Peter Baugh tweeted this out on Monday. Essentially, he attended a community meeting for a new housing project in his neighborhood. He spoke in favor of the proposed development. And was then accused of being a developer shill. His comments were subsequently no longer allowed at this “public” meeting. I mean, how could anyone possibly be in favor of new urban housing? Surely he must be a developer “plant.”
This is wrong, disappointing, and a whole host of other unsightly things. So today I thought I would share a recent City Beautiful video that asks: “Are NIMBYs selfish?” I have shared Dave Amos’ videos before. He’s an assistant professor of city planning at Cal Poly and a well known YouTuber. And I think this video does a great job explaining some of the tensions and trade-offs at play when it comes to development, particularly infill development.
But as Dave clearly explains in the video, he is not a neutral actor when it comes to this topic. His view is that, yes, NIMBYs are selfish.
BRANDON DONNELLY 
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First of all, why do people move to a city where there is no housing. Their problem, not ours. Second, we purchase property with zoning based on that zoning. I wouldn’t move to a city that required me to have a multifamily next to me. I took three jobs to buy my house, why should a developer put up a 45 foot multifamily, take away my trees, privacy and value of my home except to build more multifamily. Three all this multifamily in insulting. Are only poor people suppose to not have a home? Why does every city think it is wonderful to shove a teacher, police or firefighter into multifamily. They come home from a hard day only to have no room to relax. They smell the neighbors cooking, hear the neighbors every move, can’t sit on in a yard to relax. So… they find other ways to relax creating other problems, drugs and alcohol, now you got more homeless. Thanks a lot. Think ahead a bit instead of money and shoving poorer folks around. I fear this big infill, high density will do more damage that people imagine. It will be called the great mistake. Developer make so much money on multifamily, build cheap so in ten years they build again. They don’t put in parks, community parks or open space. The city I live in wants infill so bad they dropped the park people ratio to a goal of 2.5 acres per 1000 people. Healthy is 10 acres. Trees, where are the trees on these big multifamily complexes? Parking, we hear that multifamily unit dwellers won’t drive. Why is the city coming back to taxpayers and asking us to build parking lots for the multifamily units? It would have been better to have the parking put in from the beginning.
This list just goes on and on. Talk to a teacher, police or firefighter. Ask them if their goal is to live in multifamily over a home on a lot, even a small home on a small lot? Ask them how they feel about being told because they don’t have the income, an apartment is your life. Ask them how they feel about destressing when they get home? Where do they go? What do they do? How do they play ball with the kids? You were full self serving crap. Get out there and really take a look versus some bull fed you from books and developers. Why can’t there be 800 to 1200 square foot factory built homes? Why can’t they be put on 5000 sq ft lots? Millions of families much larger than todays were raised in smaller homes than that and did fine. Why do two Millenial’s need 2000 sq ft home? It is selfish of these people to call us NIMBY’s. It is the people who feel housing is owed them is selfish. You live where you can afford to live. If you don’t make enough money to live there, work two jobs or find another place. Don’t make your problem everyone else’s problem. Nobody is owed something. You earn something.
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