It’s a story which plays out all across the country–or at least, in the bigger cities and towns. A neighborhood full of “In Our America” signs and progressive blue voters. These same progressives love to proclaim their compassion for the homeless and the urgent need for affordable housing. They’re all in favor of it! Until…it shows up where they live. Then, suddenly, the residents are up in arms. Hence, the name NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard).

In typical leftie fashion, I used to do my share of finger-wagging and moralizing about such people. What hypocrisy! Until…the same thing happened in my neighborhood, and I turned into a NIMBY in the blink of an eye.

A few years ago, the county where I live and the city which borders our subdivision approved a large affordable housing complex, to be built on the thoroughfare near our house. I first learned about this proposal from people screaming about it on Nextdoor–that toxic pit of local “information.” To say that the Nextdoor view of the project was negative would be an understatement. I wish I could say I spoke up for the urgent need for affordable housing in our area–which is desperately needed in the overpriced city of Portland.

But I didn’t. Instead, I testified against the development at City Council meetings, wrote letters, and participated in the Nextdoor firestorm of negativity. I even canvassed door to door to convince my neighbors what a bad idea this was.

Mind you, the official reason for all this activity on my part was not because I was opposed to low-income housing in my neighborhood. At least, I never would have admitted to that. One of the reasons for the opposition to the project was that in return for putting in affordable apartments, the developer was given a break from local regulations and would not have to put in as many parking spaces as usually required. Now, it’s true that this chaps my hide to this day. Not only because it did cause more parked cars to spill out onto our streets, but also because it feels wrong for the developer to be getting special perks, when the developers are such a big part of the housing problem. But really, that is not nearly as important as the housing emergency in our city.

The other complaint was that the development would clash with the character of the neighborhood, seeing as how this was a multi-story building plunked down among single-family homes. I would say that some of the long-time residents who had lived here back when it was still farmland were justified in grumbling about this, but it was pretty rich coming from someone like me who had spent years whining about how our suburb wasn’t urban enough.

Now, let me emphasize that I’m only speaking for myself here. I don’t want to cast aspersions on any of my neighbors or guess at their motivations. I can only say that when I scratch the surface of my objections and delve a little deeper, I start finding some pretty unsavory, classist stuff in my subconscious–such as, expectations of what would happen if a bunch of “those low-income people” moved in around the block. Looking back at my fears, they were pretty vague, and I’m not sure exactly what I expected would happen. More crime? More litter? Some other thing that might bring down our property values?

Well, it’s now a few years later, and I was wrong. We like living here just fine. There is more traffic, yes, but that was to be expected with how fast the population in our area is growing. Crime did go up for a while, but this was apparently connected to a homeless encampment down the road–so, people who COULDN’T get housing. There are more cars parked on our street, but also more families with kids from the apartment complex strolling down our sidewalks and enjoying our flowers.

I can’t take back my negative reaction or my activism against my new neighbors finding a place to live. All I can do is to resolve to support any future affordable housing which might be coming to our burb–and to encourage my readers to do the same wherever they live. On the flip side of the coin…I would also encourage people not to be too quick to finger-wag and judge about what you would never, ever do. We’re all human, and you never know when you might turn into the person you don’t like, more quickly than you suspect.