| No Images? Click here   Senior enterprise reporter Michael Hobbes has covered a wide range of topics at HuffPost: obesity, mental health in the gay community, homelessness, the housing crisis. He also co-hosts a podcast, "You're Wrong About," which is about people and events America has misremembered. What unifies his beat is his interest in research, data and identity, and how our (mis)perceptions of those things can come to define reality. In his latest piece, Hobbes digs in deep on what's driving otherwise-progressive residents to so fiercely fight change and development that would fix some of the biggest challenges in our cities -- like density, transit and homelessness. They're your average NIMBY fights, except now they're hopped up on social media steroids and infused with a Trump-era flair for hysterics. From raucous council meetings to elected officials forced into hiding by angry constituents, his reporting shows that there's something going on in the suburbs. Must Reads talked to Hobbes about this story and his beat. What turned you on to this story idea? It was actually the anecdote that opens the piece: residents of a wealthy Seattle neighborhood shouting, jeering and chanting at a public meeting. One person even called a homeless woman a “coward” as she testified in favor of a tax to fund homeless services. I remember reading about it the next morning and thinking, “What the hell is going on?” Then I started looking at other cities and found that similar meetings have been happening all over the country. The shouting, the booing and the insults have all become par for the course in city politics. American cities are changing and the people who have lived there a long time are fighting back. What did you learn in the course of reporting this story? The most edifying conversation I had was actually with one of the “not in my backyard” activists. He’s a lawyer and local Democratic Party official who’s fighting to stop a bus lane from being installed near his Greenwich Village apartment. Despite the neighborhood having a median income of nearly $150,000, he says he’s fighting on behalf of the marginalized — and that blocking a form of transport disproportionately used by low-income New Yorkers is in line with his progressive values. Plus, as I’ve come to recognize in these debates, he was careful to say that he’s pro-bus lanes in general, just not this one in particular. That’s an understandable argument for him as an individual, but what’s happening is that every neighborhood, in every city, is making exactly the same case and they’re preventing desperately needed housing and transportation from being built. What do you think is driving this "radicalization" as you call it? It’s important to acknowledge that cities really are becoming more challenging to live in. America’s preferential treatment of single-family homes has created huge rings of sprawl totally disconnected from job centers and schools. That’s now intersecting with decades of under-investment in public transportation to create nonstop traffic jams and an unbelievable hassle to park anywhere. In booming cities like San Francisco, Seattle and Los Angeles, that’s created an overwhelming sense of frustration. Often, the people fighting against a bike lane on their street or an apartment building down the block describe it as the last straw, a way to finally fight back against all these other changes they’ve never been able to control. One thing I love about your reporting is that it so often reveals the conventional wisdom isn't actually true: that all millennials are more progressive than their parents, that the biggest divide in American politics is old versus young, that we need a bunch of new social programs rather than just improving the current slate. Where do your best ideas come from? Not to sound too humble-braggy, but I do think that there’s a market niche for journalists who like to read stuff. We’re a visual culture, and we tend to prioritize people who are good at talking and stories that produce striking images. To the extent that I’ve had decent ideas, they’ve mostly come from just reading the reports think tanks and academics put out without much fanfare. Often, I find amazing stories in the charts or the abstracts that have just been sitting there undiscovered. I’m lucky to have enough time to circle back to them when they seem worth looking into. How would you describe your beat these days? Stuff you haven’t thought about but probably should. 🔥 More Must Reads 🔥
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