About Us
We believe:
Housing is a human right and we must ensure everyone has access to housing.
People have a variety of housing needs so we must offer diverse housing options to meet their needs.
Increasing the supply of all housing types helps mitigate rising housing costs.
Increasing the supply of housing is necessary, but not sufficient, to reduce housing costs.
We should allow multi-residential housing throughout the entire region, in all neighbourhoods, and support the most affordable housing options in particular.
A community is best defined by not only current members, but also by those who wish to join.
Denser housing has additional benefits beyond affordability such as walkability, and environmental benefits, such as less car-dependence.
We are Waterloo Region Yes in my Backyard
We advocate for allowing more types of housing in all neighbourhoods of Waterloo Region. Currently, many neighbourhoods are zoned to exclude many housing types such as apartment buildings, townhomes and other forms of multi-home buildings such as lodging (rooming) houses which are all more likely to be more affordable than single detached homes. When cities exclude such housing options, they are actually excluding people from a neighbourhood. We believe this is fundamentally unjust. We should welcome new neighbours and allow others the opportunity to live and work in our community instead of building walls around our neighbourhoods.
Why Yes in my Backyard (YIMBY)?
Yes in my Backyard is the opposite of Not in my Backyard (NIMBY), which describes the attitude of some residents in a neighbourhood to oppose more housing or social services in their neighbourhood. NIMBY arguments only make sense if you ignore these questions: Where else are people supposed to go? If allowing people here is bad, why is it better to force people elsewhere?