Housing density has been a brisk topic lately with the introduction of SB 827, a bill that is perhaps the most radical assault on California’s affordability crisis that lawmakers have seen. The chief architect of the bill, Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) has laid out a plan to all but abolish the city’s Byzantine regulations on land use controls and other residential zoning restrictions throughout California’s neighborhoods.

In nothing short of a housing revolution, SB 827 would unfetter restrictions on development in markets that NIMBYs have long dominated. But anti-housing activists are spoiling for a fight, with some camps saying that the bill will "cause massive damage to the global environment for thousands of years.”

A new generation of enviros would take issue with that sentiment – as we noted in an earlier article, a new era of YIMBYs are coming around to believing that denser housing will reduce the carbon footprint.

Although Wiener, along with co-authors Assemblymember Phil Ting and Sen. Nancy Skinner are moving the legislation forward under the dome of the Capitol, Vox sat down with Brian Hanlon, a leader in the YIMBY movement and an activist who first dreamed up the bill.

READ THE COLORFUL INTERVIEW HERE

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