Texas has been exporting refugees to places like New York City where Mayor Adams is making other counties share support for refugees. Adams claims the City is alone and overwhelmed. So he, and much of the state, unlike Albany where I live, said NIMBY – not in my backyard. NIMBY, of course, is a root of the housing problem, the homeless problem, the concentration of poverty problem, the racial segregation problem, global warming and just about every ill that burdens us.
It prevents building homes or apartments for most of the folk who do the work that we desperately need. It concentrates those who are poorer than we are so that some neighborhoods become zones of desperation without access to jobs, transit or services and opportunities that people need. And having shut out all the people who need services, we claim as our right the ability to build and maintain modern and capable facilities, schools, hospitals, whatever, and do it just for ourselves.
Suburbs were designed so that those with money didn’t have to share the problems of the cities. Heaven forbid that they have any responsibility for the welfare of those who work for them or the essential workers who serve them. So we pack all those folks into their own communities which do not have the resources to run the schools, hospitals, public transit or other needed social services.
NIMBY is also at the root of environmental disaster – both what has already happened and what nature has in store for us if we don’t unite quickly and act powerfully. After all, until it hits us, it’s all them, their problem, so why should we help? Government once promised to buy property that’s flooded out by storms and take it off the market. But people reacted, saying you can’t do that to me – I want you to rebuild my land, not just buy it. And you can buy whatever kind of cars you want but you can’t tax MY gasoline, even if, or especially, if you use MY taxes to help SOMEONE ELSE who can’t afford to deal with higher gas taxes.
As far as I’m concerned, NIMBY to the Nimbats! Those who segregate themselves should surrender all state funds and services for their incorporated areas, cities, towns, whatever. I’d replace zoning laws for towns and cities which refuse to provide for the whole range of the population and have the state pass general zoning laws that take over that function. It is not appropriate for government to exclude whole classes of society.
Let’s be clear. NIMBY is not a new problem. It delayed the construction of the very successful Erie Canal for forty years. But it’s becoming clear that our own backyards are at stake. If we don’t stand together and for each other we will all die together, rich and poor, Black and white, all of us, in the same ditch. It's NIMBY that needs to be scrapped. I’d put it in the garbage dump – fast.
Steve Gottlieb’s latest book is Unfit for Democracy: The Roberts Court and The Breakdown of American Politics. He is the Jay and Ruth Caplan Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Albany Law School, served on the New York Civil Liberties Union board, on the New York Advisory Committee to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, and as a US Peace Corps Volunteer in Iran.
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