By Lorraine Woellert | LinkedIn
The rent is still too damn high and it’s getting only higher. When taxpayers have to subsidize rents just so city employees can live where they work and Facebook starts getting into the homebuilding business, something ain’t right.
Now a decade-old grassroots movement is starting to raise a ruckus at city halls and county councils across the country with a simple message: Build, baby, build.
Give some credit to Sonja Trauss. Frustrated by sky-high rents in San Francisco, Trauss, then a high school math teacher, started attending local planning meetings in 2014 to advocate for more construction and taller buildings. That led her to co-found the YIMBY Party—short for “yes in my backyard”—an advocacy organization that today has 600 dues-paying members.
