I’m not going to post much commentary on yesterday’s Planning Land Use and Sustainablity (PLUS) Committee meeting. I encourage you to watch for yourself about two hours of some of the most over the top reactionary NIMBY testimony to proposed low-rise legislation. I open the proceedings with a warning to Council (at 30:00) that they are about to hear lots of emotion and red herrings.

One of the best comments (some people actually cried about how much love their single-family house) was a NIMBY who said that the neighborhood “live in fear” of the next rowhouse project because new housing has turned their neighborhoods into a “war zone.” Also, the NIMBYs manage to contrive a new term: East Block Housing. They arrived at this formulation by pushing together the Cold War term Eastern Bloc with the architectural term, “Blocky” or “Block” describing Brutalist architecture. So now neighbors have to fight against East Block Housing in low-rise zones.

Sadly, the Committee is listening to the wild and emotional defense of single-family property values. Councilmember Rasmussen has promised amendments to turn back the progress made on previously bad legislation.