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

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.