In a recent article on the Jesuit publication AmericaUrban politics commentator Addison Del Mastro explains “Why Catholics Should Resist NIMBYism”:
The cost and supply of housing has gone from a problem associated with a handful of high-growth cities to a national crisis. Anyone who has moved in the last three years understands this. Calls to loosen zoning restrictions and repeal parking requirements for apartment buildings in hopes of spurring real estate production have gone mainstream….
Perhaps the most relevant element of Catholic ethics here is the idea that people are good. Pope Francis states this in his encyclical “Laudato Si’”, in which, contrary to Malthusian fears of overpopulation, he maintains that even concern for the earth cannot be placed before the dignity of the human person….
Using the unsurprising example of abortion, Francis articulates the broader Catholic belief that there is no public policy that contradicts the principle that people are good it can be good in itself. Likewise, no apparent good that is based on the denial of this principle is worth preserving….
This may seem easy enough. But people don’t exist in a vacuum. Recognizing their dignity or accommodating their needs is not just an intellectual exercise. Their needs must be concretely satisfied in the real world, and one of these needs is housing.
Self people are goodIf children and families are good, the housing they need must be good too. Home is an extension of people and family, and as children grow up, they become neighbors. But in American politics, these concerns have been separated and isolated….
Does this mean that Catholics should never oppose the construction of new homes? What about objections to ugly new buildings, traffic, or rapidly increasing density that leads to a sense of overcrowding? Are these concerns illegitimate? I wouldn’t say that, and housing policy is certainly one of those issues that Catholics can freely discuss and disagree about.
Instead, I would frame the issue this way: At least in the highest-growth regions of our country and with the most housing shortages, we may have to choose between people’s needs and our preferences for the built environment around us. We might have a picture of what a “family-friendly neighborhood” looks like: single-family homes with yards, for example. But a family-friendly neighborhood might instead be a neighborhood made up of the average family be able to afford, and it may look different from our ideal. It may be that putting the human person and family first requires abandoning some aesthetic preferences…
Del Mastro omits a further reason why Catholics should oppose NIMBYism: the Church is – rightly – supportive of migrants fleeing poverty and oppression. But, in many places, exclusionary zoning represents a major barrier to building the new housing needed to accommodate migrants and refugees (as well as Native Americans seeking economic and educational opportunities). This is, for example, one of the main causes of New York City’s current problems with asylum seekers.
I myself am not Catholic or even a religious believer. But many of the points raised by Del Mastro can also be shared by many secular people. For example, I too believe that “people are good” and that NIMBY aesthetic considerations should yield to this imperative (though it is also true that current homeowners in communities with restrictive zoning often have much to gain from reform ).
In a recent related Reason item, explains how zoning reform can help various religious groups survive and grow.
I have written before about how zoning reform is a cross-ideological cause that cuts across conventional ideological and partisan lines. In this case, it could also overcome some divisions between religious and secular.