The divisiveness of the word “Nimby” became horribly clear to me last month when a quote was wrongly attributed to me in an article in this very newspaper. It said: “I’m the Queen of the Nimbys and I’ve stopped 37,000 houses being built.”

Social media trolls went berserk. It became clear that they thought I was responsible for making 37,000 families homeless. Death threats ensued.  

Generally, a Nimby (short for “Not In My Backyard”) is characterised as a retired, middle-class white man with nothing better to do than stop younger people owning a home of their own in order to keep the value of his own property high. But caricatures get us nowhere and, in my experience, are wholly unfounded.  

When “Yimbys” (those who say Yes In My Backyard) – some of whom have been accused of being funded by developers – lob insults and make personal attacks on community campaigners, they are not solving the housing crisis. They are making it worse.

A distraction tactic that suits developers and the Government 

The use of the word Nimby is a distraction tactic. It prevents a serious discussion of the housing crisis and its true causes. But it makes an easy headline, and it suits developers and the Government.

Too much of the debate is about housing targets. As we have seen at the recent party conferences, meaningless targets are thrown around by developers and politicians, without a jot of evidence to back them up. 

The “standard formula” councils must use for their targets is based on population figures that are nearly 10 years old, despite a significant slowing in population growth.  

Who benefits from high targets? Developers. And developers do not have any interest in helping those who face a real housing crisis – those 1.5m people stuck on council house waiting lists. 

The goal of housing policy should be to provide a safe home for everyone, while keeping harm to the environment to a minimum. Right homes, right places, right prices.

Politicians generally ignore the fact that in England there are 1.5m more dwellings than households. We are not short of homes. They are just unavailable, or unaffordable. 

Homes sit empty, they are sold to foreign investors, they are put on Airbnb and taken out of the local market. However, instead of focusing on the basics, it is much easier to blame “Nimbys” for opposing high housebuilding targets and keeping people out of housing.

Nimby: a term devoid of intellectual substance

The academic Maarten Wolsink wrote an entire paper on the use of the word Nimby in 2006. He said “This injurious name-calling lacks any analytic content” and he blamed the term for causing “prejudicial caricatures”.  

In his book Property, Planning and Protest, Quintin Bradley, another academic, says there is no research to demonstrate a causal connection between the defence of property values and opposition to development. 

In fact he found the opposite – that community groups seek a democratic system in which land use is allocated to address social needs and development rights are effectively regulated.  

It is invariably the developer and landowner who benefit and the local environment and communities that suffer.  

If we want to point fingers at people for housing being unaffordable and unavailable, then look no further than the Government and housebuilders. 

A recent report by the UK Collaborative Centre for Housing Evidence found that the major housebuilders operated a “margins over volume” strategy – in other words they prioritise profits over the number of houses built.  

They are also assisted by the Government through mortgage support schemes such as Help to Buy and renegotiation of their development obligations.

So where does that leave us?

We must stop the Nimby name-calling. If we really want to help the young people the trolls claim I am making homeless, we need to have a sensible and grown-up discussion, without vested interests and donors to political parties calling the shots.

We need consensus and we need to embrace community groups and involve them in discussions about the future of the place where they live. 

The “homeownership dream” and other soundbites just move us ever further from policies that can provide a safe roof over everyone’s heads while living within our environmental means.

I for one am proud to care about my local area and proud to want the best for it and for future generations. That is not something to attack.

Rosie Pearson is co-founder of the Community Planning Alliance