YIMBYTown 2025 was a national convention for pro-homes advocates in New Haven, CT. This year, we were fortunate to have a strong contingent attending from Montgomery for All!

Read the takeaways that Montgomery for All attendees want to bring back to our local housing advocacy:

Tony Byrne, Member

One speaker or session that stood out to you: Chi Osse's TikTok guy -- takeaway: we probably could up our TikTok game, but even more important is to find and recruit local influencers...
One idea you're excited to take back with you to inform our local housing advocacy: Encouraging our members to actively promote a pro-housing / pro-transit agenda in other civic groups where they participate, to broaden our impact
One resource you'd like to share with others: The Sightline Institute/Welcoming Neighbors Network handout about messaging was great: Crafting Powerful Pro-Housing Messages

Jonathan Robinson, Member

One speaker or session that stood out to you: Texas panel: on the importance of building a big enough tent that it covers your ENTIRE coalition.
One idea you're excited to take back with you to inform our local housing advocacy: Identifying Republican state legislators who'd want to work with us
One resource you'd like to share with others: New Census/USPS data on address growth to better measure housing growth here in a rigorous way with publicly available info.

Brandi Panbach, Steering Committee Member

One speaker or session that stood out to you: The plenary on how to make government work to build transportation projects. Transportation advocacy is fundamentally different than housing advocacy because housing advocacy is largely deregulatory and housing is built by the private sector whereas transportation is built by the public sector
One idea you're excited to take back with you to inform our local housing advocacy: Sometimes the smaller changes to zoning matter more in housing production. It’s easier to achieve change by focusing on those changes because they activate the opposition less.
One resource you'd like to share with others: Short form video and slide shows are great ways of communicating effectively with a larger audience in a busy landscape. Here’s one example I thought was great: Let’s talk about parking, from betterblock and dallasurbanists

Michael Larkin, Steering Committee Member

One speaker or session that stood out to you: YIMBY Case for Freeway Fighting. One Takeaway: Redesigning streets can open up opportunities for all kinds of new housing.
One idea you're excited to take back with you to inform our local housing advocacy: The session on linking housing and transportation policy discussed leveraging transportation funding to support denser housing development. This was mostly in the context of state policy, but maybe it is worth thinking about how to apply the idea at the county level.
One resource you'd like to share with others: I spent some time talking to people about parking reform messaging. One idea is to point out specific "sympathetic" projects that did not happen due to parking requirements. That idea and more here: How to Talk About Parking Reform—and Win, from Sightline Institute

Carrie Kisicki, Coordinator

One speaker or session that stood out to you: I really enjoyed the session I attended on Massachusetts's MBTA Communities Act, which effectively requires multi-family housing by right close to transit. Passing this legislation required coordination between a wide variety of state, local, and nonprofit/advocacy partners, and this coordination was key to winning buy-in from legislators, providing needed political cover, and identifying measures like funding for technical assistance that made the bill more palatable to local governments.
One idea you're excited to take back with you to inform our local housing advocacy: To engage new people, housing messaging needs to be hopeful and simple. How can we lead with optimism, and what are some short phrases or messages that can get people excited about and interested in our advocacy work?
One resource you'd like to share with others: Something like this story map could be helpful in MoCo to help people understand what missing middle looks like, and that it already exists in our communities! — Exploring Housing at Different Densities, from SRPEDD and Massachusetts Housing Partnership

Andrew Fister, Member

One speaker or session that stood out to you: The session on Local Media highlighted best practices in relationships with journalists, to actually feed them story ideas, among other things.
One idea you're excited to take back with you to inform our local housing advocacy: Humorous walking tours
One resource you'd like to share with others: Given Bill McKibben spoke at YIMBYtown, I think Sun Day events would be a good opportunity for advocacy on housing from an environmental angle.

Blog: Reflections from YIMBYtown 2025!