12
votes
A case study in NIMBY entitlement: The former mayor of Beverly Hills is so mad about duplexes
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- Title
- A Case Study in NIMBY Entitlement
- Authors
- Will Wilkinson
- Published
- Oct 1 2021
- Word count
- 2964 words
I work in local government and the amount of NIMBY-ism that I see is stunning.
The most egregious was at a meeting a few years ago about building a Dollar General that was on the boarder of a poorer part of town and a historically upper-class, white neighborhood. A woman got up and said she was against it because of the type of people it would attract. When the one Black board member asked what type of people the speaker meant, the woman answered, "We all know which groups of people shop there."
But I've seen NIMBY-ism about the most stupid stuff. We had one group who didn't want a retention pond built near their development, even though it was a flood prone area. That one was a head scratcher. The government was offering to build a very expensive water management system that will significantly lower their insurance costs and they're against it because...well, it would have come with a path that would have connected their neighborhood with the adjoining, older and less upmarket one.
We had a fun case of misplaced NIMBYism around our neighbourhood a couple of years ago.
Shortly before marijuana was legalized here, there were a number of grey market stores popping up around the city. One was scheduled to open in our neighbourhood and many people were up in arms because they believed a less-than-legal drug business opening up would bring in all kinds of unwanted types, increasing the amount of homeless, miscreants, ne'er-do-wells, and more.
The weedery opened and operated for eight months without any issue. Turns out all the people coming to buy weed were very good about keeping a low-profile, staying out of everyone's way, and turned out to be much more of the young professional types than the street hooligans they were expecting.
Then a Tim Hortons opened up across the street and that's when the amount of homeless, miscreants, ne'er-do-wells, and more started coming by. Now the street is a traffic nightmare of badly and illegally parked cars (including the police!), there have been multiple instances of crime and (victimless) shootings, and the area is worse than ever.
I've gone with my wife a few times to the medical marijuana place to pick up her orders and it's such a random mix of people. I honestly expected it to be a ton of wink wink it's for medicine stoner types, but it's a pretty diverse mix. Old people, young people, obvious stoners, soccer moms, rednecks, joe schmos. Everyone likes the sticky icky, I guess.
Anecdotally, it's been fascinating to hear about how many grandparents here have taken to cannabis-based medication over their previous ones. A lot of them are of the vein of "Their old medication made them feel like zombies but cannabis makes them feel like themselves but without the aches and pains."
CBD creams have been one of the most quickly rising products up here.
Here is one of the biggest problems. The value of one's house is often estimated by a private assessor, and those often have the worst of prejudices, so the subjectively negative effect of “being connected to a less upmarket neighbourhood” is assessed as higher in magnitude than the objectively positive effect of “being protected from floods in a flood-prone area.”
Woah, really? I had no idea that was even a thing. How do you regulate private assessors? Can you prevent "soft" assessments from being used as a form of tax break?
The "Assessor" is the public official responsible for property taxes. Most states practice "mass appraisal", which is to say they use market data and statistical analysis to determine property tax assessments. They do not base their property assessments on a random property owner's tirade about the presence of "undesirables". Tax payers who disagree can file an appeal with their county's Assessment Appeal Board to have their property value changed, but they need actual evidence (open market data) to get values revised.
MetArtScroll is actually referring to private fee appraisers contracted to do appraisals for mortgages or refinancing. These appraisers are regulated by state agencies (e.g. Bureau of Real Estate Appraisers in California) and are bound by the Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice (USPAP) in the United States.
Yes, there are incredibly unprofessional appraisers who allow their biases to affect their judgments of property value, but it's pretty weird to single out the appraisal profession for systemic racism that has been embedded into the fabric of the US since its inception.
You are right, I am referring to those who do appraisals for mortgages, refinancing, or sale (here is an article describing that a rich Black family's home in the Marin county [!] was first terribly under-appraised and then, when they removed any evidence that the owners at that time were Black, another appraiser appraised it at $500k more).
See also this recent topic here: The housing theory of everything
I'm confused. Why does Beverly Hills have a mayor? Is it a city?
There are so many cities in the LA metropolitan area.