The nation’s largest pro-housing conference comes to the South for the first time this November. Here’s why North Carolina is the place to be.
YIMBYtown is hosted by CITYBUILDER in collaboration with a broad coalition of local partners: RaleighForward, WakeUP Wake County, Yes! in my Triangle, NC Housing Table, and Southern Urbanism.
For ten years, YIMBYtown has brought together housing advocates and organizers, policymakers and elected officials; all come together to learn and share ideas to figure out how to get more housing built. From Boulder to Oakland to Portland to New Haven, the conference has helped grow a national movement for more housing choices and more affordable communities.
Honestly, it feels fitting that it’s coming to the South now.
Housing affordability isn’t just a coastal city problem anymore. Fast-growing regions like the Triangle are facing many of the same challenges. With the future of American growth increasingly being negotiated in places like North Carolina.
Not in theory. Not in policy papers. But right now, on the ground.
Every month across the Triangle, our local governments are actively making decisions about whether we build up or out. In Raleigh and Durham alone, there are nearly a hundred rezonings each year. Advocates are working at the local and state levels to change the rules that make these projects work. And YIMBYs are winning.
Here, we are still building housing.
A lot of housing. Not enough. But building matters.
Over the last several years, Raleigh has been one of the most active housing markets in the country, ranking among the national leaders in both single-family and multifamily construction. With thousands of new homes and apartments built across the Triangle, rents have started to come down.
People can feel the affect of new housing. We see it in the cranes downtown. In the apartments opening along transit corridors. In the incremental infill projects quietly appearing inside existing neighborhoods, and in the small developers trying to build duplexes, cottage courts, ADUs, corner stores, and mixed-use housing again.
The work is of course unfinished. With real tensions being built with every building, every single council meeting still contains arguments over housing. Even with progress on reforms, with every project, the Triangle is still wrestling with what kind of region we want to become.
That is exactly why YIMBYtown belongs here.
Our theme this year is Y’all in My Backyard, bringing a little Southern hospitality to the national pro-housing movement.
Southern hospitality is about welcoming people, making room at the table, and treating new neighbors like they belong.
We think that same spirit should extend to how we build our communities.
Y’all is an expression of abundance. Replacing Yes with Y’all in the classic YIMBY is our way of signaling we want a Southern flavor of the YIMBY movement. Complete with front porches, corner stores, apartments over shops, grandparents living near their grandchildren, and kids riding bikes to the park. Places with more housing choices for people at different stages of life and different incomes. Because there’s a long tradition of building these kinds of places in the South.
Y’all in My Backyard is about making room for more neighbors while building the kinds of communities we all want to call home.
Y’all come to Raleigh!
November 17–19, we’re bringing 1,000+ people to downtown Raleigh for three days of housing policy, politics, and practical conversations about getting more housing built. There’ll be five programming tracks covering everything from grassroots organizing and housing stability to zoning reform, transportation, and presentations from real developers who are building housing. Check out all our speakers on the full schedule.
And we especially want our North Carolina people there! Come meet people doing this work across the country, share what’s happening here, and bring home ideas for your own community.
We can’t wait to welcome y’all to Raleigh!
- Jenn Truman
CITYBUILDER | YIMBYtown Raleigh Host Committee
Jenn Truman is a young designer, leader, and advocate based in Raleigh, she is embedded in the local community through both her professional and volunteer work. Jenn is a regular contributor to and Founder of CITYBUILDER.