The YIMBY Alliance: Scott Wiener, unions, developers, and the Democratic Party

Bob Silvestri in The Marin Post:

YIMBYs are not a grassroots movement in the traditional sense. They're more like a Silicon Valley version of grassroots: meaning it’s not that YIMBYs by and large lack opportunities to achieve their goals, it’s just that they don’t have enough money to get what they want, right now.

Senator Scott Wiener, like Senator Daryl Steinberg before him (who brought us SB-375 and Plan Bay Area), is strongly supported by construction unions, who stand to benefit from more development and particularly from the stipulation that new development require workers to be paid federally mandated, prevailing wages. All of Wiener’s proposed legislation includes provisions that new development pays union wages, which means smaller, local contractors will be shut out of the construction jobs created in each community.

11 out of Wiener’s top 14 donors are real estate and construction related groups. These include (in order of amounts donated), The State Building & Construction Trades Council, California Association of Realtors, Northern California Regional Council of Carpenters, Operating Engineers Local 3, and others.

Wiener and SB-827 are also strongly supported by a cabal of planning professionals and academics grounded in the dictates of “New Urbanism,” and by the Bay Area Council and major tech companies in need of housing for their employees (over 120 tech executives have endorsed SB-827).

None of this is surprising or nefarious, but it’s worth being aware of.

YIMBY organizations are also well-funded and by and large those identifying themselves as YIMBYs are educated, entitled young urban professionals (“Yuppies”). They are not poor, victims of racism or redlining by lenders, disenfranchised or otherwise precluded from job opportunities or the ability to live anywhere they can afford.

Brian Hanlon, the executive director of California YIMBY, who claims to have drafted SB-827 with Wiener, has been quite vocal about his financial backing from top Silicon Valley tech executives. In mid-2017, Hanlon received $500,000 from tech bigwigs like Microsoft executive Nat Friedman and Pantheon CEO Zack Rosen. His stated goal is now to get the backing of big development interests...

Rob's comment:
Though I'm a Democrat, I have to point out that Wiener also supports the dumb high-speed rail project, which of course is also supported by the construction unions that support Wiener. After all, even stupid, wasteful projects create jobs for the unions, which is all they really care about. It's a formidable alliance with a liberal patina: unions, the Democratic Party, and developers.