Allison Schertzer: conversation with a NIMBY

An economic historian gets a call from a housing opponent

From a paper co-authored by Schertzer on the long-term impact of zoning

Allison Schertzer is an economist and economic historian, now based in Philadelphia, who studies the long-term impacts of zoning and segregation from 100 years ago.

From Twitter:

Guys you will never believe what just happened. A neighbor here just cold-called to make sure I knew that they are *gasp* trying to build apartments behind my house and asked that I come to a meeting to speak out against this. It was like my research came to life! 1/n

Since I have never encountered a real NIMBY in the wild, I just let her speak. Her points were that (1) her home is an important part of her wealth so she has to protect it, (2) rental units just enrich landlords and do nothing for renters. 2/n

When I told her I was renting this property for the year, her tone completely changed. She said, "Well, I guess you aren't interested in what happens to the neighborhood then." 3/n

I answered that actually I am interested, since I would like to live here long term, and decades of underbuilding in nice neighborhoods like this one have made it hard to find a home. 4/n

Then she said that I'm not the kind of renter she was talking about. That my "likely income" made me an acceptable sort, or something to that effect. But she reiterated that I wouldn't attend the meeting since renters aren't invested in anything. 5/n

But now I will attend the meeting. I have no idea how this person got my number, but she may regret calling all the neighbors to unite us against building something. 6/n

(I note here that we're renting a church property temporarily, which she did not realize, and her assumption was that I was associated with the church and would still gladly go out and ensure the less fortunate cannot live anywhere near me. I was in awe). 7/n

I was very nice. I told her that I understand the desire to keep one's home value as high as possible, but giving neighbors veto power over development has created a housing crisis for future generations and that I consider this one of the great social problems of our time. 8/n

She protested that she was only trying to protect her beautiful "green" neighborhood against greedy developers and renters who desire to live here but can't afford to. I really just could not believe how close the stereotypes were to reality. 9/n

Anyway, the world is on fire but I had to share that my research came to life and called me out of the blue today. We are never going to have abundant, affordable housing until we can stop local "interests" from blocking everything. n/n

Jonah Davids, in Toronto:

After I moved into my apartment, my grandma who lives 2 minutes away invited me for tea. Over a cup of earl grey she explained to me how she had spent years aggressively lobbying against them building my building, but now that it was built wasn't it nice I was there!

More

• Research papers by Allison Schertzer