Neoliberal

All this NIMBY nonsense is just exhausting.

Apparently, the latest argument is that building affordable housing where it hasn’t ‘traditionally’ been built is racially discriminatory againt rich, white people.

How that makes any sense is beyond me, but apparently that’s a real argument. I guess NIMBYs aren’t able to find it in themselves to support something that benefits everyone.

YIMBY all the way!

Article Content:

NIMBYs sure know how to keep the surprises coming.

Just when you think they might have finally run out of absurd arguments to avoid building new housing — such as a town declaring itself a mountain lion sanctuary or proposing to develop affordable housing on underwater eelgrass — they come up with something new.

Meet the wealthy Los Angeles County community of La Cañada Flintridge, which — in a desperate attempt to avoid approving its first multifamily housing project in more than a decade — argued in court documents filed last week that a California law designed to desegregate historically exclusionary communities, known as “affirmatively furthering fair housing,” is unconstitutional due to the U.S. Supreme Court striking down affirmative action in college admissions.

In other words: building affordable apartments where they haven’t traditionally been built is racially discriminatory — mostly against rich white people.

Census data shows that 60% of La Cañada Flintridge’s 20,000 residents are white and 30% are Asian American, 9% are Latino and just over 1% are Black. The city — which was incorporated in 1976, arguably to avoid the racial integration of its public schools — has a median household income of more than $187,000 and a median home value of nearly $1.7 million.

The twisted logic of the city’s argument would almost be laughable if it weren’t in danger of setting a precedent.

Although La Cañada Flintridge may be the first and only city to claim that California’s fair housing law is unconstitutional, other NIMBYs are intentionally misinterpreting the same law in different ways to block housing.

La Cañada Flintridge is also one of California’s best test cases for a law known as the “builder’s remedy,” which allows developers to bypass local zoning standards for projects with a certain percentage of affordable units in cities without state-approved housing plans.

The city still hasn’t secured state approval for its plan to accommodate a whopping 612 of the 2.5 million homes California needs by 2030 — prompting a development company called Cedar Street Partners to propose a five-story, 80-unit mixed-income building with a 14-room hotel and office space using the builder’s remedy.

Yet La Cañada Flintridge continues to insist that it isn’t subject to the builder’s remedy, despite a court ruling and a notice of violation from the state housing department suggesting otherwise.

The city’s argument: The California Department of Housing and Community Development “has no final and binding power to declare anyone compliant or noncompliant … the courts decide whether cities have a substantially compliant housing element,” Peter Sheridan, special litigation counsel for La Cañada Flintridge, told me.

What that would mean in practice, of course, is lots of litigation — and delayed development. Dylan Casey, executive director of the California Housing Defense Fund, which, separately from the Cedar