ARTICLE
Researchers at Boston University have empirically proved what builders and developers already know, that those who attend local meetings to oppose new housing are disproportionately older, longtime residents, and homeowners. These participants are incentivised to fight development as they tend to not receive the benefits associated with new homes, primarily housing access and affordability. Additionally, since the impacts associated with new housing are more localized than the benefits (e.g. increased traffic verses greater regional housing choice), the opposition has far greater salience than the support. In a 2017 white paper, Katherine Levine Einstein, Maxwell Palmer, and David Glick demonstrate that an overreliance on community meetings as a forum for land use decision making may bias policy discussions in favor of an over represented group of NIMBYs. The paper reviews a data set on all citizen participants in planning and zoning board meetings concerning the development of multiple housing units in 97 Massachusetts cities and towns and find that participatory inequalities have important policy implications and may be contributing to rising housing costs. Next Article Previous Article