By Craig Wiesner – San Mateo Daily Journal – November 14, 2023
Many people I talk to believe that the obstacles to building much more affordable housing in the Bay Area are insurmountable. As the self-identified “weird kid” who wanted to be involved in government policy making since the age of 12, Alexander Melendrez, says that insurmountable challenges are incredibly motivating. “They just make me want to climb higher!” Alex is an organizer with YIMBY Action and when I sat down to interview him he used one of the words that has guided me in my peacemaking and social justice work for decades: “abundance.” While the world tries to scare you into practicing life with a scarcity mindset, you have to remind yourself to act out of a sense of abundance.
YIMBY Action describes itself as “a network of people who advocate for abundant housing and inclusive sustainable communities across the United States.” On the day I interviewed him, Alex had just attended a conference on rural housing, and his abundant energy level was spiking with the power he gets from meeting new people working on similar issues in very different places. He also got a good buzz from the fantastic cold brew coffee from The Groovy Goose, a new family-owned coffee shop on San Carlos Avenue. He describes himself as an “organizer” and I wondered how that differed from being an activist. He described an activist as someone taking action because they are passionate about a particular issue. An organizer “collects” other activists and helps focus them on gaining the power needed to achieve the change they are seeking. I quipped “like herding cats.”
Alex, who has lived with his parents for much of his life, is looking forward to moving into his own place soon, something too many of his friends have not been able to do here on the Peninsula. People he had grown up with and gone to school with have not been able to afford to stay here and that was one of the key factors that influenced him to channel his organizing energy into housing advocacy. Playing the devil’s advocate, channeling what I’d guess at least one Daily Journal reader is thinking right now, I asked Alex “What makes your friends think they deserve to live here?” It took a moment before he answered “Wouldn’t any parent want their children to be able to live near where they grew up? Don’t grandparents want to live near their grandkids? Shouldn’t the people who work here be able to live here?”
Then he shared the story of Belinda. At the grand opening of the Colma Veterans Village, there had been all of the usual grand opening-ish kinds of things, speeches, all very carefully crafted and scripted. And then, unscripted and not on the formal program, Belinda took the mic. She shared that for the first time in years, finally being “housed,” she felt like people would see her as “human” again. For too long she felt that people saw her, homeless, as less than human. “Four walls and a door changed her humanity.” Alex told me. Four walls and a door, housing, changes one’s humanity indeed.
The Daily Journal reader who encouraged me to write about homelessness said that in his experience most problems can be simple to overcome. Identify the obstacles, get the right people to figure out how to overcome those obstacles, and then put together a plan to do it. So, I asked Alex what some of the obstacles are to moving from where we are today to a time when we have more abundant and inclusive housing. He listed fixing broken incentives in and enforcing current laws, zoning, other regulations, and getting an abundance of people sharing their stories and being willing to make change. YIMBY Action is seeing an ever growing number of people joining their ranks locally and around the country and they are chalking up successes every day. They do that by meeting people where they are, sharing real stories of real people impacted by the lack of affordable housing, and organizing.
I shared one of my most heartbreaking stories. An 80-something year old customer came in one day and told me it would be her last visit. “I can’t afford to live here any more. I’m moving two hours away from the place where I’ve lived my whole life, away from all of my friends.” Young people like Alex’s friends and classmates, senior citizens, veterans, the people who work in our grocery stores, doctor’s offices, police stations, fire stations, schools… Don’t they ALL deserve to be able to live among us? Insurmountable as it may seem, Alex is ready to climb higher and is bringing more and more people along for the climb. He has hope in abundance. Listening to him, me too. Visit yimbyaction.org to learn more.