“NIMBYism makes perfectly good sense if you think about the variance in expected outcomes, and the fact that there is no way to insure against neighborhood or community-wide decline.” Restrictive zoning, and the creation of local homeowners’ cartels like neighborhood associations to enforce an effective ban on construction, serve as ad hoc insurance policies

The New England Telephone Company had planned to put a pole intheir front yard and workers from the company began digging the hole. Butthe Brewer sisters and Byington came out and sat in the hole, blocking theirefforts by sleeping there in a tent overnight. The telephone company installedthe pole across the road instead, making this a successful result fornineteenth-century Nimby activism.

Heminger estimated that it would take “over a million” new housing units “to make a dent in the shortfall.” The real challenge, he said, is “to fit that growth in the communities we cherish,” adding, in a non sequitur: “We need to change what the Bay Area looks like.”

“You may not feel it for a year or two years,” warned CSFN president George Wooding of the slippery slope to a denser, taller west side. “But one day it’ll be in your backyard, and you won’t know what hit you.”