NIMBY — Blog — Healy Chen

A tall crane

My neighborhood is the residential type with homes no taller than three stories. The tallest thing nearby is San Francisco State University, of which the highest building on campus is nine stories. The university is in the middle of constructing a new science building. Consequently, a giant crane have been erected for that purpose. This thing absolutely dominates the skyline, and honestly, a bit of an eye sore.

I get it now: I can see why NIMBYs all over protest against tall, dense housing. It’s not very nice to have your horizon of pure sky suddenly get obstructed with some monstrosity. What NIMBYs have to do is admit that is the real reason for their opposition - in additional to lowering the values of their home, of course. They chose to buy in a suburban area, and indeed it would suck to have that changed from under them.

Saves us the "we don’t want luxury apartments and developers to get rich” bullshit.

Just because I understand NIMBYs, doesn’t mean I am with them. San Francisco need to build more housing, full stop. And it cannot all be concentrated in the north east part of the city. Our nearby Stonestown mall is planning to develop addition apartments and shop areas to surround the existing mall. It’ll be interesting to see if it gets approval, because the skyline of our neighborhood will be changing with it.

Who knows if I’ll even be around to see that come to fruition. Not because I’d be dead, but because I might have moved away. Major constructions in this country - unless it’s a stadium/arena for a sports team - takes a long time. That aforementioned science building at San Francisco State won’t be complete for another four years!

I get it now

A few nights ago I found myself in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco. Arguably the roughest neighborhood in the whole city, it has everything the naysayers warn about. Massive amounts of loitering, likely drug deals, homeless population living on the streets, littering everywhere, and a general cloud of loud noises. Paradoxically, sprinkled in between all of this are new condos, the symbol of gentrification.

Honestly though, who would want this status quo? It’s nice to see some signs of improving the situation. I understand why NIMBYs get up in arms whenever there are talks of low-income housing or housing for the homeless getting build in their neighborhood. For better or worse, the Tenderloin shows that looks like, and people are afraid that if such housing gets built in their proverbial backyard, the negative externalities get brought along as well.

No one wants to live near loud noises, drug use, and loitering. I grew up in the poorer parts of San Francisco so I’m familiar with all those things. Moving to the west side of the city was in part to get away from those public nuisances. It’s probably dubious to equate low-income/homeless housing to having those negative qualities, but that’s the perception! That’s what I grew up with, that’s what everyone see when visiting the Tenderloin (excellent Vietnamese food there).

This isn’t a defense of outright NIMBY-ism. Surely there’s a non insignificant amount of NIMBYs whose fears are exactly as I described above. The character of the neighborhood they want is quiet, clean, and unobstructed. You can argue those fears are irrational, but how can you see what’s going on in the Tenderloin and not draw some similar thoughts and conclusions?

I couldn’t.