It is virtually impossible to have a productive debate with someone who believes one of the points of contention is absolutely and axiomatically true.

As a rule, it is better to be right 60% of the time and know that you are only right 60% of the time than to be right 80% of the time and think you're right 100% of the time.

— Mark Palko (@MarkPalko1) June 8, 2023

 From YIMBYs keep winning by Matt Yglesias

But the core YIMBY thesis that quantitative restrictions on housing production are costly to the economy and harmful to society is true. The upshot of this is that a lot of smart, highly engaged people want to express negative sentiments about YIMBYism that don’t involve directly contradicting the core YIMBY thesis since they are too smart to deny its veracity. The result is a lot of tone-policing and concern-trolling where people express the idea that YIMBYs are doing this or that wrong, ideas that normally amount to “I wish you’d be less focused on your goal” or “I wish you’d do more to align yourself with my camp in the polarization dynamic.” 

The tragedy of YIMBYists is that they are right most of the time about most things, but most of them (almost all of them writing for publications like the NYT, Vox and the Atlantic) think like Yglesias. If he had given us something here, some qualifier, some acknowledgement of complexity of housing, city planning and development, then we would have some common ground to build on.

Yes. restrictions on housing tend to bad in general, but there are exceptions, and the school of YIMBYism that currently dominates the press has arguably been on the wrong side of at least some of them.There are cases where lifting restrictions causes serious ecological damage, imposes disproportionate costs on the poor and people of color, actually increases commuting distances, encourages development in areas that will soon be targets of managed retreat, can lead to weaker fire safety rules, and has other unintended consequences. It's also possible that the focus on market based solutions can drown out arguments for other approaches.

Here's a relevant thread.

Yes, YIMBYs can be worse than NIMBYs -- the opening round of the West Coast Stat Views cage match 

Yes, YIMBYs can be worse than NIMBYs Part II -- Peeing in the River

Yes, YIMBYs can be worse than NIMBYs Part III -- When an overly appealing narrative hooks up with fatally misaligned market forces, the results are always ugly. 

Did the NIMBYs of San Francisco and Santa Monica improve the California housing crisis?

A primer for New Yorkers who want to explain California housing to Californians

A couple of curious things about Fresno

Does building where the prices are highest always reduce average commute times?

It's entirely possible that all these arguments are overblown and we should just do what the NYT NIMBYs say, (particularly in Canada where things are really bad) but deciding on the right policy is far more difficult when the side with the dominant voice in the debate won't even allow for the possibility that the other side might have a point.