The Rise of the "Left-YIMBY" in NYC
Approval of pro-housing-development ballot measures suggests that the old "home voter" coalition is dead.
Voters’ passage last week of key New York City Charter changes—which will shift certain powers over zoning from the city council to the mayor—was the work of the same coalition that elected Zohran Mamdani mayor, plus an enlarged group of historically Democratic constituencies that supported Andrew Cuomo. The “no” voters, by contrast, were concentrated in neighborhoods that voted both for Cuomo in 2025 and Donald Trump for president in 2024.
The results reflect the dwindling political clout of the small-homeowner coalition that once bolstered Mayors Edward Koch, Rudolph Giuliani, and Michael Bloomberg. That group, spread over outlying parts of the outer boroughs, is more suburban in lifestyle, has high auto ownership, and is less well-served by public transit. Its waning voting power reflects the substantially increased population in areas of Northern Brooklyn and western Queens rezoned in the Giuliani and Bloomberg years.
The success of the charter amendments also indicates newly supportive attitudes from the city’s governing Democratic class toward new housing development, conditioned on stringent rent regulation and mandatory inclusion of units at significantly below-market rents. The partisan voting majority has embraced this change of view.
The charter reform proposals got about as many votes as Mamdani, but because fewer voters overall flipped their ballot papers over to weigh in on the proposals, the “yes” vote had a higher percentage of the total. As of November 6, nearly complete resultsshowed Mamdani at 50.4 percent and proposals 2, 3 and 4 at 58.3 percent, 56.7 percent, and 58.3 percent, respectively.
Mamdani’s strongest support came from areas of northern Brooklyn and western Queens that have seen an influx of new housing in recent years. Much of this housing is now inhabited by college-educated younger adults who responded enthusiastically to his campaign. Mamdani-supporting areas also voted for the three City Charter amendments. But the charter coalition was bigger, adding middle-class neighborhoods like Spuyten Duyvil in the Bronx, as well as Forest Hills and Flushing in Queens, that gave Cuomo a majority. In addition, most of the affluent neighborhoods in Manhattan south of 96th Street that supported Cuomo also voted for charter change.
The remaining areas that voted against the charter changes overlapped substantially with those that supported Trump in 2024. With Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa campaigning against the charter changes, opposition to the proposals seems to have become coded as Republican in an overwhelmingly Democratic city.
That wasn’t always the pattern of support for growth-suppressing zoning changes. The anti-growth “downzonings” that occurred in small homeowner-dominated parts of the city under Koch, Giuliani, and Bloomberg affected neighborhoods that subsequently supported both Kamala Harris and Trump in 2024. Both Southeast Queens and the Northeast Bronx, for example, exhibit the crazy-quilt of restrictive zoning districts from that period. Asked to vote on proposals that may doom that zoning pattern, residents of these Democratic-leaning areas nevertheless said “yes.”
The small-homeowner constituency, now split by partisanship, thus was overwhelmed by the larger Democratic constituency concentrated in the higher-density parts of the city. This, too, is a political change. It reflects the wide reach of Mamdani’s “affordability” message (though the candidate himself did not express support for the proposals until Election Day).
Only a few years ago, I was decrying the alliance between anti-growth Democratic politicians and the well-funded preservationist groups that opposed new housing in affluent parts of the city. That relationship seemed to stymie any positive movement forward on housing.
But a sea change occurred with the results of the 2023 New York City Housing and Vacancy Survey in February 2024. That survey reported that, in the wake of the draconian 2019 changes to rent stabilization made by the state legislature, New York City’s rental vacancy rate had plummeted to 1.4 percent. Politicians loath to undo their ill-considered changes to rent stabilization understood that something had to be done on the supply side to make more housing available for New Yorkers.
Thus, the city’s governing Democratic political class has evolved from a posture that might be described as “Left-NIMBYism” to “Left-YIMBYism.” (NIMBY and YIMBY are acronyms for “Not in My Back Yard” and “Yes in My Back Yard.”)
The age of left-NIMBYism began with Bill de Blasio’s inauguration as mayor in 2014. De Blasio enacted Mandatory Inclusionary Housing (MIH), a requirement that housing developments benefitting from rezonings provide specified percentages of below-market units.
The city council saw MIH as a starting point for negotiations to secure yet higher percentages of affordable housing from developers. This was a way for councilors to grab city subsidy resources that might otherwise go to someone else’s district. The age of Left-NIMBYism was epitomized by the sad saga of One45, a Harlem housing development rejected in 2022 by the local council member as not affordable enough.
Left-YIMBYism, by contrast, accepts the terms of MIH and even—in the case of the “City of Yes” zoning amendments enacted in 2024—lesser affordability conditions. In the city’s low-density sections—the homeowner areas subject to all those past downzonings from Koch through Bloomberg—Left-YIMBYism even allows the private housing construction market to function without affordability conditions.
The sudden success of Left-YIMBYism has resulted in a surge in pro-housing actions by state legislators and the city council, in addition to “City of Yes.” The legislature has repealed the size cap on new high-rise residential buildings, subject to an MIH requirement. One45 has been resurrected. The council has approved a series of MIH rezonings. The charter changes, which also make explicit reference to MIH, continue this trend. Even some preservationists are on board.
The political consensus behind Left-YIMBYism and city charter reform is infinitely better than the Left-NIMBYist political environment we have left behind, as well as Sliwa’s Right-NIMBYism. The city council’s anti-charter-change campaign was an aggressive defense of individual council members’ right to be NIMBYs, whether from the left or right. A majority of the city’s voters has now decisively rejected this approach.
New Yorkers should understand, however, that well-meant pro-housing initiatives, overlaid with a framework of heavy regulation through rent stabilization and MIH, represent only a partial solution to housing affordability. The city’s housing-supply crisis may be alleviated, particularly if Mayor Mamdani builds on the reforms that have recently been achieved.
True affordability, however, requires far more openness to unrestricted private investment in new housing than we are likely to see in his tenure. New Yorkers who want to see this problem solved still have lots of organizing and persuading to do.
Eric Kober is a former New York City planner and a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.