BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
Mon, March 14, 2022, 9:30 AM
Rarely has a major group of Californians suffered a less deserved rash of insults and attacks than the myriad homeowners often described as “NIMBYs” — an acronym for folks who may favor new developments, but “not in my backyard.”
NIMBYs have killed liquefied natural gas projects pushed by Pacific Gas & Electric Co. and Southern California Gas, thus saving California consumers billions of dollars in rates they otherwise would have paid for generations for unneeded and dangerous gas imports.
They’ve prevented building prisons in urban areas, thus sending murderers, rapists, burglars and more to isolated areas where escapees are less likely to harm anyone than if they make off into crowded neighborhoods.
They kept freeways from running through the greenest (and most expensive) residential parts of the state.
Nowhere have supposed NIMBYs taken more heat than in Berkeley today. In the wake of a court decision won by a homeowners group called “Save Berkeley’s Neighborhoods,” the academically choice UC campus there claimed it would have to accept more than 3,000 fewer students for the next academic year than planned.
In this dramatic town vs. gown dispute, the homeowner group won a ruling that some say will force the onetime flagship campus of UC (these days, UCLA is higher ranked and gets more applicants) to lower its planned enrollment.
The residents essentially complained that adding thousands of enrollees could produce a new corps of homeless students or drive up rents in the area so high that current occupants might be forced out. They also griped that introducing thousands of new student residents into off-campus housing would create nightly noise problems for other residents.
And, using a sometimes maligned law called the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), they won in California courts at every level.
For this, they were labelled “reactionaries” and “backward” and “selfish” by some of the state’s largest newspapers and television stations.
Meanwhile, after taking a closer look, something that perhaps should have been done before the neighborhood group went to court, the Berkeley campus concluded things would not be so drastic after all: It turns out a thousand or so of the new enrollees can take classes online wherever they live, others can wait six months and then enroll, and no one need be deprived of an education, as critics of the so-called NIMBYs all the way up to a dissenting state Supreme Court justice, had claimed.
In fact, the folks labeled NIMBYs previously accepted many campus expansions, but resisted this one primarily because UC did not build new quarters for its new students. Yes, that was proposed, but the campus conveniently did not examine all the effects of its putative expansion on the area, and no construction was imminent in any case. The neighbors, then, are really being lambasted for a failure by campus officials to take care of needed business and preparation.
But blasting NIMBYs is politically correct in this era, when YIMBY has claimed SB 9, a new law it helped push through the Legislature last year, would simply allow homeowners to make duplexes of their single-family homes. That’s untrue: The 2021 law actually allows at least six new units on virtually every current single-family lot in California.
Politicians also find it convenient to blast what they call NIMBYism whenever their proposals are exposed as harmful to many Californians. Not surprisingly, dozens of today’s legislators, and the governor, have been major beneficiaries of campaign donations from developers and building trade unions who want to build anywhere they can.
All of which means the current anti-NIMBY fashion is often hooey. Informed Californians must learn to see through it.
Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com.
His book, “The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It,” is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net
A major point that you missed in your article is the fact that YIMBY is a TOTAL misnomer! They don’t want things built in THEIR backyards; they want to DICTATE to others that they MUST build in others’ backyards, AND they MUST be built by wealthy white supremist Trump supporting Nazi Republican land investors and land developers, who are funding YIMBY, and funding all the Democratic legislators who are “authoring” these housing bills. You also failed to mention that not ONE of the 70+ housing bills that they have passed in the last four years has ANYTHING to do with “affordable housing”; they don’t even MENTION it. I will gladly take on the moniker of NEWSIMBY – because you are DAMN right! NEVER EVER WALL STREET IN MY BACK YARD!! DAMN straight about that! You fail to mention the LACK of evidence – lack of proof – lack of any statistic – that shows that California HAS a housing shortage – because the simple fact is, IT DOES NOT!! And the simple FACT of 1.2 MILLION VACANT housing units is simple PROOF of that! Another fact that you fail to point out is that a “housing shortage” and “affordable housing” are NOT ONLY NOT SYNONYMOUS, but they actually involve ECONOMICS! NOT more building! AND another thing you fail to mention is that their “tactics” and their policies are right in line with Trumpian Nazi Republican policies – there is NOTHING democratic about any of the legislation that has been passed – they are ALL unconstitutional – they are all written by and for the benefit of a small wealthy group of greedy lying corrupt land speculators/investors/developers who could not care less about anything except their own profits. AND you failed to mention that all of the building that has gone on has driven housing prices UP in the last few years – because these a-holes are giving them even more power to take over our land. I don’t know about you, but I do NOT want to let the land speculators/investors/developers take over the land and property in the State of California – not without a fight! And god damn all the so-called Democratic legislators – Newsom, Weiner, Skinner, McGuire, Chiu, Lee, Bonta, Atkins – who are pushing all of this housing crap – ESPECIALLY when we have REAL crises that they should be dealing with in this state – something called a climate crisis; something called a drought; something called a wildfire crisis. THOSE are all REAL CRISES!! They are not fabricated by a REPEATED LIE!! Just like Donald Trump repeating the BIG LIE about election fraud (that 60 courts debunked, but people still believe it because he keeps repeating the lie) – these evil lying corrupt people in Sacramento keep repeating the BIG LIE about a “housing crisis” in CA. What we truly have is a crisis of conscience! Just like Donald Trump, these particular legislators are lying to the people of California, bullying the people of California; raping the cities of California; attacking the cities of California; destroying the cities and the mental health of the people of California – ALL FOR A BIG LIE!! SHAME on ALL OF THEM! And I might add, sir – I am a lifelong Democrat, and I have hated Donald Trump and his evil crap since November 6, 2016. And I will be damned if I am going to stand by and NOT expose all these people for being the Trumpian Nazis that they are! Assemblymember Lee has a “Stop Fascism” poster in his office; meanwhile, he is authoring AB 2053, that is nothing BUT FASCISM at work – let’s FORCE cities to pay for all the infrastructure and schools and any other environmental impacts that all this construction is bringing to their cities – meanwhile, the developers pay NOTHING, and reap all the profits!! God damn all of them! Sorry, I get VERY emotional about this. I hope you read my comments, and I hope I hear from you. I am an activist in several statewide and Bay Area groups, such as Livable California, United Neighbors, Catalyst, and Save Lafayette. And all this namecalling needs to stop! ALL THE LYING NEEDS TO STOP!! If they are going to call themselves Democrats, then they need to show that they HAVE A CONSCIENCE – which right now is the main difference between the national Democratic Party and the Trumpian Republican Nazi Party. But these individuals in CA are NOT showing ANY conscience because they are LYING EVERY DAY! Just like Donald Trump! THERE IS NO HOUSING CRISIS IN THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA, AND BUILDING MORE MARKET RATE HOUSING IS MAKING THE CLIMATE CRISIS WORSEN AND IT IS DRIVING UP HOUSING PRICES – NOT MAKING THEM MORE AFFORDABLE!! WE DON’T WANT TO BE RENTERS TO THE NAZIS!! DAMN STRAIGHT ABOUT THAT!! AND THERE IS NO NEED! WE HAVE 1.2 MILLION VACANT HOUSING UNITS, AND PEOPLE ARE LEAVING THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA BY THE DROVES – OVER 100,000 people leaving the state every year since 2017 (these morons won’t acknowledge that we lost a congressional seat because of that downtrend) AND the jobs are leaving California as well! So why are we having to be forced to build more apartment rentals for whom?? AND the corruption angle of this is so very very wicked and evil, it really and truly makes me sick!! Thank you for listening. Again, I hope I hear back from you.