My name is Stanley Johnson, I am African American, and I have been a part of the YIMBY movement since late 2016. Like so many Angelenos, I came to this city from out of state. I moved to a small studio apartment in Hollywood next to Paramount Studios in 2003. It was just a room and a tiny bathroom (like a small Motel 6) and it cost $650/month (which, for me, was a lot). It was full of many Hollywood hopefuls and the neighborhood was predominantly Latino.

A Tale of Two Cities

I quickly gained two vastly different perspectives of Los Angeles. The first perspective was how amazing this city was. There were palm trees everywhere, an amazing amount of diversity of people, there were beautiful sunny skies all the time. I have never been somewhere that had so many things to do, the number of restaurants alone is just staggering. A person would have to purposely avoid everyone and everything to be bored here. It felt like the sky was the limit and Los Angeles quickly became my all-time favorite city.

However, my second impression was a question: how can a city so rich with people, diversity, culture, opportunity, and jobs be so poor at the same time? The city was incredibly segregated and tents would consistently line up along the streets of downtown. Hollywood was full of parking lots, graffiti, and trash. Downtown only had life from 8 am to 5 pm Monday to Friday! How could the leaders of a city so large and with so many amazing people neglect so many of its neighborhoods? And what was worse; as I ventured to parts of South Los Angeles, one of the poorest neighborhoods in L.A., all I saw was trash on the sidewalks, car shops, cash loan places, liquor stores and fast-food restaurants with bulletproof windows.

How I Learned To Love Local Politics

Like many people, I voted for state and national elections, but I did not pay attention to the local elections. It was not heavily advertised and I was quite honestly too busy working 12 hour days and building my career. I was busy with hobbies outside of work so I just accepted the reality that Los Angeles was amazing for some and horrible for others without thinking about what our leaders could be doing to make it a better place for all. Later, I started to visit more and more large cities and I always wondered why we lacked public transit, density, tall buildings, and city pride. However, those thoughts would quickly go away when I returned and as I went on with my day to day life.

As the years went by, more and more development was happening and the public transit was getting more and more attention. I got excited every time I saw a crane and I started following Curbed and Urbanize LA to see what the city was doing to become… a city. However, in 2016, a campaign was just starting to form to stop development; Measure S. This campaign scared me like no other.

To me, the backers of the campaign seemed to be mainly older white homeowners who just did not want development in their neighborhoods. They even had a campaign called “Preserve LA”. I thought to myself how privileged and entitled must one be to call their campaign “Preserve LA”. Preserve traffic jams, neighborhood inequality, homelessness, and unaffordable prices? If a survey was done, I knew most people in South Los Angeles and other minority-majority neighborhoods would never vote against such improvements.

So in the first quarter of 2017, I decided to volunteer for the campaign against Measure S. I went from phone banks to door to door and then to neighborhood council meetings. I always volunteered for South Los Angeles. It was amazing to see how much heart, passion, and pride they had for their neighborhoods. The residents consistently wanted more safety, better selections of shops, well-funded schools, better infrastructure, and nearby jobs. At the same time, they wanted security where they live (like everyone else). While I attended many of these meetings, I would see paid and non-paid volunteers from the anti-development groups. Most of them appeared to be white, and they came in with a well-suited plan.

The Politics of Fear

The best way to create action among people is to use “fear” and to “create an enemy”. We have seen this play out many times throughout recent history and it is a proven technique that works. The narrative they painted was, “You are at risk of being displaced from your homes and it is all because of the Greedy Developers”. They classified every new apartment complex as “luxury” and all these greedy developers wanted was to go into neighborhoods, get rid of all the current tenants and replace them with tenants who could afford to pay luxury prices. From articles to billboards to mail-in advertisements, they kept painting the narrative that development is bad for low-income neighborhoods.

These were the same people protesting AGAINST homeless housing, protesting AGAINST the purple line going through Beverly Hills, protesting AGAINST density along the Exposition line. They were not coming to South Los Angeles and asking people what they wanted in their neighborhoods. They were telling them that development would mean getting kicked out of your home. A blatant lie.

Racial Privilege and Hypocrisy

I took this personally. How much white privilege can they have? These anti-development groups are literally going to neighborhoods of color, neighborhoods they have probably never been to, and they are essentially lying to these communities in order to scare them into opposing development.

Measure S, thankfully, failed. But, as these anti-development groups lost more and more battles, they began to come after the YIMBY movement and are trying to discredit YIMBY groups by stating they are only white and privileged and they lack the understanding of working-class people. To reiterate, rich white people are going to Minority Communities, claiming that the pro-development group is white, privileged, and entitled.

I hope Hollywood has been following this as this sounds like a script for “Black Mirror”. The irony is stunning and these claims couldn’t be farther from the truth. YIMBY groups are full of people of all economic levels, of all races, ages, genders, sexes, educations, and occupations. Because of this, I am so proud to volunteer for Abundant Housing. We are a diverse group that fights for the ability of everyone to have a roof over their heads.

These anti-development groups pay attention to the local elections, something I neglected to when I first moved here. They count on low voter turnout from people like me to get their way. This was another major reason I wanted to align myself with the YIMBY movement. We work hard to make sure the public knows about every election and which candidates actually care about the people and which candidates simply do not.

Towards a Politics of “And”

As an African American, nothing makes me prouder than working with minorities from low-income communities. I love fighting for what they want and need in their neighborhoods. I’ve constantly asked, “Why do people have to choose between having nearby jobs, good dining options, entertainment, parks, good schools, public transit options, safety, cleanliness OR having the ability to actually afford housing?”.

Anti-development groups keep giving people this choice and then they demonize those who want to see neighborhoods improve. They call us profit-chasing “Gentrifiers”, and “Colonizers”. The reality is that YIMBY groups are fighting for “AND!”. We can have a vibrant, diverse, safe and productive city AND have affordable housing. With YIMBY, you can have your cake and eat it too.