Research
California YIMBY is committed to advancing a policy agenda informed by the best available social scientific research.
Housing Underproduction in California: 2023 Report
To better understand the scale and geography of California’s housing shortage, the California YIMBY Education Fund commissioned a study by MapCraft of relative housing underproduction rates across the state.
About the
Research Index
Our values extend to our YIMBY teams and partner organizations: we are committed to providing our grassroots activists with the resources they need to promote evidence-based policies at the state and local levels.
We have created this catalog of housing scholarship to better inform our advocacy agenda. We hope that YIMBYs will use this compendium to better understand housing policy and advance their work as well.
This incomplete and living index reflects our best effort to aggregate the research sent to us by allies, activists, and academics. We do not endorse each paper listed in this catalog, and we sometimes find it helpful to read studies that contradict our assumptions or policy positions. If you would like to add to this research catalog or find errors, please contact us.
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Homelessness 101: Webinar
We held a webinar with experts on Homelessness on June 30th, 2022 to discuss what we can do about homelessness locally. These experts included: Almost every Californian is feeling the crunch from the state’s high housing costs, but no one…
Meet the Housing Law Enforcers
California’s state legislature has made major strides in reducing the barriers to building housing statewide. However, many local governments have failed to comply with state housing law, with some making explicit efforts to sidestep these laws by exploiting loopholes and…
Why is Housing Unaffordable? The Great Migration’s Effect on Exclusionary Zoning
Published: 2020 | Alexander Sahn Abstract High housing prices drive inequality, reduce growth, and increase racial segregation. Scholars have identified laws restricting the use of land, particularly for dense multi-family housing, as a primary cause of housing unaffordability. What explains…
Does demand lead supply? Gentrifiers and developers in the sequence of gentrification
Published: 2020 | Kasey Zapatka, Brenden Beck | Urban Studies Abstract Consumption-side theorists of gentrification examine the flow of middle-class White people into previously working-class neighbourhoods and argue that their demand for housing stimulates gentrification. In contrast, production-side theorists emphasise…
Parcel Tax in California: Findings from New Data Sources
Published: 2020 | Soomi Lee | CityScape Abstract This article examines parcel taxes in California counties, cities, and special districts. Unique to California, the parcel tax is commonly known as a lump-sum tax applied to parcels of real property to…
Warding Off Development: Local Control, Housing Supply, and NIMBYs
Published: 2020 | Evan Mast | The Center for Growth and Opportunity Abstract Local control of land-use regulation creates a not-in-my-backyard (NIMBY) problem that can suppress housing construction, contributing to rising prices and potentially slowing economic growth. I study how…
The Price of Inclusion: Evidence from Housing Developer Behavior
Published: 2020 | Evan Soltas Abstract In many U.S. cities, incentives and regulations lead developers to build mixed-income housing. How cost-effective are these policies? I study take-up of a tax incentive in New York City using a model in which…
From Copenhagen to Tokyo
Published: 2020 | Sarah Karlinsky, Paul Peninger, Cristian Bevington | SPUR Abstract The selected case studies demonstrate a breadth of approaches that address both supply and demand challenges for housing in its entirety, as well as affordable housing more specifically.…