Why do people get so upset when someone proposes an apartment building
or some other new development near where they live?
The prevailing theory is that it's mostly about property values.
Homeowners are worried
that a high rise or renters
or quote the type of people who live
in multi family housing can lower the resale value of their house.
And in a country where for most middle class people,
their primary residence is their primary wealth building tool,
anything that threatens your home value is suspect.
But is that the real reason for nimbyism?
My name's Jerusalem Dempsis.
I'm a staff writer at the Atlantic and this is Good on Paper,
a policy show that questions what we really know about popular narratives.
My guest today is David Brockman.
He's a political scientist at UC Berkeley whose new paper with Chris Elmendorf
and Josh Kolla questions the roots of David and his co authors reason
that if NIMBYism is about protecting property values,
then renters should be less NIMBY than homeowners.
But they find that when they asked people about new development or building more housing,