NIMBY: Not in My Back Yard. Part of an ongoing collection of articles exploring some of the many ways that a worldwide affordable housing crisis is opposed.
We’ve been remiss at affordablehousingaction.org. We’ve lately been suggesting that new kinds of NIMBY neighbourhood defences have been few and far between. In fact, we have simply been neglecting them, tied up as they are in news reports of one or another squabble between neighbourhood residents and city councils.
A recent such bad-tempered argy-bargy in Missoula, Montana offers some juicy new Not-In-My-Back-Yard justifications, as the city attempts to shoehorn a three story seniors home into a neighbourhood of single family housing occupied by at least some self-righteously hard-working hard workers (and be sure of it, they won’t forget to remind you of all that hard work).
We’ll save the Bug-Eyed Peeping Tom problem for some other time, as Missoula neighbours complain about the three story buck-and-bird watching platform that the city would allow to loom over hard-worker’s cottages — the perfect observation post for window-peeking geriatric perverts.
No, we’d like to celebrate in this article the apoplectic indignation of a neighbourhood resident who will be forced to shovel snow, but not solely for his own benefit or for that of one or two nearby, long-standing neighbours.
Should the seniors’ residence be built, his monumental snow-humping and dumping efforts will be hijacked for the undeserved convenience of seniors who are out for a slip-sliding stagger through the neighbourhood along with their canes, walkers, wheel chairs and/or other mobility devices.
Read more about this and other potential grounds for cancelling a city affordable housing project in Missoula CURRENT: Angry Neighbors Decry Skyview Senior Housing Project As An ‘Assault’
