What Does a Left-wing Pro-housing Stance Look Like?

I’m pro-housing, pro density, and pro mixed-use walkable neighbourhoods. I live on a north facing hill within a 20-minute walk from a town centre with a library, theatre, and train station. I absolutely think this is where we need more good housing for all kinds of households - so I am literally ‘yes in my backyard’. Yet yimbyism can be problematic for the pro-housing left, especially those of us who are environmentalists as much as we are leftists.

Unfortunately, yimby rhetoric is often small government and pro-market, tends toward side-lining nature and greenspace, is anti-community engagement, and opposed to design standards instead stressing ‘consumer choice’. This neoliberal yimbyism is greenwashed with neat lines about energy use, public transport, walkability, and reducing sprawl. All of which are good arguments for increased density, but we need to go further than that for genuinely sustainable, resilient homes and neighbourhoods.

For those concerned with ensuring healthy housing for all, strong communities, climate change resilience, alongside the protection of biodiversity, much of the contemporary housing discourse can be demoralising. Nimbys co-opt our concerns to argue against new housing, while yimbys describe our calls for tree-protections and design standards as being anti-housing. I’ve had leftwing environmentalists asking me if denser housing and urban ngahere are just incompatible.

So, what does a pro-housing, environmentalist, leftwing position look like? Here are some core leftwing, green positions contrasted with common neoliberal yimby talking points.

Neoliberal Yimbism

Reducing public consultation, seeing it as a platform for nimbyism.

Minimising planning rules, zones, and design standards, arguing that the market knows best, and/or that ‘housing abundance’ will enable consumer choice demanding better design.

Using the lure of the potential for public housing to justify changing the rules to benefit private development, regardless of whether that public housing eventuates.

Focusing attention, resources, and effort in the part of the city primarily dominated by middle class professionals and capitalists.

Treating sunlight, privacy, outlook, internal space provisions, and access to green open space as nice to haves that people can pay for if they want, and that if they can’t at least ‘it’s better than living in a car’.

Advocating for a cycle of replacement (build, demolish, build, demolish, build...) which may serve the market but doesn’t serve community or environment.

Minimising the concerns and needs of the disability community, arguing this is met by level access to ground floor units, and arguing that people can always move to housing that meets their needs should their needs change.

Arguing that consumer choice will ultimately deliver variation, and that developers know what the market needs.

Advocating for mechanical systems for heating, cooling, and ventilation to solve the problems created by poor siting and orientation.

Seeking ‘under-utilised’ greenspace for conversion to housing.

Viewing the city as seperate from nature and arguing for intensification as a means to protect nature elsewhere. Viewing protection of mature trees on private land as an infringement of property rights, and arguing that street trees can replace these.

Environmental Left

Constructive broad-based community engagement, with a particular focus on raising the voices of the most vulnerable.

The creation of masterplans and development frameworks, supported by design standards and example typologies, that ensure that we get the housing and urban outcomes we want and need - especially for the most vulnerable groups.

Campaigning for public housing, and enabling community housing and urban papakāinga. Prioritising these over profit-led private development.

Recognising that most working-class jobs aren’t in the CBD, and that while we do need more housing close to the CBD, we also need the same level of care and attention to urban outcomes that the inner areas get, in South and West Auckland.

Acknowledging the body of research into human physical and mental well-being in relation to the built environment, and treating sunlight, privacy, outlook, internal space provisions, and access to green open space as equity issues.

Designing buildings that are climate resilient, adaptable, and using durable materials that (in the event of demolition) can be easily reused or recycled.

Advocating for a wide range of accessible homes that meet the needs of the 20% of the population who are disabled, and that enable people to continue living in their homes even as their needs change over their lives.

Advocating for developments to incorporate a range of typologies and unit sizes to serve varied household types and sizes, including intergenerational and multi-family living, and work from home options.

Site-specific design for winter sun and summer shade, cross ventilation and stack ventilation, using passive solar principles learned over millennia.

Ensuring that parks and green corridors are maintained and increased alongside increasing density.

Defending urban ngahere and treating the city as an ecosystem connected to the rest of biosphere, and working to ensure it is a healthy one, with thriving biodiversity, and nature based solutions for infrastructure and buildings alike.

We can have equitable homes and communities that work with and incorporate nature. This future is possible - but if we want it, we can’t just leave it to the market to provide, we have to collectively plan for it and demand it.

Jessamine Fraser, BArch (Hons), ANZIA, is a NZ Registered Architect and the director of Rain Studio Architects. She teaches at Unitec School of Architecture and AUT School of Future Environments, and is currently a candidate for the Green Party on the Future West team for Waitākere Ranges Local Board.