With victories in Los Angeles and Washington, a new Left-YIMBY alliance in big city politics takes center stage

LOS ANGELES — The revolution in American housing policy continues to accelerate.

This week’s wins by Nithya Raman And Janeese Lewis George in the mayoral elections in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., join a growing group of elected officials who are calling for both strong protections for renters and more housing construction.

The candidates’ new combination of pro-renter and pro-development policies has created strange bedfellows, uniting the party’s factions. an urban left at war for more than a decade as housing costs in cities have soared. The socialist camp blamed real estate and argued that the only path to affordability lies in restrictions on rents and public ownership of housing. The YIMBY movement, short for Yes In My Back Yard, has pointed to zoning rules and other development restrictions and says the general housing shortage is at the root of the problem.

Raman and Lewis George’s ancestry follows that of Zohran Mamdani in New York last year, who also espoused socialist and YIMBY perspectives during his successful mayoral campaign.