“Settler Colonialism”: The NIMBY Grift Exposed

There’s a cottage industry of nonprofit groups in California whose entire business model depends on making your life more expensive. And the California Environmental Justice Alliance (CEJA)—described as the most important environmental justice organization in the state—just said the quiet part out loud.

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Armand Domalewski

@ArmandDoma

The most important environmental justice organization in California, California Environmental Justice Alliance, thinks market rate housing is “a vestige of settler colonialism”

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Cole Sandick🌹🇵🇸🇺🇦🇸🇩

@ColeSandick

It’s absurdly underreported how leftist politicians and voters are consistently more open YIMBYism than their ideological counterparts. Abundance libs have chosen to fixate on a marginal group of left-NIMBYs for the sake of bitter factionalism and it’s not good for their project. twitter.com/PEWilliams_/status/2007174191787954646

Jan 2, 2026

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Jan 3, 2026

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That’s right. The group that holds enormous sway over housing policy in California has officially declared that your ability to own a home—or even rent at market rates—is “a vestige of settler colonialism.” Their solution? “Decommodify housing and cultivate alternative ownership models.” Translation: kill market-rate housing and let nonprofits control everything.

This isn’t some fringe activist group posting on Tumblr. CEJA is the kind of organization that gets meetings with legislators, shapes environmental review processes, and extracts “community benefits” payments before allowing projects to proceed. When they oppose housing, projects die.

Tech founder Zach Weinberg—who built and sold companies to Google and Roche—put it bluntly:

Archived tweet

Are there any groups more destructive to the cost structure of the lives of middle class people than non profit environmental justice groups? https://t.co/HZ6h4TUUpi

Tweets from Zach Weinberg @zachweinberg January 04, 2026

He’s right. These nonprofits have figured out a perfect grift: oppose every project, demand money or concessions to drop opposition, then move on to the next one. All while California’s housing costs crush working families.

The irony is that this ideology doesn’t even represent most progressives. As one organizer pointed out, leftist voters are consistently more open to YIMBYism than their ideological counterparts. The left-NIMBY faction is marginal but extraordinarily loud—and they’ve captured the institutional infrastructure.

Meanwhile, the real victims are middle-class Californians who can’t afford a home because every market-rate project gets strangled by nonprofit opposition dressed up in activist language. If you want to help people at every income level, the answer is simple: build more housing and bring costs down for everyone. Not firehosing money to nonprofit grift.

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