Urbanities,
Vol. 4
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No 2
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November 2014
© 2014
Urbanities
4
The NIMBY (‘not in my backyard’) phenomenon is one that is largely defined by
differing constructions of social reality made by people on alternate sides of a community
issue. The term NIMBY first arose during the 1970s when environmental scholars were
becoming aware of the use of several areas as dumping grounds for toxins and industrial
waste (Dear 1992, McGurty 1997). The 1970s also saw changes in laws governing group
homes and halfway houses that laid the foundation for NIMBY battles. Until that time, group
homes and halfway houses were so uncommon that laws to regulate them were unnecessary.
As the horrors of state run psychiatric institutions were exposed in the media, nearly all states
passed laws mandating the creation of group homes for persons with mental illness and those
with developmental disabilities (Szasz 1991). However, the passage of these laws did not
mean that group homes and halfway houses were established without opposition.
In some cases, the laws themselves contained a built-in mechanism for community
protests (Schonfeld 1984). In New York State, for example, the Padavan law requires that
agencies seeking to purchase property to convert into group homes and halfway houses give
notice to the city and get approval not from local zoning boards but from a special state
hearing officer before the purchase is made. This extra level of scrutiny provided ample time
for communities and their political representatives to mount a counteroffensive (Winerip
1994).
One controversial idea implied by all NIMBY battles is that neighbourhoods with
affluent and non-minority residents will avoid suffering the burden of unwanted government
or industrial use of community land use. Despite protests, state and local governments have
used disenfranchised neighbourhoods for correctional purposes because of their lack of
political voice. Prisons, halfway houses and community correctional facilities can also be
placed in such politically powerless communities (Costanza, Kilburn and Vendetti-Koski
2013; Kilburn and Costanza 2011).
In this article, we report how residents of one New England town continue to adapt to
the unwanted placement of halfway houses in their neighbourhoods. The people in this
neighbourhood view the presence of the halfway houses as an imposition on their way of life.
They lash out in myriad ways at governmental attempts to subsidize halfway houses in their
neighbourhoods. We explore how these people behave in what they perceive as a decaying
environment and show how community dynamics function in the midst of a classic NIMBY
battle. The battle over halfway house placement, moreover, presents us with a unique set of
conditions because each individual that tries to have a voice in the crisis defines their personal
situation in their own unique way. We draw from several interviews to assess the feelings of
residents and discover that sometimes when a town is in decay, residents (many who
previously had not known one another) will cohere behind a common objective in an attempt
to regain perceived control over their environment.
‘Chestnut Lane’
Because we were asked by certain town representatives to keep our research anonymous, we
use ‘Chestnut Lane’ as the pseudonym for the main street of a New England town. Its native
