YIMBY’S

Dear Buzz Killers at the Party:

The DCist.com joins the Washington City Paper in promoting the YIMBY (yes, in my back yard) movement, http://dcist.com/2013/01/anti-nimby.php, http://tinyurl.com/ak5nele. YIMBY’s are the opposite of, and scornful of, the neighborhood activists whom they scorn as NIMBY’s. They are mostly young, in their early twenties, recently arrived in the city from the suburbs, and they want to gentrify and refashion their neighborhoods into something more exciting. Their first priority is more bars and liquor stores, patronized by more young gentrifiers like themselves, and their second priority is to drive out those stodgy old people who lived in their neighborhoods before they arrived there, and who don’t spend all their nights getting drunk in bars.

YIMBY’s allegiance is not to their neighbors, but to the developers who want to reduce construction costs by any means necessary. They want to eliminate building and zoning codes that require parking for their apartment houses, to eliminate codes that require minimum living spaces (who needs an apartment any bigger than a refrigerator carton, anyway), and to eliminate FAR (floor area ratio) and building height restrictions that might preserve any green space or sunlight in the city.

Resident associations, YIMBY’s think, just want to kill the fun. Why can’t every neighborhood in the city be like the French Quarter at Mardi Gras? Why can’t those stuffy old people who want to raise families move out to the suburbs, where they belong?

Gary Imhoff
themail@dcwatch.com

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CLASSIFIEDS — EVENTS

Smart Meter Discussion at UDC Dave Clarke School of Law, February 8
Gayle M. Peterson, gayle1214@aol.com

Please save the date to come and join us to hear an open and frank discussion by experts in the field, about the new, mandatory and quite controversial PEPCO "Smart" Meters and how they can effect you. At the Dave Clarke School of Law (DCSL) UDC Van Ness Campus, 4200 Connecticut Avenue, NW, February 8, 4:30 p.m. Room to be announced.

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