Founder Op-Ed: Blocking new housing isn't activism. It's antisocial.

While Belgium needs half a million additional homes by 2035, our planning system is too often paralyzed by a kind of "vetocracy," where inertia wins over the common good. At the same time, a new intuition is gaining ground: the YIMBY movement — Yes In My Backyard — calling for more homes in our cities. In a world of scarcity, it's time to relearn how to say yes.

A few years ago, I stood proudly on the civic barricades myself. The project was, it must be said, rather brutal: demolishing a villa with a large garden to build two residential towers. Together with the neighborhood committee, we protested, organized petitions, and ultimately stopped the project. At the time, I was convinced I had saved the soul of my neighborhood.

Today, the house is on the market for the third time, slowly losing its shine. That "victorious" no has only produced stagnation. No better project has taken its place. That bitter realization forced me to reconsider my position. What if our collective ability to say no has itself become the greatest obstacle to the common good?

The housing crisis is hitting all of Europe. The gap between household housing needs and existing supply is growing. In Belgium, the shortage is estimated at around 500,000 homes within ten years — representing more than €50 billion in investment. Yet the real estate sector is struggling, and building permit applications have fallen to a historic low.

It's tempting to explain this solely through rising construction costs and administrative complexity. But there is another culprit: the NIMBY reflex, Not In My Backyard. Whether it concerns concrete nuisances — noise, views, pressure on roads or childcare — or concerns about nature and heritage: everyone has a reason, often sincere, to oppose a project near their home. Local politicians, moreover, have little incentive to attract new residents if it might irritate their existing voters.

When objection becomes a veto

The problem is not concern or objection in itself. It arises when objection transforms into a right of veto. In Flanders, a VRT report even exposed a grey market where intermediaries charge money to withdraw complaints. Add to that permitting procedures that often drag on for more than two years — which alone can cost tens of thousands of euros per home. Affordable housing suffers most: uncertainty deters investment and drives up the final price further.

The same mechanism plays out everywhere: a shortage made worse by our inability to weigh legitimate interests against each other.

Even artificial intelligence is making obstruction easier today: in the United States, one individual recently managed to file thousands of complaints against an airport project. Meanwhile, the real losers remain invisible: young families and essential workers forced to move ever further away, and the energy transition, as renovations and densification are blocked. Gentrification is often feared, but we forget that it is primarily the scarcity of supply that drives up prices.

Learning to say yes again

Being YIMBY doesn't mean accepting everything without question. Brussels, marked by the "brusselization" of the 1970s, knows what going off the rails looks like. Allowing more homes means demanding better projects: redeveloping brownfield sites, converting vacant offices, densifying near public transport, and halting further encroachment on open space. As philosopher Philippe Van Parijs argues: a denser city is also a more prosperous and accessible city.

Civic participation is valuable when it improves a project: it surfaces impacts, corrects mistakes, and compels developers to do better. But it cannot become a permanent right of veto. Dialogue ends where instrumentalization begins: when objections arrive too late to be meaningfully addressed, when procedural errors become a strategy, when blocking becomes a bargaining tool.

Restoring political arbitration capacity

This is where politics has a role to play. As the Friday Group proposes, the threshold for admissible appeals must be raised to discourage abuse, and every procedure should be linked to prior participation in the public inquiry. Municipalities must also be more strongly incentivized to build housing — for example by linking certain regional funding more directly to housing creation efforts. The regions are already working on such levers, each in their own way. The stakes are clear: making the permit a decision-making instrument again, not an arena for endless procedural warfare.

Finally, we must address conflicts less through litigation and more directly. Densification, yes — but with visible compensation: a park, a crèche, a renewed public space. The idea is to share the value a project creates with the neighborhood that receives it. Instead of pitting developers and residents against each other in legal battles, we can transform the conflict into a negotiation where everyone gains something. The final decision then rests with the majority of the neighborhood — not with the most litigious neighbor or the loudest committee.