I didn’t quite expect this tweet to garner as much attention as it did, from a mix of conservatives and progressives. (NIMBY is shorthand for “not in my backyard,” itself shorthand for people who oppose new housing or development in general in their communities.)

If a grown child cannot afford to live somewhere in the community where he grew up, is that community family friendly? Do NIMBY parents feel their children should be kicked out and only allowed back in when they've gotten rich? I've been thinking about this lately.

— Addison Del Mastro (@ad_mastro) October 1, 2020

The replies are fascinating and include agreement, disagreement, and, yes, examples of parents who are in fact indifferent to whether their adult children could, if they choose, afford to remain the community in which they grew up.

I am not suggesting that it’s more moral to remain in one’s hometown, or that there’s some sort of social obligation to do so. Rather, I’m trying to get at this question: would families with some kids and some money, and whose default position on new housing or new development is to oppose it, think differently if they imagined the new housing being for their children? Forget the NIMBY bogeymen of traffic, crime, “renters,” etc, and the idea that the absence of these things makes a community “family friendly.” If a child cannot choose to remain somewhere in the community he grew up in, is that community really family friendly? If he cannot start a family himself because of affordability issues, is that family friendly?

There are plenty of ordinary people who simply default to opposing development for a variety of reasons, most of them usually innocent. But the professional NIMBY position often boils down to the idea that individual communities should be restricted by income (or even, usually implicitly, by race.) That the suburbs are where families can find a refuge. But this is a betrayal of solidarity—both with the less fortunate who are already in many communities but have little voice, and within the family itself. It seems to encourage an uprooting and a starting over that is at odds with building the civil society and intermediating institutions that conservatives otherwise champion. It is one thing for adult children to move out of their parents’ homes. It is another thing for their parents to treat the entire community as a nest which must be flown until their children can prove, with their incomes, that they “deserve” to remain.

There are broader issues here: individualism vs. communitarianism, the idea that earning money is evidence of moral worthiness, and an aversion to the idea of entitlements such that homeownership is viewed as a reward rather than a means to the very practical end of ensuring that everyone can live somewhere. But despite my strong wording here, this is an open thread and I’m genuinely looking for thoughts: How would people raising families in expensive communities, who tend towards a NIMBY position on housing and development, respond to these questions?

This New Urbanism series is supported by the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation. Follow New Urbs on Twitter for a feed dedicated to TAC’s coverage of cities, urbanism, and place.