Decoding NIMBY Excuses

This week you may have seen an interview going viral where an LA City Councilmember says that to increase affordable housing in her district, she forced an affordable housing project to shrink and add more parking. This contradiction, where to support affordable housing she killed affordable housing, was lost on Councilmember Imelda Padilla. She talked about this as if it was a brave action she took to help the community.

This bizarre attitude is unfortunately common in politics, where if an official talks long enough, they can convince themselves that the best way to get people housing is to stop it from ever being built. I am going to highlight two NIMBY LA elected officials with different excuses for why they block housing, but these attitudes can be found in elected officials across the country.

Imelda Padilla and Local Control

Councilmember Padilla’s website lists the “unsheltered population” as her first priority, promising to implement an immediate solution to the housing crisis. Despite making such a bold claim, her actions speak differently.

Earlier this year, California State Senator Scott Weiner introduced SB 79, which would allow for more multi-family housing near rail stations and bus rapid transit (BRT) statewide. Almost 200,000 people in California do not have a home and housing prices are skyrocketing, so one would think that local officials would rejoice at the opportunity to build more housing. Yet Councilmember Padilla and many other California elected officials are officially opposing the bill, stating that it will take away local control.

To an extent, the Councilmember is right. An individual official will have less power to interfere in housing development if SB 79 passes. No politician likes losing power, but when they are using that power to block housing, it must be done. With SB 79, Councilmember Padilla would not have been able to cut that affordable housing development in favor of parking.

The most revealing aspect is how Padilla defended her actions against affordable housing. She said it with pride as an example of her work for the community. Politicians love to talk, and if you give them enough time they will be able to defend anything. If you were just casually listening to her, you would think that she was an advocate for housing. But you need to cut through the noise and listen for the substance of what she is saying. She is saying that she forced the affordable housing development to cut down from seven to three stories and to remove housing and put in more parking instead. It does not matter how many times she said “listen to the community” or “engage all stakeholders”, what matters is that she blocked housing.

Any time an elected official gives a defense of NIMBYism, listen closely, tuning out the standard politician platitudes. You will hear the same points that Councilmember Padilla stated, where “the community” does not want affordable housing and therefore it is her obligation to block said housing.

Karen Bass and “Unintended Consequences”

Karen Bass was elected as LA’s Mayor in 2022 while promising to take serious action on the housing crisis, but has proved to be a major disappointment. She has repeatedly taken action to block housing development in her city while making excuse after excuse for why housing should be blocked. Like Councilmember Padilla, Mayor Bass is rhetorically in favor of housing but in practice is a NIMBY.

In 2023 she signed an order to expedite affordable housing development in the city. This is a great idea, as municipalities’ permitting times and endless studies are major contributors to the housing crisis. However, as soon as Mayor Bass received pushback, she retreated and changed the order so that affordable housing near single family zoning was ineligible to be fast tracked. When that was not enough, she even further restricted it to block fast-tracking in historic districts or on properties with rent controlled apartments. This blocking in historic districts was at the request of homeowners in a wealthy LA neighborhood named Windsor Village. Developers had proposed building a 70 unit affordable housing development on a vacant lot in Windsor Village, so she made this change to slow that project down.

She later argued that blocking this affordable housing was a way to prevent gentrification. I do even know where to begin with that statement as it is completely detached from reality. In case anyone is unaware, affordable housing does not cause gentrification. Either Mayor Bass is so unaware of housing that she thinks this is true, or she is lying.

She received a lot of criticism for this statement, and she seems to have changed her words but still has the same message. Now she warns of “unintended consequences” in response to housing development, and then does not articulate what those consequences would be.

Mayor Bass has officially come out against SB 79 because of its “unintended consequences” and wants LA exempted from it. What a surprise that yet again, she speaks in favor of housing generally but opposes any attempt to actually build it.

This nebulous fear of “unintended consequences” is a common talking point from NIMBYs. It has a grain of truth, in that there may be unintended consequences from anyone taking action on anything. There may be unintended consequences if I go to the store, but I still have to get groceries.

I want to remind Councilmember Padilla and Mayor Bass of the intended consequences of their actions. Their actions blocked affordable housing. I do not care what long statement they would put out talking about their extensive community engagement and how they engaged all stakeholders. They had a binary choice between supporting or blocking housing, and they chose to block.