'Housing Twitter' and the Great Debate

Eillie Anzilotti writes: "…if you’ve ever seen a discussion of a new development in your neighborhood, or a new state law offering protections to tenants, you may have felt the collective blood pressure rising as you scroll through endless, increasingly vitriolic and personal replies."

"Welcome, you’ve just discovered housing Twitter."

There are massive disagreements and heated playing out on Housing Twitter (one of the "subcultures and loose associations of people who gravitate toward one another" on Twitter, according to Anzilotti), but the one thing everyone agrees on is that there's a crisis in housing in this country. "What’s less agreed upon is what to do about it," writes Anzilotti.

On housing Twitter, people strongly identify with what they believe will best solve the housing crisis, whether that be sweeping rent control, building many more units, some combination of the two, or something else entirely. Discord among people in these different camps is frequent and often aggressive.

Planners might have hoped for decades for a higher profile or new turf for the debates of the professional and academic field of planning, and its many related intersections. Here it is.

The lengthy article attempts to create a taxonomy of participants in Housing twitter, at one point splitting people into two camps—YIMBY and NIMBY—before also acknowledging subcategories—like PHIMBYs, market urbanists, anti-gentrification advocates, and tenants rights advocates.