Blog Posts

While zoning and permitting delays get much of the blame for high housing costs, building codes are an oft-overlooked contributor. These codes set minimum construction standards, such as for structural and electrical safety, and fire protection. And most U.S. apartment…

California has advanced several housing reforms over the past decade to tackle high costs, but one 1979 law—the Density Bonus Law—has become one of the most-used tools for homebuilders to get their housing approved by cities and counties. The Bonus…

More than a third of California cities and counties, including San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego and fast-growing suburbs like Dublin and Irvine, require private home builders to set aside a portion of the homes they build at below-market rents…

One of the many levers that California cities control that directly influence housing production is the one-time fee they charge builders to help cover roads, parks, and other public infrastructure. A new RAND Corporation study by Lizhong Liu and Jason…

SB 79, California YIMBY’s signature legislation that legalized apartment buildings near transit stops throughout California, went into effect on July 1, 2026. Under the law’s provisions, jurisdictions throughout the state must now begin implementation, which includes various pathways to achieve…

More and more cities and states have concluded that a key way to lower housing costs is to loosen rules, such as upzoning that lets developers build taller, denser buildings, and that construction will follow. A new Urban Institute study…

Austin’s median rent is 4% below the national median today, down from a 15% premium above the national median in 2021. The shift follows a decade of zoning and permitting reforms that enabled the city to add 120,000 homes, even…

America pays roughly 50 percent more per mile for public transit than comparable countries do, and a little-examined culprit is the community engagement process meant to improve projects. A new analysis from the Urban Institute finds that poorly structured public…

Building apartments in American cities is one of the most effective climate strategies available right now. While federal EV incentives are gutted and gas-ban building codes face litigation across the country, apartment construction continues to reduce climate pollution through four…

For months, California YIMBY has worked on a state-level solution to fix bad transfer taxes that are crushing new housing construction in many cities. In the process, we also hoped to prevent the passage of an anti-tax ballot measure that…