ANGELES — The revolution in American housing politics keeps picking up speed. This week’s victories by Nithya Raman and Janeese Lewis George in mayoral races in Los Angeles and Washington D.C., add to a growing cadre of elected officials pushing for both robust renter protections and more homebuilding.

The candidates’ novel pairing of pro-tenant and pro-development policies have made for strange bedfellows, uniting factions of theurban left that have warred for more than a decade as housing costs in cities have skyrocketed. The socialist camp has blamed big real estate and argued the only path to affordability lies in rent restrictions and publicly owned housing. The YIMBY movement, short for Yes In My Back Yard, has pointed the finger at zoning rules and other development restrictions and contends a shortage of housing overall is the root of the problem.

Raman and Lewis George’s ascendance follows that of Zohran Mamdani in New York last year who similarly married socialist and YIMBY perspectives during his successful mayoral campaign.

All three politicians were endorsed by local chapters of the Democratic Socialists of America and have moved past the far left’s deep-seated skepticism that private developers can play a role in making housing more affordable.

“It’s thrilling,” said Paul Williams, who served on Mamdani’s transition team and is executive director of the New York-based think tank Center for Public Enterprise. “When Mamdani got elected, there was almost an only-Nixon-could-go-to-China attitude that some people had about this. But then Janeese ran on it. And Nithya ran on it. Now it’s just, this is what’s happening in America now.”Supporters of the burgeoning “Left-YIMBY” movement see a path to an enduring coalition of renters in metropolises pushing aside a homeowner bloc that has typically advocated against construction in their neighborhoods and dominated at the ballot box for decades.

But the new union faces obstacles. One centrist critic called the idea “capitalism for developers, communism for landlords” and predicted it will fall apart as the drive for profits inherent in private homebuilding collides with demands for greater protections from tenant advocates.

So far, Mamdani is navigating tensions between his push to freeze New Yorkers’ rent and concerns from lenders, while attempting to enlist President Donald Trumpto help build 12,000 new homes over a railyard in Queens.

In Los Angeles, Raman, who will leave her current seat on the City Council to become mayor, has delighted or angered various camps — sometimes at the same time — as she led the charge to tighten LA’s rent control restrictions while also proposing to cut a tax on multifamily development.

On the campaign trail, Raman promised to push for development in single-family-home neighborhoods that have historically been off limits to growth, reform permitting practices and create a new city department to handle tenant complaints. At her election night party Tuesday, Raman cast her platform as common sense.

“We have a vision for our city, one where the people who make this city extraordinary can afford a home,” Raman said. “It's a simple vision. It doesn't feel radical to me.”Dave Rand, a prominent local land-use attorney who supports Raman, said developers remain skeptical of the mayor-elect. But he’s confident they will come around if Raman makes permits easier to obtain and speeds up electricity connections to new buildings by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.

“The basic competency of municipal government needs to come back, and I think she's going to deliver that,” Rand said. “When it happens, I think people will be more excited about investing and building in Los Angeles.”Lewis George, who also was a City Council member before her mayoral election, has saidshe became convinced of private development’s role in easing housing costs after reading academic research and studying other cities’ efforts to build more homes.

She’s called for more permissive zoning, especially near mass transit, parks and schools, as well as expanding DC’s rent control rules and building publicly owned, mixed-income housing.

Aparna Raj, who won election this week to the DC City Council on a similar platform, told POLITICO the movement is resonating in majority-tenant cities nationwide because so many renters struggle to find homes and remain vulnerable to price spikes or landlord harassment once they do.

“We can make it much easier to build housing in DC than we have been,” said Raj, a DSA member and tenant organizer. “And that doesn’t have to come at the cost of tenants.”