Where Is the German YIMBY Movement?

Germany’s housing shortage worsens, but a push for more development and urban growth is missing.

Like construction activity on Tempelhofer Feld, a German YIMBY movement is nowhere to be found. Source: Unsplash

For all the talk about the rent being too damn high in major cities of the Anglosphere, Germany is facing a massive housing shortage, too. By 2025, Germany is projected to lack 750k housing units. Out of the promised 400k annual new units targeted by the federal government, only 290k were built last year, and the rate of construction is falling rapidly.

Higher interest rates and rising material costs are, of course, major reasons for the current slump. However, focusing on them exclusively misses a broader issue. While historically low interest rates after the Great Recession boosted construction, they also masked the growing complexities of environmental standards, building codes, and permitting procedures. These factors have played a significant role in doubling construction costs since 2000, which in turn have exacerbated today’s housing crisis.

The outlook is even more concerning. Source: Reuters

Since 2009, rents in major cities like Munich, Cologne, and Stuttgart have increased by about 50%. In Berlin, rents doubled, with some areas like Kreuzberg and Neukölln experiencing more than a threefold increase since 2005. Berlin is also a prime example of the impact of building restrictions and NIMBYism in Germany. Why are most Berlin buildings no taller than 22 meters? Well, this traces back to an old law from 1875 that limited building heights to the maximum reach of ladders used by the local Fire Department.¹

Then there is the Tempelhofer Feld, once Berlin’s largest airport. Now, an area the size of 13 AT&T Stadiums² is used for biking, barbecuing, and protecting skylarks.³ It has a long history of political disputes and only became a permanent recreational area through a successful NIMBY ballot initiative in 2014. Due to rising rents, Berlin’s conservative mayor plans to allow construction on parts of the airfield’s edge. While this enjoys public support, it faces strong opposition from local activists. Some are even pushing to have it recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. 

Looking enviously across the ocean, I see an incredibly successful YIMBY movement. Faced with sky-high rents and sluggish property development in major American cities, YIMBYs—short for Yes-In-My-Backyard—advocate for increased housing density, diverse building types, and relaxed zoning laws to address housing shortages and promote urban growth. The movement has seen significant political breakthroughs, such as Kamala Harris putting housing on her campaign agenda and Obama’s YIMBY moment at the DNC. YIMBYism has garnered support from both parties with impressive policy wins in Austin, Texas, and the San Francisco Bay Area. 

And yet, in Germany, finding YIMBY discussions in newspapers is as rare as finding affordable housing in Berlin.

So, why is there no German YIMBY politics?

To some, this may still read like a trivial question. YIMBY is one of these peculiar American⁴ acronyms that are infamously hard to translate and explain to the German reader. And it might just be one of those ideas, born among educated US urbanites, that takes surprisingly long to cross the Atlantic — not just because of my slow German Wi-Fi connection.⁵ 

No, we must explore German discourse and politics around housing to understand this puzzle. 

One crucial piece of context with lots of implications is German pro-renting culture. Germany has the highest share (51%) of people living in rental housing in the EU, far exceeding the US (36%) and the UK (19%). Major urban areas with the most pronounced housing shortage, like Berlin (83%), have an even higher share of renters. This makes tenants a powerful political coalition.⁶ 

Source: Eurostat, Maps Interlude.

The discourse around housing is often framed antagonistically, with renters being exploited by greedy landlords.⁷ While in the US, wealthy white NIMBY boomers are increasingly seen as the main opposition to affordable rents, in Germany, the focus is on large corporate landlords like Vonovia, a giant real estate firm known for its aggressive rent increases. All of this makes rent control and expropriation of landlords much more popular and attractive for left-of-center politics, despite their known counterproductive effects on the housing supply. In total, three-quarters of Germans supported the current national rent control approach, which ultimately proved ineffective at keeping rents down. It seems quite likely that the center-left SPD will advocate for a stricter version in next year’s federal election. 

Unsurprisingly, rent and housing are challenging issues for Germany’s classical liberals (FDP) and conservatives (CDU). They might strictly oppose rent control and advocate for deregulation, but making those arguments in public is hard, especially when you are easily painted as being in the pocket of large construction companies and real estate barons. Consequently, they seem mostly on a defensive footing, trying to sidestep the issue when possible.⁸ 

Another problem is that no political party outside the very small FDP seems well-positioned to carry the YIMBY torch. The SPD is closely entangled with the tenant coalition and lacks the neoliberal wing of the US Democrats. The Greens would like to be closely entangled with the tenant coalition, are traditionally supporters of stricter building codes, and have a distaste for market solutions. Finally, the conservatives, who enjoy the support of Germany’s electorally powerful rural and small-town communities, prefer to strengthen these areas over large cities where they are often out of power. While they support deregulating building codes, they are not into dense, walkable urbanism and lean towards policies for car-dependent lifestyles, including new Autobahns through inner cities.

For all of these reasons, only some (very online) Germans are familiar with the YIMBY movement, even though, with some adaptation, many of its ideas could find appeal.

A German YIMBY agenda

Although YIMBYism remains relatively unknown in Germany, growing frustration with high rents and bureaucratic inefficiency is laying the groundwork for change. Across the political spectrum, slow permitting processes and construction delays are stalling progress. The Greens want to accelerate the buildout of renewables, while conservatives push for new roads and industrial parks. 

A German version of the YIMBY movement could bridge these frustrations by advocating for faster development under one umbrella. To gain broad support, it would likely need to be centered around housing affordability and Germany’s green energy transition while addressing environmentalist and historic preservation concerns. If you need some encouragement, the success of recent reforms in streamlining permits for renewable energy projects suggests that progress is possible.

Finally, one reason a YIMBY movement hasn’t gained traction is simple: no one has spearheaded it yet. Adapting YIMBYism could address some real problems holding Germany back and become a powerful force for progress. 

The opportunity is there—it’s time to seize it.

A special thanks to Rob Tracinski, Shreeda Segan, Heike Larson, Jeff Fong, Anton Leicht, Simon Grimm and Habakuk Hain for their feedback on earlier drafts.

1. This is of course no longer the official justification. Modern proponents of this rule focus on the notorious neighborhood character.

2. Apologies to my European readers. Apparently 13 AT&T Stadiums equal 524 soccer fields. Oh dear.

3. Living close by, even I have to admit it is kind of cool. Though it is still an airfield and not Yosemite.

4. During research for this article I found a claim that the term YIMBY was crafted in Stockholm. Can anyone more well-versed in YIMBY history confirm this?

5. This observation has obviously quite a lot to do with language and culture. It’s no coincidence that the only YIMBY chapters in continental Europe are found in Sweden and the Netherlands who are known for their English proficiency and cultural proximity to the Anglosphere. Anecdotally this also seems true for other Anglophone social movements like Effective Altruism and Bay Area Rationalism.

6. Pro-rent culture changes some of the mechanics of NIMBYism as well. Not only is there more political capital for rent control, but there is also a stronger push for pro-tenant policies like eviction protections. On the other hand, there is less of an aversion to density and there might be fewer homeowners blocking apartment buildings at the city council discussion, though you still see lots of NIMBY initiatives e.g. high-rises. I am unsure how to weigh these, I just think they matter for understand the context.

7. This has implications for your messaging which needs to look very different depending on whether you try to appeal to Joe Sixpack or to educated young urban professionals.

8. One possible solution to address shortages, everyone in Germany seems to agree upon, is state-built housing. Proponents of this like to refer to the example of Vienna, where 60% of the population live in state-owned or subsidized social housing (so-called Gemeindebau). Empirically in Germany this does not seem to be sufficient.