Rooted or Units?

Continuity is good, NIMBYism isn't

The other day I saw this tweet from a fellow at a progressive think tank:

Casey Berkovitz@CaseyBerk

Instead of announcing how long you’ve lived in your neighborhood at a community meeting, you should have to announce when the last time you looked for new housing was

12:58 AM · Apr 7, 2022

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He’s referring to the kind of anecdotes, for example, that the excellent Ally Schweitzer, at WAMU/DCist, reports in her recent piece on housing shortfalls in Montgomery County, Maryland that I featured in yesterday’s roundup. You’ll see people who sort of appoint themselves, as she puts it, defenders of their neighborhoods—gatekeepers, in a word—despite their notion of what their neighborhood is often being artificially narrow. Berkovitz is suggesting, I think, that simply being a homeowner for a long period of time should not give you a veto over the future, or over those in the community who are not as lucky or privileged. I agree.

Yet I have to be honest—there’s a little part of me that winces when I see this kind of statement.