NIMBY?

As best as I can recall, the term NIMBY originally referred to someone who espoused a particular view, but changed that when he was affected by the policy. The term seems to have removed the hypocritical aspect and now refers to someone who opposes a generally approved policy (or at least one advocated by his accuser).

I'm going to play a dirty trick and list some top-level aspects of actions, which most would agree meet the NIMBY criteria, and then include more details that may explain the difficulties in some of these choices.

1. Residents of a middle class Los Angeles neighborhood requested speed bumps be installed to reduce traffic in their area by outsiders

2. Residents of two neighborhoods protested plans to tear down houses for a development, stating that these would change the character of the neighborhood.

3. Local LA businesses requested that a proposed light rail extension use an alternate route though a poorer section of the city

4. Local business owners (near me in Huntington Beach) fought to defeat plans to install a homeless shelter in an industrial park

I'm not saying these pushbacks are all justified, but it's worthwhile understanding the reasons.

1. Modern map software not only can guide you from point A to point B, but they can dynamically determine the fastest route. When freeway congestion was high, the software was rerouting cars onto surface streets to bypass choke points. Drivers were speeding down this affected neighborhood and making it difficult for residents to back onto the street and supposedly endangering children.

2. The two areas fighting the housing project were Inglewood and the Leimert Park area. As background, Los Angeles City (including "South Central") is an Hispanic city. Watts (remember the riots) is about 70% Hispanic and Compton (NWA and other rap stars) is about 50%. Apparently the redistricting commission had difficulty establishing "black majority" districts without oddly-shaped boundaries. (There's been an exodus of African Americans to Lancaster/Palmdale and Corona/Riverside).

Anyway, Leimert Park is now the "soul" of black Los Angeles and protestors want to avoid gentrification and loss of low cost rentals/housing. Whether it's good to preserve racial and ethnic enclaves is another discussion. I'm sympathetic to their view, although it's couched in the same language used by other neighborhoods.

3. The light rail underground expansion would limit access to the area for an extended period of time, and the businesses pushed to move it elsewhere (poor get shafted again?). However, it highlights one of the issue that the owners were faced with a serious financial cost that they weren't being compensated for and were protecting their financial interests.

4.The nearby homeless shelter had a similar issue. Many of the owners of the buildings themselves (not the people renting them) protested because they were faced with renters moving their businesses (lots of vacant buildings nationally) and faced the prospect of owning "unrentable" space in the future.

There's often a fine line between protecting ones financial and other interests and being outright selfish. One of the complaints I hear voiced is that the impacts are not spread evenly and there's a financial impact (when is the 3 story apartment building next to Newsom's house being built?). Maybe it's punishment for ignoring similar complaints of the poor in the past when eminent domain took their property (at below market payments?).