We all know that posts about cats fuel the internet, and posts by, from, and about NIMBYs end up dominating internet comment threads about growth and development. Imagine putting these two things together. Well, someone finally did it in a post making the rounds on Facebook now called 9 Things People Always Say at Zoning Hearings Illustrated by Cats. Here’s my favorite from the list:

6. “What this neighborhood really needs is a coffee shop, not more apartments.”

For all the mean things people sometimes say about developers, a lot of folks seem to fashion themselves amateur land developers, with a keen eye on exactly what types of businesses will succeed or fail. As it turns out, those things coincide perfectly with the things they personally enjoy.

Actually, they are ALL my favorite because the 9 comments on the list are so typical, so common, that anyone who has been to a design review meeting or any public meeting about new housing could have come up with the same list. The thing I like about number 6 is that it also applies to members of the Seattle City Council who seem to spend their time trying to be housing developers — really bad, unsuccessful, broke housing developers. In my more than 20 years of working with various levels of government, I’ve never seen a group of people (including the staff) with such a strong dislike and distrust of people who make housing, but such a profound desire to dictate where housing should go, what it should look like, and what it should cost.

This fussiness about rooflines and hedges and building heights and windows usually masquerades as worry about social justice (“we’re in a housing crisis!“) or as worry over bad design or bad density. That’s caught up in the 1st entry on the list:

1. “I’m not opposed to all development. Just this development.”

Those 1,000 times you sat on your couch to support developments far away from you surely counterbalance that one time you came out to oppose your neighbor’s development.

If you’re opposed, just tell us why; don’t go on about how you’re not a person that opposes things.

There are people in Seattle who have based their entire political philosophy and community careers on this first point, raising endless red herrings about design, energy efficiency, parking, height, bulk, scale, views, spacing, light and air, and just about anything else they can think of about why this one project doesn’t fit their image of “density done right.” We all know that these cats, er people, will never be satisfied and will endlessly adjust things into eternity with nothing ever getting built.

Here’s my addition to the list, the scaredy cat:

10. “I’m afraid of what this project will do to the character of my neighborhood and community.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fear. The number one reason anyone ever opposed anything ever, anywhere. If someone proposed a toxic waste dump on the corner, well, yeah, be afraid. But some apartments? I don’t think so. Remember the crying lady begging the City Council not to allow microhousing on her block? Well, I guess we can honor and respect your feelings while we’re building that microhousing anyway.

I think any self-conscious human being will recognize themselves in the cats. But that’s just it, NIMBYs aren’t self-conscious, since their world revolves around themselves and making sure that what they see out their window when they’re washing dishes stays exactly the same.