Incoherent

Why do neighborhood activists, even in cases when they've won, always feel obligated to surrender the principle that under other circumstances, they wouldn't object to being run out of town by gentrification?

Julie Jones, president of Neighbors First for Bywater, a neighborhood group that formed three years ago after splintering from the Bywater Neighborhood Association, said the group is opposed to allowing the developer to build four times what's allowed by zoning, and there are ongoing concerns about noise.

Jones said she has heard from people upset that the Bywater Neighborhood Association decided to support the hostel. "We do not think that this hostel is right for the place they're putting it in Bywater -- nothing against hostels either," Jones said.

What is wrong with just flat out saying, hey, we don't want our neighborhood to become a playground for wealthy vacationers where nobody actually lives?  Is that so out of bounds?  If you allow for the possibility that some sort of development (just not this one in particular) could do that to you, you've lost the whole point entirely.