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NIMBYs of the Fighting Southeast! In Crosscut.com

October 15th, 2008 | Features

Graphic: NIMBYs of the fighting Southeast!

Two weeks back, local blog­ger John Hoole pub­lished a long, illu­mi­nat­ing piece on his The Hoole Intel­li­gence Report called “NIM­BYs of the fight­ing South­east!” If you want to under­stand the con­tours of Colum­bia City/Southeast Seat­tle neigh­bor­hood activism or wanted to get involved in the com­mu­nity, this is a must-read.

And it’s going to get in front of a few more eye­balls now. Crosscut.com has picked up “NIM­BYs of the fight­ing South­east!” (adding the sub­ti­tle, “How an obsessed fac­tion of res­i­dents dri­ves the pol­i­tics of an entire Seat­tle neigh­bor­hood”) and has it fea­tured on their front page today.

Some quotes:

… the sen­si­bil­ity I found at the Colum­bia City Com­mu­nity Coun­cil per­plexed and fas­ci­nated me. The more I looked, the more places I found it. The more closely I exam­ined it, the clearer it became that the sen­si­bil­ity in ques­tion is a deep, cryp­tic strain of NIM­BY­ism in Southeast.…
I have been sur­prised and trou­bled to find that, in a com­mu­nity famed for its eth­nic, racial, and income diver­sity, one nar­row world­view pre­vails among the small group of peo­ple who rep­re­sent them­selves as the lead­ers of South Seattle.…
The South End NIMBY view of social services:
The argu­ment is that since social ser­vice providers are funded by the city, it’s in their inter­ests to be the city’s stooges. As such, social ser­vice providers herd the poor, the addicted, and the crim­i­nal away from more desir­able parts of the city and into Southeast.

Ulti­mately, “social ser­vices” is code for all kinds of inter­lop­ers and the prob­lems they bring with them — each under­stood to be a prod­uct of the city’s neg­li­gent med­dling and each rep­re­sent­ing a kind of intol­er­a­ble com­pul­sion. The city tries to force the poor to move to South Seat­tle, com­muters to use the light rail, and dri­vers to give their cars the sum­mer off. And mean­while, the com­plaint goes, the neigh­bor­hoods are expected to dis­play a meek accep­tance — of views blocked by six-story build­ings; of their accus­tomed park­ing spots hogged by new renters; of an inad­e­quately staffed police precinct; of the crime they say comes with increased pop­u­la­tion den­sity.… How about some more?

The oppo­si­tion to social ser­vices in South­east is cat­e­gor­i­cal — the mis­sion, orga­ni­za­tional his­tory, and per­for­mance of any par­tic­u­lar orga­ni­za­tion are irrelevant.…

The very idea that a non­profit might be a legit­i­mate and use­ful rep­re­sen­ta­tive for poor res­i­dents who don’t have the leisure and resources to orga­nize on their own is inim­i­cal to the NIM­BYs of Southeast.…

My expe­ri­ence with the CCCC bears out the anti-renter, anti-low-income bias of South End NIM­BYs. Per the group’s bylaws, the geo­graphic area the group rep­re­sents fol­lows the gen­er­ally accepted bound­aries of Colum­bia City, except in the north­west cor­ner, where it veers dra­mat­i­cally inward to exclude the SHA’s mixed-income Rainier Vista development.…

In this way of think­ing, an intu­itive equa­tion — most poverty and crime in a neigh­bor­hood equals most social ser­vices — is twisted into an out­rage. The NIM­BYs have made such a habit of demo­niz­ing social ser­vices that they’ve come to believe they cause poverty, crime, and low prop­erty values.

Above all, it’s this abdi­ca­tion of respon­si­bil­ity for the prob­lem of poverty in South­east that makes our NIM­BYs NIM­BYs.… And what passes for lead­er­ship is bemoan­ing the fate of the poor while actively foil­ing the groups in our com­mu­nity that serve them. Have you read this yet? Con­tro­ver­sial? Start the dis­cus­sion in the com­ments below.

NIM­BYs of the fight­ing South­east! (IMAGE by Colum­bia City Blog, avail­able under an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike Cre­ative Com­mons license)

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  • Seattle Renter
    All this anti-renter bias is just fascinating. Columbia City has one of the highest rates of foreclosure in Seattle. That means the real deadbeats are the *owners*, not the renters.
  • sfb
    Owners who've purchased under special programs in the last couple of years. Deadbeats come in all shapes and sizes just like teachers or cops.
  • Denise
    Here's another:

    The basic dispute over the Southeast District Council is this: Should a board set up to provide neighborhood representation in city affairs for activist and business groups be subverted to serve the aims of social service groups who move in and take over? Social service groups all share the same basic agenda—they want more public money to be pumped into their groups and especially development money, to allow them to build housing projects and other facilities. These public dollars may provide some benefit to low-income people and renters (while also performing the all-important function of paying the salaries of the social service employees) but does that really mean that social service agency employees are the true voice of low-income people and renters? Not in my book.

    Here’s your problem, John: You tried to get involved in neighborhood activism and found that you disagree with many of your neighbors. Here’s your solution: You want to silence your neighbors and give their voice to social service folks who agree with your feel-good, liberal, pro-density agenda. My question is this: Once you have given away the pipeline to City Hall for Southeast residents to paid private-sector employees, how do low-income people, renters, and enlightened new residents such as yourself obtain a voice in city affairs?


    — J.R.
  • Denise
    Since you reprinted Hooles piece of fiction, might you also want some of the comments:

    I left Seattle due the ramifications of these problems.

    FWIW, the worst are the bureaucrats, state and city, working on their own time. Social service types are a problem, but, FWIW, I don't think it's the rank and file DSHS folks so much as it is the rejects from MSW central - the ones that populate much of the 'community service' ranks.

    Perhaps the most disgusting thing is the neighborhood representative that thinks they are to high and mighty to even talk with the folks they are supposed to be representing. This, too, is an attitude seen often in government service.

    Inclusion and a true diversity must be the hallmarks of a neighborhood group - and, yes, that means folks will disagree more often than not. The important thing is to be able to focus on the things that everyone agrees on and not prevent the good works of eccentrics who aren't otherwise harming anyone.

    The whole term 'NIMBY' has always struck me as strange. It is certainly the right of a single family neighborhood to stay that way. What is more absurd is the bureaucrat who starts accusing anyone who doesn't agree with them as somehow being 'negative'.

    I saw a classic example of this just yesterday afternoon with a presumably very high paid Sound Transit official, Marty Johnson, if I recall the name right.

    The issue involved the Sounder and Link crossing of Pacific in Downtown Tacoma. This guy, rather than actually listening to a group of very well educated lay folks instead insisted on playing PC bulldozer politics accusing anyone pointing out a complete failure of his in a respectful fashion as somehow being rude, or worse.

    Remember, we are paying people to call us trash.


    — Douglas Tooley
  • Denise
    Trellis,

    It is a sad thing that you've chosen to give this piece of fiction any credence. I know most all of these individuals and they are not NIMBY's. Mr. Hoole has not attended community meetings for years as I have and is simply unaware of the truth and following a path laid by SEDC leadership to smear community volunteers. Do you know Mariana Quarnstrom? Pat Murakami? Neither does Mr. Hoole and he did not speak with even one of these people. And it is thought to be true because people like you who know almost nothing about the conflict pick up and spread CRAP like this.

    Your neighbor,
    Denise Gloster
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