Help Us Crown the NIMBY Capital of the United States

For the past week, the writers on this blog — a diverse group that includes current and formerly homeless individuals, social workers, a shelter director, a professor of peace studies and more — have been united against a common enemy: NIMBYism, or the prevailing attitude of "not in my backyard" that many fearful neighbors express when they learn that a homeless shelter, apartments for the formerly homeless or similarly critical services are moving into their community. "Their community" should be in quotes, I suppose. The last time I checked, if you didn't have a golf course estate on a country club's grounds, there was no ticket needed or price of admission to simply live.

Joy Eckstine kicked things off by writing about the misconceptions behind NIMBYism, and provided a striking example in the Hope Gardens shelter in Sylmar, California. When it opened in 2007, angry neighbors chained themselves to fences. But last month, when it nearly went under, the community stepped up with $4 million in donations to keep it open.

Unfortunately, not everybody has come around yet. In Nashville, Tennessee, as local outreach worker Steven Samra chronicles, officials and residents are using a tragic event — record flooding that destroyed homeless encampments — as an opportunity to make sure more tent cities don't pop up. One tent city resident who attended a community meeting where tempers got out of hand said, "I felt like we were all Negroes at a Klan meeting."

Vote on which city's policies exemplify NIMBYism the most. We'll follow-up with a petition to the mayor asking for increased tolerance.

That sort of hatred sounds pretty hard to top, but it doesn't keep people in other cities from coming close. Grand Junction, Colorado has been the battleground for a "war" between the homeless community and local officials for some time now, writes Randall Amster. Low points include the intentional destruction of personal property, the tents of homeless campers, by police officers who were later fired. The city also started calling a park a "median" just so it could justify banning the homeless who had traditionally spent time there. It's hard to imagine a city opposing something — or someone — enough to give up a public park over it.

In St. Petersburg, Florida, a new no-panhandling ordinance has driven many people to nearby Tampa. But in trying to hide the homeless, has the city done away with an aspect of public life as important as a public park? Becky Blanton writes, "This means the local paper cannot be sold by paperboys, and the local fire department cannot conduct its annual fundraising drives at city intersections. In punishing the homeless, the town has thrown the baby out with the bathwater."

Unfortunately, it's not just small towns or Southern towns where intolerance thrives. In Washington, D.C., writes "homeless advocate for the homeless" Eric Sheptock, business interests (or supposed business interests) are taking precedence over human beings, like the ones being told not to hang out outside their shelters because — gasp! — tourists might see them. Eric ably sums it up: "[Opponents] don't like homelessness or the solution to it."

In New York City, in Chelsea, one of the most LGBTQ-friendly neighborhoods on earth, the homeless aren't quite as welcome as everybody else. As Rich and Elizabeth Lombino explain, residents are using every last bit of red tape they can to stall or quash plans for a homeless shelter with 200 beds. This in a city with nearly 35,000 homeless.

Those residents, if they can still be reached with reason, would do well to read David Henderson's piece about how theories that low-income housing of any sort will decrease property values or increase crime don't hold water. Creating a mixed-income community actually benefits everyone. Low-income children gain from attending well-funded schools and the local economy is strengthened by having folks available, such as their parents, to fill lower-paying jobs. "Affordable housing works because it is more than charity; it helps make a whole community better," he wrote. The same could be said for compassion.

Photo credit: liberalmind1012