The Atlantic

What People Misunderstand About NIMBYs

Asking a neighborhood or municipality to bear the responsibility for a housing crisis is asking for failure.
Source: Joe Raedle / Getty

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Housing-policy experts largely agree that the solution to a housing-affordability crisis is to build more housing. Many residents support this notion in theory, until they’re faced with the possibility of new housing developments in their own backyard—in other words, NIMBYs. But Atlantic staff writer Jerusalem Demsas argues in a recent article that maybe these presumed villains of progress aren’t the problem. Instead, they’re a symptom of an approach to housing development that’s doomed to fail.

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