Who talks about housing density and transit at Bay Area public meetings
- I collected a year of Bay Area public meetings, and transcribed stretches about housing density or transit from 27 bodies.
- I had a large language model label each public speaker NIMBY, meaning against new housing or transit nearby, YIMBY, meaning for it, or neither, after a second pass checked which way each proposal pointed.
- I found no significant difference between YIMBY and NIMBY among public speakers overall, and in almost every body.
- I found that public speakers took a side significantly more often than officials.
- The plots below carry the numbers, and every limitation is on the Methods page.
How public speakers split between the two labels
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These meetings decide real projects. San José Spotlight reported that in June 2025 the San Jose City Council voted unanimously to deny 135 homes, after neighbors objected.
Blocking housing density and transit keeps the next generation out of the places with the jobs, and keeps housing costs high. It also locks in car dependence: longer journeys, higher household travel costs, more traffic deaths and more tailpipe pollution.
One comment against more housing, one for it
NIMBY (against more housing)
“Mayor and council members, reject the missing middle framework recommendation in the general plan for your review. San Jose residents do not want three-story apartment complexes by right in residential neighborhoods without parking. Smart growth means concentrating density along commercial corridors, transit hubs, not quiet residential streets. …”
YIMBY (for more of it)
“… I'm somebody who is very interested in housing in Fremont, and from what I can tell, this changing with the zoning does improve the ability for us to actually create more housing …”
Transcribed hours are concentrated in a few bodies
circle area = hours of that body's meetings transcribed
colour: share of those hours on transit, through to share on housing density
hover a circle, or tap it on a phone, for that body's name and counts
Topic time per meeting-hour
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YIMBY / NIMBY
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Stance: the role gap
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Renter share
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Every instrument, number and limitation is on Methods, with a flowchart of how the data was made. The meetings are public recordings on YouTube, Granicus and Swagit, and the code that read them is at github.com/hotsoupisgood/baytransitanalysis.