As I was strolling the newspapers of our fine state, I kept coming up on a theme of “affordable housing is great, but Not In My BackYard (NIMBY)”.  It’s something that we’ve addressed on these virtual pages, and it’s not to hard to find others talking about the subject.  But, how do we deal with NIMBYism?

So, take this one, from the Eureka Times-Standard:

A proposal by Danco Communities to build 56 affordable housing apartments on Moore Avenue has some neighbors rankled and ready to take their case to the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors. (Eureka Times-Standard 7/2/07)

Or this one from the San Jose Merc:

Almost two weeks after Santa Clara leaders approved rezoning the city’s last 17 acres of farmland for housing, activists who want the land preserved as open space started walking around their neighborhoods collecting signatures for a referendum.

“People are tired and fed up with high-density housing and they want to do something about it,” said Brian Lowery, who spent about six hours collecting signatures this week.(San Jose Merc 7/2/07)

Kindly turn to the extended…

Of course, there are plenty more stories just like this in practically every city of mid-large size.  Housing activists want affordable housing, open space advocates want um…open space, and NIMBYs want pretty stuff in their neighborhood.  Satisfying everybody become nearly impossible to accomplish.

But clearly some of this work must be accomplished. We cannot continue to keep driving people further and further away from where they work. Gas prices aren’t getting any cheaper (nor should we really want them to be if we value our environment), but yet nobody wants that high-rise in their neighborhood.  But, at some level we all acknowledge this might happen.  Somehow people need to suck it up and figure out how we can set up a more efficient process to get affordable housing in all of California’s cities.