Not In My Backyard, You Don't

By Margot Hornblower

Call it the NIMBY syndrome. It is happening in New York City, where middle- class homeowners are on trial on charges of setting fire to a foster home for infants. In tiny Louisa, Ky., it is the battle cry against a proposed hazardous-waste incinerator. It has cropped up in Berkeley, where residents banded together to keep out a drop-in center for the emotionally disturbed. The acronym stands for "not in my backyard," and it symbolizes a perverse form of antisocial activism. "Everybody says, 'Take care of the homeless, take care of the boarder babies,' " says New York City Mayor Edward Koch. "But when you need a facility, they say, 'Not in my backyard.' "

Such problems are growing because there are more homeless, more AIDS victims, more drug addicts, more prisoners, more garbage, more toxic waste. The result is budget-busting pressure for more services that many people do not want in their vicinity. But beyond the fiscal debate, there is a painful ethical dilemma for many communities: Who should bear the burden of the common good? As often as not, neighborhoods are rising up to resist responsibility, and in some cases are turning to violence. "Too often we assume that the human being can achieve a good life without attending to the collective good," says Dr. Willard Gaylin, head of the Hastings Center for ethics in Briarcliff, N.Y.

In April 1987 the tranquillity of Gladwin Avenue, in the Queens section of New York City, was shattered when a fire erupted in a two-story house that the city had rented to use as a foster home. Today five respected citizens who live on the block each face up to 25 years in prison if they are convicted of arson. "These are nice middle-class people, not hoodlums," says Defense Lawyer Jacob Evseroff.

Gladwin Avenue is white. The foster children and the workers who care for them are black. Local residents, many of whom joined in a lawsuit against the home, fretted about falling property values; others argued that the babies' visiting relatives might commit crimes. "They don't belong here," says Mary Meyer, a retired waitress. "The city pushed this down our throats." That sense of alienation was accentuated by the city's failure to hold public hearings or educate the neighborhood about its plans. "It's a racial issue, but it's also a political issue, an economic issue, a class issue and a fear issue," says R. Susan Motley, a city official.

The element of fear is understandable for families that have saved for years to buy a home. Who wants a garbage dump next door? Or wants to invite recovering drug addicts to walk their sidewalks? "Put it in Nancy Reagan's backyard!" was the shrill cry when neighbors demonstrated against a proposed drug treatment center in California's San Fernando Valley. While many worries may be unfounded, experts believe planners and politicians must address the emotions people develop in such situations. Perry Norton, an emeritus professor of urban planning at New York University, advocates tax abatements for homeowners who live near an undesirable public facility, or a guarantee on the resale value of their homes.

That may not be enough. Too often local governments fail to consult residents about new projects or do not respond to their complaints. In Van Nuys, a Los Angeles suburb, the state department of corrections quietly installed 54 inmates in a work-furlough program housed in a former health club, leaving the building's sign -- Aerobics and Nautilus Unlimited -- intact. In Berkeley, after James Kelly repeatedly complained to city officials about the offensive behavior of homeless squatters next door, he finally got frustrated enough to take action: he allegedly lobbed Molotov cocktails at his obstreperous neighbors. Kelly, 47, a utility engineer with no previous criminal record, faces up to eight years in prison if convicted.

In 1985 the U.S. Supreme Court established a precedent in cases involving group homes for the mentally retarded by ruling that Cleburne, Texas (pop. 21,000), could not require a special permit for a home for 13 retarded men and women because of community opposition and "irrational prejudice." In recent years 37 states have passed laws removing zoning restrictions on group homes in single-family neighborhoods. That has not stopped people from torching homes for the mentally handicapped in middle-class cities such as Hewlett, N.Y., and Ventura, Calif. Even poor people do not necessarily want to live near their troubled brethren. In New York City's predominantly Hispanic East Harlem, a homeless shelter for 48 families was withdrawn in January after intense opposition.

Although racial and economic discrimination is hardly new, the scope of the current sentiment is alarming. Just as middle-class community groups have absorbed lessons in organizing from the civil rights movement, they seem to have turned inward. Their very sense of community, of wholeness, seems to derive from a homogeneity that can breed xenophobia. "Often communities that are the most cohesive are also hostile and fearful of outsiders," says University of Chicago Sociologist Richard Taub. "Community spirit says, 'Take care of your own.' The ethical challenge is to make people see that the world is their community."

Some argue that there is a difference between the dilemmas presented by a halfway house and a toxic-waste dump: one is a perceived social threat, the other more directly physical. But from an ethical point of view, there is little distinction, so long as society lawfully sanctions both treatment for drug abusers and manufacturing processes that create poisonous wastes. The problem remains: fewer and fewer communities acknowledge that they have any responsibility to share such common, unpleasant burdens. "The ultimate issue of community is, What do we owe other people?" says Dan Lewis, a Northwestern University urbanologist. "In our society, where individualism plays such an important role, we don't have a public ethic about what we owe others."

"We're paralyzed," says Frank Popper, chairman of urban studies at Rutgers University. "Nationwide, no one has been able to place a major hazardous- waste dump since 1980. No large metropolitan airport has been sited since 1961. The lack of locations for new prisons has caused such overcrowding that / some cities have had to release convicted prisoners." Worse, the solutions to these conflicts have tended to be quick fixes. After years of squabbling, Congress finally chose Nevada as a site for nuclear-waste storage, mainly because the state wielded less political clout than the other two contenders, Texas and Washington.

In searching for remedies for the NIMBY syndrome, some innovative approaches have been tried. The New Jersey Supreme Court broke new ground in 1975 when it ruled that wealthy suburbs must share the burden of low-cost housing. In Arkansas officials have proposed that any county that refuses a prison should pay the state to house its criminals. In each instance, the principle of community responsibility for the greater good was paramount. "One of the few things we deprive our middle class of is the opportunity to serve," says Ethicist Gaylin. Whether the problem is a waste dump, a shelter for the homeless or an AIDS hospice, an equitable and beneficial solution, however imperfect, is likely to be one that the community has had a strong hand in shaping.

With reporting by Andrea Sachs/New York and James Willwerth/Los Angeles