NIMBY Nation

This Huff-Po article about the increasingly reactionary nature of urban land use politics in major US cities got a fair amount of attention this weekend. I don't know exactly why the author insists on defining the backlash as a generational thing. I know "Boomer" is lately the shorthand for middle-class, middle aged conservatives.  But it confuses the issue for too many people. What we're really trying to describe here is the tipping point in urban politics that naturally follows years of policies specifically designed to fill the cities with nice things for rich people while everyone else is left to fend for themselves.  If only rich people can live in the city, eventually the city's politics will reflect the rich people's interests.

"We have mountains of data showing that cities need more housing and better transit and shelters for homeless people,” said Matthew Lewis, the director of communications for California YIMBY, a pro-housing nonprofit. And yet cities often give in to neighborhood groups opposing this much-needed infrastructure. The proposed homeless shelter booed by Salt Lake City residents in 2017 was canceled the next day. Schwartz’s lawsuit has succeeded in delaying the bus lane on 14th Street. The tantrum-throwing Seattleites eventually won the repeal of the tax they were shouting about.

“It’s frustrating,” Lewis said. “The people with the most privilege pack the meetings, shout over everybody else and get their way.”

These organized opposition groups could also, in the longer term, form a conservative coalition in cities and pull them to the right. This is already happening in cities with high rates of homelessness, where nominally progressive residents have formed interest groups that echo conservative talking points on personal responsibility and cracking down on drug users.

“This is not an anti-homeless march,” Barry Vince, an attorney, told reporters from the local television station as he participated in an “anti-crime march” in Long Beach, California. “We’re here to march against criminals, and we want the bad guys taken down.

Lewis said he’s seen similar rhetoric begin to appear in public hearings over housing and transportation.

“It’s a pretty short leap from ‘We don’t want homeless people living here’ to ‘We don’t want refugees’ or ‘We don’t want immigrants,’” Lewis said. “I’ve seen lifelong hippies who drive electric vehicles stand up at these meetings and say, ‘There’s too many people here already.’ It’s like you’re at a Trump rally.”

Maybe it's that thing about "lifelong hippies" that prompts the "Boomer" framing in the article.  But the critical dividing line isn't based in culture or age cohort so much as class. Didn't we already know hippies grow up to be yuppies the minute they get a hold of the slightest semblance of wealth?  The article alludes to that as well but quickly takes it in the wrong direction.

Cities can also redesign community outreach to encourage input from groups that have traditionally been excluded. According to a 2017 study, older male homeowners are more likely to participate in town hall meetings and other public participation processes than other demographic groups. Another, published this month, found that becoming a property owner motivated individuals to participate in politics and to express their views on housing, traffic and development to elected leaders more often.

This is followed by a consideration of whether or not cities should limit or deflect public feedback at government meetings.  But that's just more of the anti-democratic neoliberal impulse that got us here in the first place. The issue isn't really about process. It is about political power. And right now rich people have too much of it. That's not a new problem. Nor is it a generational problem the way the article wants you to think it might be. It's just the timeless process of wealth accumulating and then defending itself.

A proper analysis of this goes beyond simple questions of YIMBY vs NIMBY.  You can't describe the politics of who is allowed to live where by whom solely in terms of cold hard "supply and demand." There are real live power relationships to consider. In New Orleans, for example, big decisions are heavily influenced by real estate developers, of course. But also there are neighborhood organizations (dominated by property owners) and historic preservationists (property owners with the kind of money that gets you onto the "philanthropy" circuit) who have stifled equitable housing and transportation policies for ages. More often than not they operate with some sort of progressive sounding rationalization.

Under the pretense of "quality of life promotion," neighborhood associations hire private police with public funds,  shut down bars and music venues, shoo the homeless away,  and ensure that bus stations doesn't have too many public restrooms. When the City Council voted to demolish the Big Four housing projects after Katrina, we were told by NIMBY liberals the cause was humanitarian. 

“We need affordable housing in this city,” said Shelley Stephenson Midura, a Council member who proposed the resolution that was adopted. But, she added, “public housing ought not to be the warehouse for the poor.”

New Orleans's most prominent beneficiary of those demolitions was mega-developer Pres Kabacoff. Here is an article by Roberta Gratz who, even in an article critical of the displacement for which Pres is hugely responsible, can't help but give him props as a preservationist.

Ironically, Kabacoff and his company, Historic Restoration Inc., are responsible for some of the best of the preservation projects that have helped downtown retain its traditional feel.

There's nothing "ironic" about it, though.  Preservation and gentrification often align with the same policy agenda. Which is often carried, we were reminded again today, by high powered liberal politicians.

Warren will meet “with activists, influencers and community leaders,” a campaign spokeswoman said, but didn’t provide specifics.

One of her leading supporters in the state is Pres Kabacoff, a New Orleans real estate developer who said he reached out to Warren because of her support for well-regulated capitalism.

But most of the time these are battles fought out block by block and one planning meeting at a time. Recently this mixed use development faced a gauntlet of intense neighborhood opposition in Bywater. And the Touro-Bouligny association is currently stalling a HANO project Uptown aided, we should note, by the addition of the building in question to a list of "Endangered Landmarks" maintained by a local preservationist society.

Interestingly the mayor rarely weighs in on any of this.  Over the course of her first year in office she's been more focused on the tourism grand bargain, police affairs, the traffic camera controversy, and the Sewerage and Water Board follies than zoning and housing questions. That might change at any moment. The STR wars are moving toward a conclusion... of the current phase anyway.  We may see the mayor get involved in that at some point.  But whenever she does decide to put a thumb on the scale of one of these land use matters, surely the fact that she got her start in politics as a neighborhood association president will have at least some bearing on which way that scale might tip. Just something to watch for, anyway.