What is YIMBY Fort Collins and what does it stand for? Here's how it came to be.
Fort Collins resident Peter Erickson says YIMBY activists like himself can usually point to one specific project or personal experience that marked their entry into local housing advocacy.
For him, it was 140 Oak. St.
The site, which today provides 79 homes in the heart of Old Town at Oak 140, was identified for affordable housing development through a partnership between Housing Catalyst and the Downtown Development Authority in 2019. Every unit was going to be affordable, and it was going to be located a few blocks from where Erickson lives and owns a home.
Inspired by housing activism in the San Francisco Bay Area, he felt an urgent need to go to public hearings and speak out in order to protect the project.
At the neighborhood meeting, held remotely during the early months of the COVID pandemic, "I remember the opposition was nearly universal," Erickson said. "I was generally the only person who spoke up in favor of the project."
There were concerns about building height, parking and compatibility with the neighborhood. Even a resident living next door in another tall building was worried about the project's impact on their views.
A lot of people say they're in favor of affordable housing, Erickson said, but "there's a difference between saying in the abstract that you support something and being willing to stand up and commit and support those projects even when they're in your neighborhood."
"We need people to stand up, to appear at hearings, to be counted as supporting these specific projects, not just in the abstract but concretely," he said.
And that's what YIMBY Fort Collins members are hoping to do.
A year after the chapter's formation, the Coloradoan sat down with its leadership, all volunteers, to understand who they are and what the organization is working toward, while exploring some criticism and skepticism from residents on the opposite side of changes to Fort Collins' land use code who have openly questioned YIMBY motives.
So who are the people of YIMBY Fort Collins and how did it get started?
YIMBY stands for Yes In My Backyard, and the national nonprofit YIMBY Action is "a network of people who advocate for abundant, affordable housing and inclusive, sustainable communities across the United States," according to its website.
YIMBY Fort Collins formed, in part, as a reaction to opposition to the land use code changes that City Council passed. Another freshly formed coalition, Preserve Fort Collins, had successfully petitioned to have the code repealed by collecting enough voter signatures to equal 10% of the number of people who voted in the prior city election.
Old Town Fort Collins resident and YIMBY member Chris Conway said he had for years worked on trying to find solutions around homelessness, and that brought him to a realization: “We were tackling a lot of the symptoms but we weren’t getting at the root cause, which is that there aren’t enough homes to go around.”
But the secondary-school English teacher also noticed, after moving back to Fort Collins, how many of his friends and their families had moved to places like Wellington or Loveland because they couldn't afford housing in the city.
"It's just gotten worse in the last five years. It's just kind of accelerated," he said.
Now he sees his coworkers getting priced out and driving an hour from Greeley or Longmont for work.
Conway said he has followed housing issues independently and has always been interested in city planning because his grandmother had been a city planner in the Denver area.
Conway essentially grew up in Fort Collins, moving here at age 9 with his parents, who came to Fort Collins to help start the nonprofit Trees, Water & People, based in Old Town.
"They loved Fort Collins because it wasn’t like Boulder and it wasn't like some other places, in that anybody could live here regardless of how rich or poor they were — they could make a life here," Conway said. "And it wasn’t just an enclave for the rich. That's what I saw growing up and going to Tavelli and Lincoln and Poudre (schools). I felt like it was a town where people of all different social statuses lived together."
Kate Conley, a Fort Collins resident and architect specializing in multifamily affordable housing development, said she had known about YIMBY because of her work. In California, YIMBYs always showed up to advocate for projects designed by her firm.
When she and her husband moved to Fort Collins in 2021, "I wanted to return the favor."
Conley's husband had grown up in Colorado and had always wanted to move back.
"When the pandemic hit, we realized this would be the moment," she said. They found their dream house and fell in love with Fort Collins.
"This community has embraced us in a way I didn’t expect. And I definitely didn't feel that way in the Bay Area," Conley said. "I already feel like I know my neighbors better. Already feel like we’re a more integrated part of the community."
She owns an architecture firm with two others. "Our mission is to tackle the housing crisis at all scales," she said.
"My work every day is directly affected by land use codes and what is or isn't allowable," Conley said. "When I see that playing out in Fort Collins, where I now also have clients, it has a real impact on what we can do as a project team."
Their work spans multiple states and project sizes. Her smallest project is an addition for an accessory dwelling unit, and her largest is 135 units for veterans, formerly homeless individuals and people with disabilities in downtown Santa Fe.
"There are a lot of people in a lot of pain in this the city and every city across the country, really, in terms of housing costs," she said.
Erickson moved to Fort Collins in 2016 to teach German language, literature and culture at Colorado State University.
Raised in Palo Alto, California, he had also been inspired by reading "Golden Gates" and learning about what YIMBY forebear Sonja Trauss was doing in the Bay Area.
He described that she would show up to hearings for housing developments, but she was young and brash, different from the regular attendees, who were either the project developers or nearby residents sharing their concerns.
"She was showing up to these hearings on behalf of renters like her," Erickson said, and was continually asked questions by the people trying to understand why she was there: "Who are you with? Are developers paying you? You don’t live across the street?"
"From its inception, it's a movement that I think is unapologetically progressive," Erickson said, noting they show up to hearings to support both deed-restricted affordable housing and market-rate housing.
Conley and Conway each recounted how they and others had independently reached out to YIMBY Denver to find resources for housing issues Fort Collins was facing. When the first land use code repeal effort was successful, enough people from Fort Collins had reached out that the Denver group connected them to each other, Conley said.
After the founding members were connected, YIMBY Fort Collins started at a meetup at a downtown coffee shop with five people and a baby in attendance.
Conley said today the chapter has a couple dozen active volunteers and 400 to 500 people on their mailing list. They have a social media presence on Facebook and Instagram, along with a website.
"What we’ve noticed as we continue to work in the community is that there was already very strong pro-housing interest here. We put a name on it," she said, and "created a signpost for people to gather to." She believes YIMBY Fort Collins' leadership could not have kept the momentum going without the support they found in Fort Collins.
"Just by spreading our message and educating people on what we believe, we find the folks and they come to us," Conley said.
So what does YIMBY Fort Collins advocate for?
Most notably, YIMBY Fort Collins has advocated for changes to the city's land use code. The organization supports higher density development, allowing more multi-unit housing in residential zones, fast-tracking the development review process, decreasing parking minimums and relaxing the city's U+2 residential occupancy ordinance.
A review of their Facebook page over the past year shows they've organized forums with Democratic state Reps. Cathy Kipp and Andy Boesenecker. They've hosted panel discussions on land use and development processes with realtors, city planners, the directors of local affordable housing nonprofits and Larimer County Commissioner Kristin Stephens.
In the November City Council election, YIMBY Fort Collins endorsed four candidates: Jeni Arndt, Emily Francis, Julie Pignataro and Melanie Potyondy. All won their races.
But YIMBY Fort Collins has also been the source of questions and skepticism.
At City Council meetings this fall, residents aligned with Preserve Fort Collins criticized the motives of YIMBY. Some of those videos are posted to the Preserve Fort Collins website.
"The YIMBY movement started with self-serving agendas to force the production of more housing that they could live in, no matter the consequences to the working-class communities impacted," Kathryn Dubiel stated during public comment on Sept. 19.
Referring to events involving YIMBY movements in other states, she said: "When faced with challenges from housing rights activists, including ones based in communities of color, YIMBYs co-opted the positions of these housing justice adherents. In fact, they have a long and disturbing history of clashing with these adherents for housing justice."
"YIMBYs have pushed pro-gentrification, trickle-down housing policies that have generated huge profits for real estate investors, and they've continually ignored the negative impacts of their policies on working-class residents," she said.
A November Facebook post by Preserve Fort Collins described YIMBY Fort Collins as having a radical agenda. On its website, Preserve also questions the origins and motives of local YIMBY members. It claims the organization funds local efforts through the national organization, using dark money.
"YIMBY Action is a pro-development, pro-density organization that uses ‘people-centric’ language to mask their corporate-centric agenda, and they are endorsing a slate of candidates in our local election," Preserve's website states. "YIMBY Action’s process is to 'shape the candidates they endorse' and are also likely to back them with dark money."
Conley said it's disingenuous to say YIMBY is in the pockets of developers: "We're just pro-housing, and that's who does that work."
"Developers build housing," she said. "Your house was built by a developer. So, if you’re anti-developer, you’re anti-housing."
On Preserve's website, there are links to articles with headlines like:
To understand some of the origins of skepticism toward YIMBY, you can look to the polarization in the San Francisco Bay Area, highlighted in some of those articles.
There, housing advocates have been at odds. Some anti-displacement groups and the local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) are opposed to YIMBY stances and tactics.
California critics say the YIMBY movement has ignored that development can lead to displacement of marginalized communities and contribute to a rise in housing costs. They accuse YIMBYs of being arrogant, overzealous, overlooking racism in the history of development, and ignoring other tools like rent control, renter protections and building more public housing. They also point out comments made by YIMBY pioneer Trauss that were racially charged.
In Fort Collins, there also have been sharp words and debates around the land use code and the YIMBY movement. But nothing like what's been going on in the Bay Area. And here, there are also different alliances.
The Fort Collins DSA chapter has been one of YIMBY Fort Collins' closest allies, Erickson said, while Denver's chapter has been more resistant to development.
Affordable housing providers who build and manage deed-restricted units also have aligned with YIMBY in support of allowing for increased density, including through the local coalition One Voice For Housing.
Different YIMBY chapters and members across the U.S. seem to have evolving or differing emphasis on some tools, as well.
"We have, I would say, a particularly strong affiliation with those affordable housing developers in Fort Collins in part because of Kate Conley and her personality and her connections," Erickson said.
Conley says in addition to allowing more housing types in more places, having a streamlined review process is an important tool for the city. If a land use code has a set of criteria with objective standards that must be followed, then you can address the housing issue faster by forgoing public hearings and allowing administrative approval. A longer development review can take two or three years, "and time is money" that can thwart housing for people.
Fort Collins' latest land use code, repealed by council on Tuesday night, allowed expedited review only for projects that have an affordable housing component. (Council will consider in January how it wants to proceed to update the 28-year-old standards in the code after a second successful repeal effort.)
Erickson said he thinks YIMBYs are, by and large, people who favor an "all of the above" approach. "We need all of the solutions and all of the tools that we can come up with to address this crisis," he said.
"We can acknowledge many of the arguments that economists make that supply and demand are crucial and that we need more supply," he said, "but we also recognize that will never be sufficient in the short term and that we desperately need Section 8 vouchers and deed-restricted affordable units and missing middle housing" and other tools.
There are "lots of levers and tools" and legitimate disagreements about them, he said. For example, he believes enacting rent control without doing other things to address housing prices, like adding housing supply, is a mistake. He said it won't have its intended effect if it doesn't also include income limits for renters.
But he and Conley both noted they support rent control, which remains illegal in Colorado, as a tool to incorporate.
Conway cited the chapter's support of "other types of creative housing reforms to make housing cheaper," like requiring just cause evictions, and he noted YIMBY Fort Collins endorsed the city's proposed property tax increase to create a designated stream of money for affordable housing projects.
But everywhere, including in Fort Collins, YIMBYs are unapologetically in favor of building more housing.
"We think the root cause of a lot of the housing problems is a lack of supply of homes. There’s not enough homes to meet the demand," Conway said.
Conley says: "Yes, housing needs to get built in order to make housing more affordable for people because right now, we’re all competing for the dregs."
"Ultimately, what I want is more units built," Erickson said. And while deed-restricted units are crucial, they still address only one subset of a population in need of more affordable housing.
Erickson contends that what really causes gentrification is the blocking of new housing in more wealthy neighborhoods, which pushes new construction to the more affordable working-class neighborhoods on the outskirts.
"There are incredible opportunities for additional housing in Old Town, and I say this as someone who owns a historic home in Old Town," he said. "We have massive streets that can accommodate additional vehicles, in terms of parking. We have back alleys that are perfect for ADUs. There is a lot that we could accommodate without changing the neighborhood character. If Old Town persists in resisting, we're going to see housing instead go up" in places that have historically been more diverse and more affordable.
Increasing density potential makes people nervous, Erickson said, but the closer a city gets to achieving its housing goals, the less pressure there is on prices. And he contends that if other cities are also working on it, Fort Collins could benefit from fewer people fleeing unaffordable situations in Denver and California.
Where does YIMBY get its funding?
YIMBY Fort Collins is a chapter of YIMBY Action, a 501(c)(4) social welfare organization.
The Fort Collins chapter gets an annual allowance from member dues to conduct its activities, and Conway estimated this was around $600.
Conley said that has gone to fund things like making photocopies and banners and buying a pop-up tent.
A local grant from Bohemian Foundation for a concert paid for the bands that performed, Conway said.
"We have never spent any money on any campaign for any city," he said.
YIMBY follows a typical structure for a national nonprofit with local chapters, Conley said. The local chapter gets resource support from YIMBY Action in the form of a Slack communications platform, access to digital tools for social media and training on things like writing an op-ed or public speaking.
YIMBY Fort Collins also benefits from learning from the work going on in other chapters, Conway said.
The umbrella 501(c)(4) can accept donations from individuals and corporations, and does not have to disclose those donors. It can endorse candidates, lobby and advocate on political issues, but its work must not primarily be political activity, like influencing an election of a candidate. It can lobby or advocate for the public good.
On its 2021 990 tax form, the most recent available, the national YIMBY Action estimates money spent on endorsing candidates represented less than 2% of its annual budget. It reported just more than $1 million in revenue, 12 paid employees and an estimated 2,700 volunteers.
Closer to home, a December fundraiser on ColoradoGives.org showed donations of $1,140 to benefit both the Fort Collins and Denver chapters.
Critics of the YIMBY movement say it's fueled by the interests of developers and, particularly in California, tech companies.
There, some of the YIMBY organizations are PACs and must disclose their donors, which have included tech company employees and executives, real estate employees, attorneys and architects. These large donations have helped fund statewide lobbying efforts that included statewide policies that, if passed, would have had the effect of overriding local control.
Locally, none of the four endorsed City Council candidates received donations from YIMBY Fort Collins or YIMBY Action, but some of them did receive individual contributions from YIMBY Fort Collins members in amounts of $75 or $100.
"Every time someone who’s anti-housing criticizes us — 'Oh, you must have deep pockets, you have all this dark tech money — it makes me sad," Conley said. "It makes me sad that you think that’s the only reason I could care about this. You think I need some dark ulterior motive to care about my neighbors having housing.”
But "change is scary, and this is a reaction to potential change," she said.
When asked whether her interests as an architect influence her support for building more housing, Conley said: "The reason I have my business is that I care about the housing crisis. Of course I do well if we do a good job at solving the housing crisis. The motivation for my business is to solve this very deep societal problem. ... Why wouldn’t I use those skills I’ve honed over the last two decades to solve an issue I feel very deeply about?"
YIMBY leadership locally "are not private property developers," Erickson said, noting Conley's work as an affordable housing architect, Conway's job as a teacher and his own role as a humanities teacher. "That's not who we are."
The policies they support are meant to slow down competition in the market, not fuel it, "and that’s not necessarily in the interest of developers or banks," he said. "We represent the interest of renters."
What’s next for YIMBY Fort Collins
In its first year, the land use code has been at the center of YIMBY Fort Collins' attention.
But there are other issues the organization has been paying attention to, like the 24/7 homeless shelter planned in north Fort Collins and the Sanctuary on the Green development in northwest Fort Collins.
Reducing mandatory parking minimums is on the list of priorities, particularly when it comes to accessory dwelling unit development.
As another example, Erickson circled back to the Oak 140 project, where city rules required 1.5 stories of the five-story building to be parking, even though he said there's a public garage across the street, it's two blocks from the MAX bus line, and the building was developed for downtown workers.
"Think about all of the additional units you could have fit in there and all of the additional people that could have been housed," he said.
Alternatives to reduce parking requirements could include in-lieu parking fees that require a developer to contribute to communal parking rather than build it itself, shifting the responsibility but not necessarily the cost to the city.
Removing "oceans of parking lots" mandated by the code is also a way to make room for additional housing, Erickson said, while making the city more walkable and bikeable.
Fighting sprawl is a priority, as well, and will take regional collaboration because places like Weld County are experiencing explosive growth, Erickson said. That's why YIMBY Fort Collins supports statewide legislation to address housing problems.
As for the group's motivations, Conway thinks it's obvious:
"You see people homeless on the street ... you see families not be able to afford the city," Conway said. "You see schools closing because there are not enough kids around in the city. And you think to yourself: I want to do something about that."
This article originally appeared on Fort Collins Coloradoan: YIMBY Fort Collins: Who's who and the group's origins, stances
