NIMBY-ism the Real Miami Shores Election Victor
Letter to the Editor
While I appreciated Biscayne Times coverage of recent Miami Shores Village elections, the true story was that beyond the decisive winning slate of George Burch, Jesse Valinski, and Jerome Charles; the true winner was NIMBY-sim.
The acronym NIMBY, which stands for “Not-in-My-Backyard,” is the behavioral phenomenon that most acutely affects wealthier communities whose residents' band together against any kind of development, irrespective of the larger social good or societal costs. And in 2023, this was a village election motivated by NIMBY concerns, organized by NIMBY fears, and propelled by NIMBY electors, to deliver the most NIMBY Council in recent memory.
Fueled by social-media hysteria regarding the updating of the Village’s Comprehensive Development Plan (Comp Plan for short), the election was a single-issue election. Every declared candidate was an ardent opponent of adopting the Comp Plan. Conversely, no declared candidate had any proposed alternative to what to replace it with. The Village experienced a Trump-ian election based on NIMBY fear, anger, and misinformation.
There were false claims that the proposed Comp Plan would allow for high-rise developments or promote Section-8 housing (a commonly understood racial dog-whistle) on vacant lots Barry University seeks to develop and that the golf course would be ringed with condos. The removal of street barricades also was floated on social media in opponents’ efforts to gin up fear and anger amongst residents.
Council efforts to debunk these wild claims fell on deaf ears as red-hots descended on Village Council meetings, Jerry Springer-style, to berate Village Councilmembers as corrupt, Nazi-like, and seeking to “destroy the village.” It recalls Mark Twain’s quote that “a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes.”
But NIMBY-ism is more serious than just concerned affluent residents seeking to block developments adjacent to their homes. It has tremendous impact from a granular local level up to the more societal level. Because of Miami Shores NIMBY-ism, locally:
· In 2017, Villagers overwhelmingly voted down a bond initiative to construct a new Recreation Community Center. Public meetings were met with cries of crime, outsiders, traffic, etc.
· The Village may surrender $1.3 million in state monies to rehabilitate the Bayfront Park seawall because there’d be a requirement for “public access” to the bay, perhaps as a -- GASP -- kayak launch, which would of course produce crime, outsiders, traffic, etc.
· There is no appropriately placed dog park. Once under consideration along 2nd Ave., the village’s current dog park is located at the pedestrian-inaccessible aquatic center.
Perhaps the most damning result of NIMBY-ism is there may be NO housing within the village ever so slightly affordable to mainstream professionals. When a councilmember noted the median sales price in Miami Shores was $1.3 million, he was met with chars and whistles of elite approval.
Members of the public, including one now elected village council member, posited that future multi-family residents would be a threat to the Village, bizarrely stating these multi-family residents would then become “multi-family voters” who don’t share the “priorities” of single-family residents (whatever any of this NIMBY-istic/xenophobic gobbledygook means is anyone’s guess).
Instead, village housing NIMBY-ism will deliver South Florida greater unaffordability, more urban sprawl, more greenhouse emissions, more automobile dependency, more concentrate poverty in already low-income communities, and further economic segregation.
NIMBY-ism is as politically potent as it is morally bankrupt.
John Ise
Miami Shores