"“Someone needs to represent people who haven’t yet moved into a neighborhood,”
said pro-development activist Sonja Trauss, who moved to Oakland in 2011…
A founder of the Yelp.com web empire, Jeremy Stoppelman,
bequeathed $100,000 upon new Oakland resident Trauss in 2015,
with the stated goal of clearing the way for more housing units,
even if those units were only accessible to the richest of the rich.
That investment helped to spark a libertarian, anti-poor campaign
to turn longtime sites of progressive organizing into rich-people-only zones."
YIMBYs: The Darlings of the Real Estate Industry,
Truthout
"The San Francisco Bay Area Renters' Federation (SFBARF)…
is attempting a new strategy:
Find a powerful progressive organization,
pack its ranks with sympathizers…
then use this new voting bloc to take that organization over,
and leverage its platform and influence to convince voters to change the city's housing policy…
The organization is putting this strategy into action with the local Sierra Club chapter.
Sonja Trauss, the founder of SFBARF,
told VICE that her group has already recruited 210 supporters
to join the venerable environmental advocacy group…
Trauss predicted that of the San Francisco city chapter's
roughly 3,000 members, only 390 of them would end up voting in the [2015] election,
meaning SFBARF would have a significant voting bloc come election time."
Why Are Redditors and a Cyber Bully Trying to Take Over San Francisco's Sierra Club?,
Vice
"The YIMBY Party was formed this year [2016] by Sonja Trauss…
While the YIMBY Party has not disclosed its entire budget,
for its short existence it has become remarkably well funded —
dwarfing in size the local Sierra Club’s own budget…
since May the YIMBY Party received more than… $101,000…"
Developer allies again try to take over Sierra Club,
48 Hills