Leaked memos show direct funding of the fake YIMBY narrative fueling horrific State laws.

Zack Rosen of California YIMBY and the Abundance Network laid out a $260 million political project bankrolled by Silicon Valley billionaires—John Arnold, Steve Ballmer, Dustin Moskovitz, and others including Mark Zuckerberg and Patrick Collison. Tech money makes up over 80% of California YIMBY’s funding.

This isn’t about “just building more housing.” Rosen’s own words show the real goal: long-term institutional power, modeled on the conservative legal machine that overturned Roe. Housing is only the opening wedge. Local chapters are the delivery system—carrying top-down strategy into neighborhood councils while pretending to be grassroots.

The same network has repeatedly sided with corporate landlords against rent control and tenant protections, while dismissing local residents, labor, and equity groups as an “exaction machine.”

Simple supply-and-demand talk is the sales pitch. The memos reveal the actual project: override local control so zoning and planning get decided in Sacramento by donors and their allies.

Our Neighborhood Voices has been right.

Zoning and planning belong at the local level—not in a billionaire-funded statewide political machine.