Fresh news of NIMBY opposition to affordable housing comes out of … well, our own backyard.

From North Country Public Radio, we learn that residents in Plattsburgh managed to persuade the planning board to reject a proposed four-building residential complex, alleging familiar sorts of adverse effects that low-income people would have on traffic, safety, property values.  Affordable housing is a permitted use in that district, but…

 “It is transient housing,” one resident complained. “ They put people in there who are just out of jail, prison whatever until they can get back on their feet … I don’t want it in my area.”

“This concept of us serving transients is so far from reality,” countered the director of the housing organization that would be referring tenants. “The majority of the people that we serve are disabled. They are the veterans in your community. There are elderly people in your community that we serve…”

She might have also cited reports, like this one, that affordable housing can have an uplifting impact on economic development and property values.

Oh well. The developer is appealing the rejection in court. “The thrust of it was, they did not want ‘these people’ moving into their neighborhood,” the developer’s lawyer said.

Plattsburgh is in good company. Upper Saddle River, a toney community in New Jersey, is being sued for rejecting a multi-family housing complex, and thus, by proxy, new residents who happen to be black or Latino. Another interesting case of NIMBY opposition to multi-family housing recently arose in Arizona, where the “backyard” in question belonged to a mortuary! Apparently the mortuary and the developer resolved their differences, though.

NIMBYism gets some of the credit, or blame, for California’s housing-affordability crisis, and it certainly comes in many forms, as this entertaining catalogue attests. Among our favorites are “mega-mansion NIMBYs.”