I get irked when I hear the word NIMBY, short for “Not in my backyard,” used to put community members on the defensive when they raise legitimate concerns about a nonprofit or commercial development proposed for their neighborhoods.

Invoking the acronym NIMBY can collapse opposition into a singular motive. Those who deploy it suggest that neighborhood advocates are selfish, concerned only about their property values.

Using the term NIMBY shifts the debate from considering a developmentʻs potential impact to instead questioning the legitimacy of people who oppose it.

In reality, community concerns are often multifaceted, grounded in credible reasons that warrant careful scrutiny before a project is built near their homes.

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There are of course cases where opposition fits the NIMBY label when residents resist any kind of development, but what I am addressing here is the facile put down of engaged citizens who take the time to study proposals and speak up when they identify potential problems.

“NIMBY is a term that vilifies people who are doing what citizens are supposed to be doing — having their voices heard and participating in government,” says Donna Wong, a longtime community advocate and co-founder of Hawaiiʻs Thousand Friends.

Residents of a cul de sac in Kāneʻohe say they have been called NIMBYs for opposing a two-story commercial facility proposed to house 24 elderly residents in their Kaimalu residential neighborhood.

Developer Jacob Chan told Civil Beat in an interview last year, the project will help meet the growing need for senior housing on Oʻahu. The Honolulu Department of Planning and Permitting issued a conditional use permit for the facility in January 2023. The neighbors’ group Hui O Mahinui appealed to the Honolulu Zoning Board of Appeals and lost. Now they are  preparing a legal  appeal.

“We will not give up,” says Rosie Goo, a 30-year resident of the neighborhood.

Goo says neighbors are concerned about increased traffic, additional storm water runoff into adjacent Kāneʻohe Bay, lighting, noise and the transformation of their neighborhood by a commercial facility operating 24/7 with staff, visitors and delivery vehicles coming and going at all hours.

“The neighborhood has always been open to discussing a smaller senior care facility — serving eight to 12 elderly residents, not 24 and not with the larger structures and  staffing required for such  care,” she said.

She added the name calling has been disheartening. “It is so effective to pull out the NIMBY card. It shuts down everything. It makes it harder to expess our concerns to the larger community.”

Recently, the Honolulu Star-Advertiser questioned the concerns of Kaimukī residents opposing the city’s proposal to partner with a private Zen archery group to construct permanent kyudo archery structures in Mauʻumae Nature Park.

An editorial concluded: “Letʻs hope naysayers arenʻt operating solely from a NIMBY mindset, targeting a project that doesn’t deserve to be shot down.”

The implication was the critics were motivated by self interest rather than serious concerns about a private group constructing permanent structures on public land.

In my own reporting about the kyudo archery range, I found both sides had carefully considered positions. The developer articulated clear benefits while the neighbors raised thoughtful and specific objections.

A search on newspapers.com indicates the NIMBY term seems to have first entered public discourse in the late 1970s in an article in the Daily Press of Newport News, Virginia, about a member of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission discussing the need to eliminate what he called the “not in my backyard syndrome” from people worried about radioactive waste dumps in their neighborhoods. NIMBY was also used to characterize opponents to plans for therapeutic group homes in their neighborhoods.

Over time NIMBY took on a more pejorative meaning particularly in land use debates. In Hawaiʻi the term gained traction in the late 1980s and early 1990s and now is more frequently invoked in discussions about affordable housing.

It is often easier to invoke NIMBY to delegitimize opposition than to fully analyze a project’s long-term impacts and also to enforce permit conditions to ensure affordable housing remains affordable and that so-called monster homes do not become unpermitted apartment buildings.

Land use debates are inherently more intense in Hawaiʻi than on the mainland because land in the islands is finite. Developers here cannot keep spreading out their projects across vast open fields and endless stretches of desert like they can on the continent.

Environmental concerns are also real. The fragility of the land was underscored by the Lahaina fire and more recently by the flooding and rock slides during two Kona low storms.

Equally different is Hawaiʻi’s deep sense of place — the residents’ respect for the culture and the history some feel is embedded in the ʻāina that surrounds them.

In response to NIMBYism, a countermovement YIMBY — for “Yes in my backyard” — has emerged including advocates in Hawaiʻi. YIMBY proponents argue that increasing building density across neighborhoods will create more affordable housing, a claim that is still being debated.

Perhaps it is time for a different framing altogether. One that eliminates the name calling. Not NIMBY or YIMBY but a shared commitment to respect neighborhoods and the people who live in them rather than dismissing them with easy labels.