National Post (National Edition)
NIMBYISM exalts parking over the poor
If you spend any time on Twitter, it was hard to miss what was a truly cringeworthy news interview on the weekend featuring a gentleman clueless enough to deliver his most painful line of all with a stone-cold straight face: “this parking lot is the hub, it's the heart of the community.” He was talking about a parking lot in his East York neighbourhood which was set to be replaced with low-income housing for the homeless. This lack of self-awareness would be funny if it wasn't so common. This embarrassing outburst was one in a series of similar incidents.
Time and time again, outspoken community members in wealthy neighbourhoods across the city have the gall to speak out against specific manifestations of the very policies they so ardently promote. Toronto didn't invent NIMBYISM (a Not-In-My-Backyard take on development) but it sure isn't leading the way toward a more elevated approach to community-building. Most concerning is that this gutless approach to development seems to thrive in progressive communities like East York where residents have sent progressive politicians to Parliament and city council for decades.
NIMBYISM is bad enough all on its own. At its heart is an illogical amorality — a belief that though I acknowledge that this thing (subway line, low-income housing, homeless shelter, natural gas plant) should exist (I might even demand it of my politicians!), I just don't think it should exist near me. To hold this thought and excuse it as acceptable requires an impressive egoism that perhaps unsurprisingly is alive and well in today's culture. It is bad enough when these incidents crop up in rural communities where we expect a certain personal-property focused individualism.
After all, rural Canadians are told time and again by the rest of the country that their lack of support for big government and its attendant supports for people who need them, is heartless. So rural NIMBYISM would seem to suit the left's caricature of its adherents perfectly. After all, coldhearted conservatives just don't understand that we all play a role in lifting up those who need our help. When the bumpkins complain about the unsightliness of wind turbines, it's because they just can't accept that we all must sacrifice if we are to save the planet.
But if libertarianism is to blame for NIMBYISM, why is it that despite the occasional bout of rural grousing, these stories seem to overwhelmingly pop up in our most progressive of communities? How could it be that voters who demand better public services and transit of their elected representatives and rage at conservatives for their cold indifference to the plight of the poor, could be the loudest voices against those very demands actually being realized in their own communities?
Take my own community of Leslieville for instance. My neighbours are a social justice-oriented group.
Walks around the neighbourhood reveal caring households with Black Lives Matter and Support Essential Workers posters adorning windows. A perusal of local Facebook groups uncovers a fervent, almost militant leftist politics, going so far as to shame neighbours for offensive indiscretions.
So, imagine my surprise when, alongside the BLM posters, I started to notice posters of a different sort. These were calls to action opposing the Ontario Line, the latest version of a subway line supported by all parties and all levels of government to transport people from Toronto's outer reaches into and out of the downtown core and relieve the overstressed Yonge line. But how could this opposition be? This was a community that valued public services above all. A community that fought for transit funding.
A closer read of the poster revealed the concern. The government plans to run part of the Ontario Line aboveground and — disturbingly — the community would lose a couple of the dozens of well-maintained dog parks in the area. This could of course have a devastating impact on the community. It might even mean that my essential-worker-supporting-neighbour would have to walk a couple blocks farther for Spot to have his morning runaround. This is quite obviously too high a price to pay for those essential workers living in Scarborough and Etobicoke to be able to get downtown faster and more cheaply for work.
My community isn't the only one guilty of this kind of shameless insincerity. The Annex, home to Toronto's cultural elite, is infamous for its opposition to increased housing and density in the community and only a few months ago, the Karens of Yonge and Eglinton fighting a homeless shelter in the area took to Facebook to agree that if people must overdose from their addiction to opioids, they should have the decency to do it in another neighbourhood.
Supporting low-income people and building diverse communities isn't easy. Inevitably, subsidized housing will share neighbourhood blocks with existing schools, childcare centres and parks, as is the case for the proposal in East York. But the NIMBYISM on display last weekend was not about a thoughtful concern for integration and safety.
It was a naked abdication of the requirements of community and citizenship best demonstrated by the context-setting words the now-Twitter-famous gentleman used before he uttered the line for which he was dunked on over the weekend: “We're not saying people don't need support and people don't need homes, but to increase the population density with … people going through the most troubling and difficult times of their lives … this may not be the appropriate place to do it”.
In other words, help those poor people. Just don't do it anywhere near me.
MY COMMUNITY ISN'T THE ONLY ONE GUILTY OF THIS KIND OF SHAMELESS INSINCERITY. — ROTH
TO HOLD THIS THOUGHT ... REQUIRES AN IMPRESSIVE EGOISM.