, it was $1.3 million.

Part of the reason that home prices are nearing $2 million in Northern California is that it’s nearly impossible to build new homes in the region for a variety of reasons, including scarce buildable land.

But Klein and Thompson primarily blame restrictive zoning policies for hindering supply. They trace California’s affordability squeeze to 1971, when city officials in the San Francisco suburb of Petaluma moved to oppose growth by limiting building permits. The Petaluma Plan withstood court challenges and was adopted by other municipalities. As a result, California’s pace of homebuilding has slowed. As recently as 1988, California developers won permits to build nearly 250,000 private housing units, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. However, that annual figure is a highwater mark. These days, California municipalities issue about 100,000 building permits a year.

The result? Housing keeps getting more expensive, and some people have been priced out. In 2020, California’s population peaked at 39.6 million people, according to U.S. Census data. In 2022, that number fell to 39.1 million, although the population was back up to 39.4 million in 2025.

To reverse the ongoing effects of the Petaluma Plan, California officials have tried to boost housing supply. One such move was a law encouraging the development of accessory dwelling units, backyard apartments that can house family members or be rented to tenants. Then, in October 2025, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law allowing greater density and less-restrictive height limits near transit stops.

Salib calls the new push “a good example of public-private partnership.” The incentives for developments near public transportation allowed CRP Affordable Housing to build more densely in Burlingame than it otherwise could have. “We can build higher,” he says. “If we weren’t allowed to build eight stories, this project wouldn’t have been feasible.”

Gonzalez, for her part, counts herself fortunate to have found a place that fits her budget and commute. “I feel so blessed, because I’ve struggled so long trying to find a place,” she says.

Restrictive zoning laws aren’t limited to California, of course. In New York, Westchester County allows only single-family development. In Greenwich, Connecticut, the minimum allowable lot size is so large that, predictably, only wealthy homebuyers can afford property. Those policies reflect existing homeowners protecting their interests: If the housing supply is kept scarce through restrictive zoning, those who already own houses are all but guaranteed a jump in their real estate values.

The Massachusetts approach: ‘Legalize starter homes’

Efforts to remove obstacles to housing construction are happening on the East Coast, too. In Massachusetts, a group of housing advocates aims to boost affordability by allowing building on lot sizes as small as 5,000 square feet, or about a ninth of an acre. The Legalize Starter Homes committee is gathering signatures in hopes of putting the initiative to voters later this year.

“Research has shown that Massachusetts’ large minimum lot-size requirements increase home prices and reduce new production,” Andrew Mikula, chair of the committee, wrote in a recent Boston Globe piece.

The median price of homes sold in the Boston area during the third quarter of 2025 was more than $800,000, according to the National Association of Realtors. That’s nearly twice the national median.

Boston’s high home prices are partly a result of a limited supply of housing: Like most coastal cities, the Boston region has little land available for new development. On the demand side of the equation, the metro area has plenty of high-wage workers competing for homes. The Boston area is home to prestigious universities such as Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as well as major players in the biotech, pharmaceutical and consumer products industries. 

Meanwhile, many municipalities impose minimum requirements for the size of lots that can accommodate single-family homes. The proposal from Mikula and other housing advocates would compel Massachusetts cities to allow for single-family homes to be built on lots as small as 5,000 square feet — a petite footprint that Mikula compares to the surface area of a basketball court.

The rules would apply only to properties served by public water and sewer lines.

“I just want to level the playing field across generations,” Mikula tells Bankrate. “People who are making $200,000 a year won’t have to move to Rhode Island to afford a house.”

Mikula points to a similar measure that took effect last year in Maine, which also imposed minimum lot sizes of 5,000 square feet. If the measure makes it to a statewide vote, Mikula predicts passage — the Legalize Starter Homes committee’s research shows 78% of Massachusetts voters support such a move.

“We landed on minimum lot size in part because it polls so well,” Mikula says.

In Florida, Live Local spurs development

During the pandemic, Florida experienced a population boom and a spike in rents that made it difficult for working-class residents to find affordable housing. The state responded with the Live Local Act, a 2023 law that aimed to boost housing supply by loosening regulations around new development.

So long as developers include units devoted to residents who make less than 120% of an area’s median income, projects can be approved at the maximum height and density allowed in a given area. In many parts of the country, moderately paid workers fall into the “missing middle” area where housing choices can be scarce.

The income levels and rent limits are complicated, and they’re reset once a year by the Florida Housing Finance Corp. To give one example, a tenant who makes a bit less than 120% of Miami’s median income would get about a 20% discount on rent. In a Live Local project planned for Miami’s Omni district, market rent for a one-bedroom unit is slated to be $3,426 per month, says developer Liam Krahe of the SF QOZ Fund. But a single tenant making $100,000 a year (just under 120% of Miami-Dade County’s median income) would pay $2,788 a month.

Krahe hopes to build 576 units in a building near Biscayne Bay. Without Live Local’s density enhancements, the project likely would be approved for 425 units. 

“Live Local has incentivized a lot of developers who otherwise would not be doing multifamily,” Krahe says.

One advantage for developers: Live Local lets developers win approval with no public hearing. That means no NIMBY neighbors waving signs, sporting custom T-shirts or threatening comeuppance to municipal officials in the next local election. Navigating the gauntlet of neighborhood naysayers has made developers and officials reluctant to propose or support new development over the years, contributing significantly to today’s housing shortage. But these new regulations provide a workaround. 

“You get no backlash from the community,” says Michael Wohl, principal at Coral Rock Development Group, which has completed two projects under Live Local and is developing another.

In addition to the easier approval process, Live Local also calls for tax subsidies that make it financially feasible for developers to offer below-market rents.

Coral Rock Development Group has taken advantage — the company has built Live Local developments in the South Florida cities of Hialeah and Coral Springs, and it’s working on another in Miami. The Coral Springs project, which includes 153 rent-controlled units, is 99% occupied, the developer says.

While Coral Rock Development Group’s projects focus on rental units, some developers building under Live Local include a combination of for-rent apartments and for-sale condos, Wohl says. In either case, the new units are providing supply in a housing market that desperately needs it. For South Florida’s middle-income workers, he says, affordability challenges are “a crisis.”

Live Local addresses one part of the housing crisis, but it’s far from a comprehensive solution, says Ken Russell, a former Miami city commissioner. In one bit of pushback, municipalities have rejected some Live Local projects, prompting lawsuits.

“Some of these are high-density, high-intensity projects that don’t fit the community,” Russell says.

One example of that conflict comes in the Fort Lauderdale suburb of Hollywood, where a developer and the city are battling over the legality of a proposed oceanfront project that would be more than twice as tall as surrounding buildings.

Another reality: The new developments going up under Live Local are tailored to the upper end of middle-income workers, as evidenced by the monthly rent of $2,788 for a one-bedroom unit. “Workforce housing is a misnomer,” Russell says. “This isn’t aimed at blue-collar workers.”

Alfonso Costa Jr., chief operating officer of Florida developer Falcone Group, says that’s by design.

“When you think about the missing middle supply that exists in this country,” he notes, “for households that earn anywhere from 80% of area median income up to 120% of area median income, there’s never traditionally or historically been programs that have incentivized the private sector to really harness their resources to contribute to that supply.”