Brian Hanlon used to work for environmental agencies and regards himself as a political progressive. Then several years ago, he began to feel the crunch of the Bay Area housing crisis. Why was everything so insanely expensive? And what was with all these zoning laws that were preventing new houses from being built?

Hanlon switched careers and became a full-time housing advocate, one who says, “Yes In My Backyard,” to affordable housing as well as to luxury housing, condos and mixed-use projects near transit hubs. That motto is now the rallying cry for the region’s growing YIMBY movement, of which he is a leader. YIMBYs say the region must get its head out of the sand and expand its meager housing supply. How else will it ever reduce the competition for homes that keeps driving prices up – and pricing so many people out of their own communities?

“I’m someone who supports whichever housing policies are going to benefit people who need housing the most,” says Hanlon, who concedes that being a YIMBY can make for unpredictable bedfellows – for instance supporting developers while opposing aging and otherwise left-leaning NIMBY homeowners who block any new housing in their neighborhoods.

He is policy director of the San Francisco YIMBY Party and co-executive director of the California Renters Legal Advocacy and Education Fund (CaRLA), which has targeted local governments that block residential development. And, oh, yes – he and his girlfriend pay $2,000 a month for a “tiny” one-bedroom apartment in an old building in downtown Oakland.

This interview was edited for clarity and length.

Q: What does the YIMBY movement stand for, and who are the YIMBYs?

A: The YIMBY movement works to make housing more affordable and accessible by advocating for more home building.

Demographically, we’re mostly renters in our 20s and 30s who’ve been locked out of the California housing market — not because of some natural economic forces, not because we’re not hard-working enough, but because for decades now, policy at the local level — and abetted by the California state Legislature — has greatly restricted new home building.

Until now, there has been no consistent voice for people who want more homes built. The landlords and the developers talk about it, but they have their own financial motivations. We’re unique in that we’re like a consumer group for people that want homes.

Q: You talk about zoning laws and how they’ve turned suburbs and, more recently, entire cities into de facto “exclusionary” communities.

A: These policies are bad for people like me, a 30-something professional white guy. But I am by no means the type of person who’s most impacted by these policies, which historically were used to exclude people by race and class … These restrictive zoning rules still disproportionately impact low-income, black and Latino people the most, but they’ve “worked” too well — now these policies exclude the white grandchildren of their original proponents.

Q: What’s to be done?

A: Firstly, every locality has zoning rules as well as a general plan with a housing element that says, “Here’s our plan to allow so much housing of a certain density.” So if someone then presents a proposal to develop housing in accordance with those rules and that plan, the local government should have to say “yes” to it. They shouldn’t say “no” and nit-pick projects that follow all their own rules, which is what happens all the time.

Beyond that, the local rules are too restrictive. In most of the Bay Area, it is illegal to build dense housing, even near train stations. How crazy is that? So we say, “Look, given climate change, given our emissions levels, how can we not be building dense, environmentally friendly housing near jobs and transit?”

Q: You come from an environmentalist background, yet you and other YIMBYs say the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) needs reform.

A: It’s a law that’s been perverted. If someone thinks a new development will downgrade the aesthetic of their neighborhood — or not provide enough parking — they just invoke CEQA. I am a huge supporter of robust environmental protections. But if we take climate change seriously, then we need to reform CEQA.

Q: Where do you stand on rent control?

A: I support rent control, including the new protections that were increased in Oakland last year. The problem is that rent control is great for those who already have their apartment, like their apartment, and don’t think they’ll ever want to move out of their apartment. But what do we do for people who move here and young people that want to start new families? The fundamental problem is the housing shortage, and rent control doesn’t solve it. In fact, when rent control extends to things like granny flats, many homeowners decide they don’t want to bother with a tenant they can’t get rid of, so they just let the unit stay vacant.

Q: How do you feel about inclusionary zoning rules that require developers to include a certain percentage of affordable units in a project?

A: It depends. Inclusionary zoning is a program that just doesn’t create all that many units. I think there’s too much time spent debating inclusionary zoning where the differences between competing proposals will often result in maybe an extra 20 units a year. There’s just not much there. The problem is that poorly crafted inclusionary zoning programs make new home building unprofitable, so inclusionary zoning can worsen the housing shortage.

Q: What should the San Francisco of 2027 look like?

A: It would be a denser city with more housing, with better transit. It would be much more affordable. It would be an integrated, diverse city. If we don’t make that happen, San Francisco is going to become Monaco by the bay. And indeed the entire San Francisco Bay Area is on its way to becoming an exclusionary, unaffordable region.

Q: How do you not let that possibility get you down? Are you an optimist by nature?

A: Look, the tide is really turning here. The effects of restrictive home building are becoming more widely known in policy circles and environmental circles. There’s a whole lot of new grassroots organizing happening around housing. So, yes, I am optimistic for the future.

Brian Hanlon

Age: 34.

Grew up: Fairfax, Virginia.

Place of residence: Downtown Oakland.

Positions: California Renters Legal Advocacy and Education Fund (CaRLA), co-executive director; San Francisco YIMBY Party, policy director.

Previous jobs: U.S. Forest Service, grants and agreements specialist, Albany, CA, 2010 – 2016; U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, policy specialist, Washington, D.C., 2004 – 2008.

Education: University of Virginia, B.A. in Political and Social Thought, 2004; George Mason University, Master in Public Policy, 2007; Northwestern University, M.A. in American History, 2010.

Family: He lives with girlfriend Jade Jones, who is an analyst for the solar industry.

5 Facts About Brian Hanlon

1. If he won the lottery: “If the jackpot were large enough, I might be able to buy a house in Oakland! I’d then bike through the Japanese Alps while staying at inns with hot springs.”

2. After dropping out of a Ph.D. program in American history, he thought he “wanted to work in wine. I briefly worked at Piccino in San Francisco, but still hope to work part time at a natural wine bar after the YIMBY movement achieves greater organizational stability.”

3. Most of his time is spent “working, but when I find the time, I go cycling in the East Bay hills, cook for, and sometimes with, my girlfriend, and attend shows in Oakland. I biked for a couple weeks in France in 2015 and will cycle through Norway this summer.”

4. He organized the “dork revolution” at his high school: “I recruited nerdy candidates to run for student government so we could topple the preppy oligarchy. We won. I started my freshman year in college as a computer science major, but I got caught up in student activism and decided computers were boring, so I studied politics instead. I’ve always made terrible career decisions.”

5. Nowadays, he says, “I mostly read case law, LAO (Legislative Analyst’s Office) reports and housing scholarship articles, but I used to read quite a bit of fiction. I really enjoy reading Ben Lerner, but I’m so stereotypically the kind of person who likes Ben Lerner.”