Our Impact

Since California YIMBY’s founding, we’ve built a movement of 80,000+ Californians who share the simple belief that to combat homelessness, make our neighborhoods affordable, and create a California for everyone, we have to make it legal to build more homes in our cities.

And our track record is clear: Our evidence-based movement of passionate YIMBYs and pro-housing allies are transforming housing policy across California and influencing policy worldwide.

We’ve ended exclusionary, single-unit zoning in the state where it began, and our legislative victories will enable at least 2.2 million more homes* to be built in California. The impact reports below are a celebration of everything we’ve been able to accomplish together — and the list of impacts grows longer by the day.

Since 2017, we’ve led on passing 18 bills into law:

• SB 167 (2017, Skinner) – Requires local governments to approve zoning compliant housing
• AB 2923 (2018, Chiu) – Allows BART to build 20,000 homes on parking lots it owns
• AB 68 (2019, Ting) – Legalizes 3-unit homes everywhere in California by permitting 1 backyard cottage and 1 interior accessory dwelling unit for each single family home
• AB 881 (2019, Bloom) – Removes owner-occupancy requirement for ADUs
• SB 330 (2019, Skinner) – Accelerates housing construction, limits fees, and protects tenants
• AB 725 (2020, Wicks) – Increases 4-plex zoning
• AB 1851 (2020, Wicks) – Reduces parking requirements for houses of worship
• AB 3182 (2020, Ting) – Ends HOA bans on renters
• SB 9 (2021, Atkins) – Ends single-family zoning and legalizes duplexes and lot splits on single-family properties statewide
• SB 10 (2021, Wiener) – Streamlines zoning ordinances for small apartments up to ten homes in transit-rich areas
• AB 602 (2021, Grayson) – Adjusts impact fees to ensure that smaller, more affordable homes pay smaller, more affordable fees
• SB 478 (2021, Wiener) – Prevents cities from blocking homes that comply with their zoning ordinance
• AB 2011 (2022, Wicks) – Makes affordable housing by right on commercially zoned lands, and mixed-income housing by right along commercial corridors
• AB 2097 (2022, Friedman) – Eliminates expensive parking mandates in in walkable, transit-accessible neighborhoods
• AB 2221 (2022, Quirk-Silva) – Clarifies state ADU law to make ADUs easier to build
• AB 2873 (2022, Jones-Sawyer) – Seeks to address historic inequities in the building labor force
• SB 886 (2022, Wiener) – Allows colleges and universities to build housing projects on campus faster and for lower cost by streamlining CEQA review process
• SCA 2 (2022, Allen) – Places a measure on the 2024 ballot to repeal Article 34 of the California Constitution with the goal of making it legal to build low-income and public housing in California’s cities

We campaign for vibrant, inclusive, and just communities:

• Prop 1 (2018) – Raised $4 billion for affordable homes for veterans, seniors, and families.
• Prop 2 (2018) – Raised $2 billion for permanent, supportive housing for the mentally ill and homeless.
• AB 686 (2018, Santiago) – Codifies Obama’s Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Rule before Trump repealed them.
• SB 946 (2018, Lara) – Decriminalizes street vending, encouraging entrepreneurship and access to goods.
• AB 1482 (2019, Chiu) – Limits rent increases and protects renters from unfair evictions.

While these initiatives did not pass, California YIMBY remains committed to property tax reform and racial justice:

• Prop 15 (2020) – The “Schools and Communities First” initiative would have reclaimed $12 billion dollars each year for education and essential services by requiring large commercial property owners to pay their fair share of taxes. California YIMBY is a member of the Executive Committee.
• Prop 16 (2020) – This initiative would have ended California’s ban on affirmative action, which would have made race-conscious housing justice remedies more feasible.