> But this is also a factional concern; for reasons I don't understand, the Democratic left polarized hard against "abundance" (and thus YIMBYism). So these kinds of arguments now code as "centrist".

To be slightly glib: the left has no greater enemy than someone who agrees with them 95% of the time.

> But this is also a factional concern; for reasons I don't understand, the Democratic left polarized hard against "abundance" (and thus YIMBYism). So these kinds of arguments now code as "centrist".

I think a lot of these activists were originally fighting gentrification. Then, over time, the gentrifiers won anyway, and now most housing in hcol areas is occupied by wealthy professionals. But the activists never updated their politics (people have a hard time admitting—or, sometimes, realizing—that they lost), and now they advocate policies that shut out the people they originally set out to protect.

Of course one of the reasons social housing won't get built is the faircloth limit from 20 years ago.

> Nathan J. Robinson actually said the quiet part out loud a couple years ago, when he wrote in Current Affairs (a relatively high-profile American leftist periodical) a long defense of suburban NIMBYism.

If we’re thinking about the same essay it’s a criticism of capitalist YIMBYs who are only interested in building McMansions and the like. It is both anti-NIMBY and anti-some-YIMBYs, which seems reasonable to me.

EDIT: Historically, some YIMBYs have not opposed—I guess we’ll call it instead—unaffordable housing. So-called “capitalist” or “libertarian” YIMBYs in particular. Robinson’s article describes this. Leftists are skeptical of “all housing construction makes housing more affordable” arguments, and there’s evidence presented in the article to that effect.