The Editor's Back Fence

It's time that the New York Times and other publications stopped using the term "NIMBY" as a pejorative directed at those with whom they disagree about housing policy. It's no more appropriate than traditional ethnic slurs, and it's historically misguided. Not In My Back Yard was the slogan of the heroic mothers who finally exposed pollution at Love Canal.

Farhad Manjoo's attack in the New York Times on Berkeleyans who doubt that ending single family zoning will end our low-cost housing crisis was rife with factual errors. In particular he badly mischaracterizes former Councilmember Cheryl Davila as being "more skeptical of new housing." She's a plain-spoken middle-aged African-American whose principal sin was being skeptical of the blandishments of the White developers who funded Terry Taplin's successful campaign against her. She's been a strong and vocal supporter of social housing and other solutions which are not based on trickle-down economic models. She's well to Taplin's left politically, but no sucker.

Evidently Farhad Manjoo only talked to Taplin. The unanimous Berkeley vote on the zoning proposal was just a resolution, not an ordinance, simply announcing the Council's support for apple pie (gluten-free, of course). The devil, as always, is in the recipe.