Who are the YIMBYs? Inside the group that is shaking up Melbourne’s neighbourhoods

They’re loud, they’re brash and, like it or not, they’re in our backyard.

This month just a year ago a group of young professionals gatecrashed this state’s housing and planning debate, claiming to represent a growing demographic priced out of our city’s inner and middle suburbs.

The Melbourne Yes In My Back Yard group – or YIMBY – formed amid a deepening housing crisis as home-ownership rates, building starts and rental vacancies nosedived and rents, mortgage repayments and homelessness levels soared.

YIMBY Melbourne’s answer is seductively simple: just change the rules to allow more homes, particularly Paris-style, six-storey apartments, to be built where people want to live – near jobs, transport, bars and cafes.

For a small, grassroots group they’ve had an unusual, immediate impact; their savvy campaigning winning headlines, the backing of influential think tanks, and the ears of politicians and bureaucrats. They are also looking to influence the outcome of local council elections.

Katie Roberts-Hull and Jonathan O’Brien during a YIMBY meeting.Credit: Penny Stephens

But whenever the YIMBYs come up in government offices, newsrooms, pubs and parties, the same questions tend to follow: Who are these people? Who’s behind them? Is the solution that simple?

Who is YIMBY?

At a Collingwood cafe, YIMBY Melbourne leaders Jonathan O’Brien and Katie Roberts-Hull, are explaining their faith.

O’Brien, 28, is the group’s cocky frontman. A nerdy, bike-riding software developer and ALP member who rents an apartment in Coburg. He says his interest in housing policy is less about his own situation than concern for those young people who want but can’t afford to live in inner Melbourne.

Roberts-Hull, 38, is an education policy specialist and mother who lives in Carlton. A former member of the US Democratic Party, she owns a single-level terrace she rents out, while renting an apartment herself in same street.

She says she came to YIMBYism from an “urbanist” perspective and an interest in creating better and less sprawling cities. “It’s nice that it also happens to lead to more affordable housing often as well,” she notes.

YIMBY Melbourne grew out of what O’Brien describes as a “centre left” and “politics in the pub” chat group dubbed the New Progressives – a group not dedicated exclusively to housing issues. But as members wrestled with which policy area to focus its energies on, homes, or the lack of them, were the clear winner. “What do we care about?” O’Brien says they asked. “And the fundamental overlap was housing.”

It is one of a network of YIMBY groups across Australia and internationally. The first YIMBY group was established in San Francisco by young Silicon Valley workers.

Like the San Francisco chapter, the Melbourne YIMBYs have challenged locals and attracted scathing critiques from across the political spectrum. From the right, Liberal planning spokesman James Newbury slams YIMBYs as extremists who “do not believe in amenity, community character, or the uniqueness of our state’s suburbs and towns”.

From the left, Crikey commentator Guy Rundle has decried the YIMBYs as “nihilists” with a “Thatcherite, neoliberal, ideological belief in small government and deregulation, right-wing magical thinking that is, for whatever reason, unstintingly favourable to developers”.

Given YIMBY’s pro-development position, there is a lingering suspicion that it’s some kind of astro-turfing outfit; a PR front providing “grassroots” credibility for ruthless developers.

The YIMBY Melbourne’s recent monthly meet-up.Credit: Penny Stephens

YIMBY Melbourne, therefore, is at pains to prove its authenticity, and independence. It is an incorporated association under Victorian consumer law and is awaiting registration with the Australian Charities and Not-for-Profits Commission. It claims 300 financial members and about five core activists. Roberts-Hull is the only woman among the five.

YIMBY says it has no paid staff and no office, nor does it have party political affiliation, claiming members from across the political spectrum, from Liberals and Labor to Greens and Socialists.

In the spirit of what it describes as “radical transparency”, the group has shared member data revealing some surprising demographics; there are more owner-occupiers (48.5 per cent) than renters (38.9 per cent), and while 50 per cent of members are between the ages of 25-39, more than a quarter (27 per cent) are between the ages of 40 and 64.

YIMBY members hail mostly from the municipalities of Yarra (17 per cent), Melbourne (13 per cent), Merri-bek (10 per cent) Stonnington (5 per cent) Boroondara (5 per cent) Maribyrnong (4.7 per cent) and Port Phillip (4 per cent). Most YIMBY members live where they say they can’t.

Labor for Housing co-convener Julijana Todorovic, who advocates on housing within the ALP, observes the strength of the YIMBY movement “is having inner-city, middle-class people challenging the voices of other inner-city, middle-class voices”.

On the money

Conspicuous in the member section of the YIMBY website is a “conflicts of interest disclosure” including for those in property, development and construction.

In a written statement, YIMBY treasurer Tristan Layton, a law graduate at Planning & Property Partners, says the group relies on aspiring members and donors to declare potential conflicts of interest. He says the group has rejected support from people with a “material financial interest” or executive roles in development companies.

YIMBY Melbourne says it does not reject support from those with “ancillary roles” in development, such as architects, designers, planners, planning lawyers, and private consultants.

David Hodge, for example, is senior consultant with major Melbourne developer, Intrapac. He has confirmed both joining YIMBY Melbourne and making a donation, his money accepted without question.

Still, if YIMBY Melbourne has accepted developer-linked money it has not amounted to much.

To date, the group has not had to lodge financial statements with government authorities, so there is no public information about its income.

But O’Brien agreed to open his books to The Age. As of just over a week ago, YIMBY Melbourne had $7786 in what he swears is its only bank account.

The YIMBY solution

Key to the YIMBY manifesto is the idea that a restrictive planning system, including existing height and heritage controls, is blocking a potential deluge of apartment construction in inner and middle Melbourne that – if allowed – would force down prices and rents.

Its main report, The Missing Middle, calls for mass “upzoning” to allow “Paris-style” six-storey development on all residential land within one kilometre of train stations or 500 metres of tram stops, and for a review and rollback of heritage overlays.

The YIMBY position is not something set in stone, however, nor are its public pronouncements consistent.

It proposes a strict six-storey height limit but has welcomed council and government approval for apartment development at heights well above that, including in Frankston, Richmond and along the Suburban Rail Loop.

The group’s early focus was almost solely on increasing supply, rather than on affordability and what governments might actively do to improve it.

Former Victorian Greens leader and now federal aspirant Samantha Ratnam attended an early YIMBY forum and was surprised by the singular focus on housing supply, and the lack of interest in affordability.

“We all recognise the need for more homes and higher density, but it matters who can afford to live in those homes,” she says.

Notable is that YIMBY Melbourne says that developers who opt to build to six levels should be able to do as-of-right – no planning permit required – in exchange for handing over one in 10 dwellings for social housing.

It now also backs scrapping the “discretionary” controls introduced in the Kennett era that allowed developers to push for more than the “preferred” heights posed by councils.

O’Brien concedes policy is a work in progress. He now spruiks the YIMBY Melbourne’s platform as having “more redistributive policies” than “any YIMBY organisation around the world that I’ve seen”.

The YIMBY strategy

Like its US namesakes, YIMBY Melbourne is unapologetically impudent, the brand itself a provocation of the resident groups, councillors and planners it accuses of locking up neighbourhoods.

For decades the planning discourse in Melbourne’s mainstream media outlets – including this one – has platformed objector voices.

Now, the caricature of the grey-haired Baby Boomer holding a placard in the newspaper picture opposing some development is being used as a weapon by YIMBYs.

“These guys (YIMBY) are ripping the microphone away for themselves,” says prominent former Labor strategist and Redbridge pollster Kos Samaras, who is also a registered lobbyist with developer clients.

Behind the scenes, many in the planning and local government world are incredulous, if not infuriated by the attention the group commands.

YIMBY Melbourne is media-oriented and savvy, using Twitter in particular to highlight council refusals and pick fights with planners and heritage consultants.

“Between all of our skill sets … our biggest strength is being able to get media cut through,” says O’Brien.

YIMBY Melbourne’s aggressive campaigning has not gone unnoticed.

Influence with the state government

For new kids on the block, their access to government is unusual.

O’Brien boasted at a Planning Institute forum this month that while most of his group’s media commentary was about council decisions, “in the background, a majority of our work is actually speaking with stakeholders within the state government and advocating there for a better and more accountable planning system”.

YIMBY Melbourne has had audiences with Treasurer Tim Pallas once, Planning Minister Sonya Kilkenny twice and has regular contact with top departmental officials in planning and housing and in the Department of Premier and Cabinet.

O’Brien says he’s lined up meetings with Premier Jacinta Allan and Housing Minister Harriet Shing for the coming weeks. He claims to have had three meetings with senior officials last week and has another four booked for this week.

The group is working closely with the government on its current rewriting of the Cain Labor government’s 1987 Planning and Environment Act, which set the planning ground rules for councils and VCAT.

The landmark legislation sought to democratise planning and give Victorians a say in the shape of their neighbourhoods.

It came after years of battles fought through the 1970s in particular by residents and unions seeking to protect neighbourhoods from freeways, and Melbourne icons like the Queen Victoria Market and City Baths from developer wrecking balls.

But O’Brien and Roberts-Hulls say the act swung the pendulum too far the way of local communities.

“We have very good relationships with people at state government and are constantly having those discussions around how that rewrite should go and what it should look like,” O’Brien told the planner’s event.

Closely related is the implementation of then-premier Daniel Andrews’ housing statement from September, which has been tasked to Labor’s trusted public sector troubleshooter Jeroen Weimar, who oversaw the COVID response and Commonwealth Games bid.

One YIMBY insider says the group meets Weimar “at least once a month” and is working with him and other senior officials on housing targets that Labor is proposing to impose on local councils to realise Andrews’ promise of building 800,000 new homes in Victoria within a decade.

Conveniently for the government, YIMBY produced its own targets last month in a report that mapped out how Melbourne’s “missing middle” could accommodate 40,000 new homes a year.

The government’s own targets have not yet been made public. However, O’Brien says he has been briefed about them.

On multiple occasions in recent months, the government has pointed Age reporters to YIMBY research and recommended getting YIMBY comment for stories.

Why is the government seemingly so enamoured with YIMBY? One theory is that the group’s supply-side solution echoes the government’s own response to the housing crisis. Cash-strapped and with a prime minister also focused on supply, the Allan government is not proposing a major role for itself, for instance through building public or social housing.

Instead, the thrust of Labor’s September housing statement is that local councils, and the state itself, need to approve more private apartments.

YIMBY is also politically useful for the government. It represents a demographic Labor needs to keep and win over in its battle with the Greens in inner-city electorates – educated millennials squeezed by soaring rents and mortgage repayments.

Kilkenny said the government was speaking to people “in all corners of the state”.

“Whether it’s advocacy, property, business, community, building, environment, architecture or design, we meet frequently with a broad range of groups, all wanting to support more homes being built in Victoria because they all understand that increasing supply is the best way to make housing more affordable,” the planning minister said.

Warnings

Unsurprisingly, YIMBY’s apparent influence with the government is broadly welcomed by the development industry.

“It’s refreshing to see a grassroots organisation that reframes the debate about increasing density and housing supply in our suburbs as a social good,” says Cath Evans, the Property Council’s Victorian executive director.

Development consultant and YIMBY member Hodge agrees: “I think YIMBY is a strong independent voice of balance and reason amid a housing debacle and crisis created by governments.”

The professional planners’ peak group the Planning Institute of Australia is less impressed.

The institute’s Victoria president, Patrick Fensham, warns the government of the “risks” of YIMBY’s blanket upzoning without proper planning and funding to ensure infrastructure and services like transport, schools and parkland are provided.

He says the government also “risks ruining” what makes Melbourne Melbourne.

“A blanket six-storey upzoning is proposed for essentially all of 19th and early 20th-century Melbourne, including over the human scale streets of cottages and terraces that the city is known for all over the world.”

Fensham likens the YIMBY upzoning proposal to the Baillieu government’s snap rezoning of Fishermans Bend. When it rezoned the bayside industrial precinct to Capital City Zone in 2012, land values skyrocketed, delivering overnight windfalls to landowners there including some of Melbourne’s wealthiest property moguls.

“The Victorian government at the time gave away around $1 billion in development rights,” says Fensham, “and is now struggling to supply adequate infrastructure and open space.” In the 12 years since, the yield of apartments has been nothing like what was promised for Fishermans Bend.

O’Brien says the problem with Fishermans Bend is that the rezoning was in a limited area.

Fensham says YIMBY’s argument that blanket rezoning will reduce the price of housing because there will be more sites to be developed is flawed because it assumes there is currently a lack of sites.

He says the opposite is the case and that there are “decades and decades” of apartment capacity across Docklands, Arden-Macauley in North Melbourne, West Melbourne and Fishermans Bend.

Statistics also show that, no matter how many dwellings councils and government approve, developers are not building them because of construction costs and lack of profitability.

Last month The Age reported that Victorian builders were shelving more flats and townhouses than they are starting, despite being given the green light to press ahead by local councils.

“The reality is that we can’t make developers make less money,” economist and housing specialist Dr Cameron Murray noted at the time.

YIMBY points to Auckland for evidence of the merits of a broad upzoning. There in 2016 the government embarked on a radical plan to upzone 75 per cent of residential land, tripling the city’s housing capacity.

A subsequent Auckland University report found that the city built an additional 27,000 homes as a result.

But the research has strong critics; including Murray, who argues the research paper’s data had major methodological flaws.

Yet, despite the criticisms, even naysayers concede YIMBY’s impact.

Its ideas – including the merits of a middle-density city – are not new; they’ve been promoted by planners and urbanists for decades.

Many a Melburnian has walked the streets of Paris and Barcelona and wondered why their own city of soaring central skyscrapers surrounded by a vast blanket of low-rise, often car-dependent neighbourhoods, can’t be more compact.

Now the message seems to have cut through, in part because the housing crisis is no longer only a problem for the lowest income earners.

“In the past there were a lot of people who talked about housing for the disadvantaged,” says Todorovic. “But housing affordability and insecurity is now an issue for an increasingly larger part of the community.

“There are now a lot of people talking about Millennials being priced out of the housing market.”

YIMBY Melbourne says it’s gearing up for an even bigger second year under its motto, taken from Italian poet Giovanni Boccaccio: “In this world, you only get what you grab for.”

It may not have all the answers to the housing crisis, but it is grabbing lots of attention.

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