Is NIMBY ever a good thing?

Great Debates
1

So I was walking out of church yesterday when a passerby shoves a flyer in my hand. Apparently, it’s asking the neighborhood to sign a petition to remove a drug rehab home from the neighborhood. The guy’s home was recently vandalized, and he claims that some of the residents of the rehab house did it in order to get drug money.

I’ve never been one for NIMBY (or “Not In My Back Yard”) attitudes, as people have to go somewhere in order to live. And that includes recovering drug addicts, the retarded, single mothers, what-have-you. I can understand the guy being upset over his home being vandalized, but–

  1. can he prove that someone from the drug rehab house actually broke into his place?
  2. if someone from the house did do it, does that mean the whole home should be held liable? Doesn’t that just mean it should make its own policies stricter?
  3. if every neighborhood takes this attitude, where are group homes supposed to go?

I really forget what the anti-discrimination policies are in this area. Anyway, what’s everyone else’s opinion? Is there ever a case where a neighborhood could justifiably exclude someone from living there?

2

Is NIMBY ever a good thing?

Depends on if its my backyard or yours…

3

How about practicing drug addicts, mentally disturbed homeless, prostitutes and what have you?

Yes they have to live somewhere. Let them live somewhere else.

4

The drug rehab things always baffled me. People complain that we should lock up everyone on drugs. Then when our jails are full, they complain about that. So when we release minor drug offenders, they complain about getting them help so they can become productive. Geez, make up your mind already.

5

Well it really doesn’t have anything to do with how the neighborhood feels about the criminalization of drugs or the rehabilitation of users. Mosy NIMBY movements are based on preserving property values, preserving safety, or preserving the feel of the neighborhood. Not necessarily in that order but I suspect preserving property values would top the list.

A house is the single largest investment for the typical American. (For the purpose of this discussion any apartment, mobile home, or cave you happen live in is a house.) Purchasing a home is often a finiancal and emotionally draining experience but most people find that in they are rewarded.

So you’ve purchased a home and have invested your time and money into making it a place you’re happy to live and you like the neighborhood. Now the city wants to build a water waste reclaimation center less then 1/2 a mile from your neighborhood.
So now instead of smelling beautiful pine when you step outside your home you’ll be greeted by the smell of raw sewage. So you and your neighbors get together and make some noise at city hall and attempt to get them put it somewhere else.

Marc

6

[quote]
I really forget what the anti-discrimination policies are in this area. Anyway, what’s everyone else’s opinion? Is there ever a case where a neighborhood could justifiably exclude someone from living there?

[quote]

Not an individual person, but drug programs, group homes ,etc , yes, in a few cases I can think of

  1. An outpatient drug program with lots of traffic in a strictly residential area, although this may not be excluding the program from a neighborhood as much as a specific site.

  2. An organization with a history of not keeping clients from causing problems in the neighborhood. There used to be an outpatient drug program about 3 blocks from my house. It was there for quite some time before I knew about it, because unlike every other outpatient program I’ve ever encountered ( and that was quite a few, as I would visit them to check on my own clients attendance) there was not a mass of people hanging out on the sidewalk.

  3. A neighborhood, which because other neighborhoods have successfully resisted such institutions, has ended up with a lot of drug programs,group homes, homeless shelters, etc already.

7

Urban planner here. I deal with NIMBY first hand.

There are three different types of NIMBY, IMHO.

  1. The “we’ve had enough” NIMBY. When it comes to halfway houses, group homes, and so on, such uses often tend to congregate in certain neighborhoods. More often than not, they’re areas that are either lower-income, in ethnic transision, or bohemian-leaning where residents aren’t opposed to the use.

One or two group homes or social service agencies in an area usually don’t create that much of an impact. However, when a neighborhood becomes a dumping ground for them, and the presence has a measurable negative impact on the quality of life and public safety, it’s in the residents’ best interest to act up.

A prime example is Allentown, a once-trendy, bohemian neighborhood near downtown Buffalo. Social service agencies saw the big houses and a very liberal population, and set up shop without much resistance. After so many methadone clinics, halfway houses, cocial service offices, day labor agencies, and similar uses set up shop in Allentown, residents began to notice a decrease in the quality of life. More petty crime, more homeless, more open drug use, more prostitution, more begging – more “nuisance crimes,” as Rudolph Juliani would put it. A few years ago, the once-tolerant neighbors finally said “enough is enough. We’ve got more than our fair share, and we’re beginning to feel the pain. Put 'em somewhere else now.”

  1. The snooty NIMBY. This is the type of NIMBY that most people resent; the folks who want to keep their (usually affluent) neighborhoods pristine. Yes, group homes and cell towers have to go somewhere, but these folks refuse to be burdened with their fair share. There’s the usual arguments; property values, traffic, safety, the children.

  2. The “we didn’t do our due diligence” NIMBY. Let’s say you buy a house next to a lovely field. You think that the field will be empty forever, that the gates have closed behind you. What you don’t realize is that the field is zoned C-1, and it’s just the right size and location for a new Wal-Mart Supercenter.

As a planner, I encunter this more than the other types of NIMBYs. Folks want the vacant field next to their house to stay vacant forever. They’re part of a “community,” but the development that follows them is “sprawl.” For a perfect example, see http://www.seaqol.org . When I was living in Denver, I was the planner that got hit with this first. The subject parcel is commercially zoned, but adjacent to $400,000 houses with mountain views. The land was zoned for retail use long before the houses were built. The owner of the commercial zoned land has a right to build in compliance with zoning, urban design and architectural design regulations. The neighbors are upset, and that’s understandable … but they didn’t perform due diligence before they bought their houses.

If a zoning map shows a large tract of land next to my house, colored grey and marked “I-4,” I shouldn’t be surprised when a dog food plant plans to sets up shop there.

Planners encounter this type of NIMBY more often than not

8

IANA Urban Planner, but perhaps a distinction for “good NIMBY” v “bad NIMBY” could be made in various cases.

"Good NIMBY " might be taken to mean, “Influencing planning to help the community/stop Bad Things (whatever that means) from happening.”

“Bad NIMBY” would probably be defined as “corrupting/influencing planning for selfish or unreasonable purposes”.

An example of the former might be: in a neighborhood, there is an elementary school with a nearby (say, 2 blocks away) undeveloped tract that is zoned residential. The local planning board/city council changes the zoning to commercial, perhaps with the intent that there should be more local businesses nearby. The neighborhood might in this case take the stance that zoning that area commercial will increase traffic along the same street as that school, causing safety problems for children going to/from school.

Are the residents NIMBYing? Not necessarily – they probably don’t have an issue per se with having a commercial district nearby (although obviously if there are any houses that directly border the commercial area they would have property-value concerns), but have raised what may be a legitimate safety issue that hadn’t been of concern before the proposed zoning change.

OTOH, one person’s “Good NIMBY” is “Unreasonable, luddite, selfish obstructionism.” It obviously depends on your point of view.