Neighbors said they didn’t oppose affordable housing per se, but that they feared the burden of the construction on their area, citing issues such as an increase in traffic and car accidents, potential flooding, and a lack of walkability for incoming residents. The developer said it had selected the site because it would immerse residents in a middle-density community with access to family amenities, including a bus stop, parks, and an elementary school.

At first, it looked like NIMBYism had prevailed: The petition and complaints convinced the city planning commission to vote against the request to rezone the property at an April 2016 meeting. But a few months later, the proposal was revived, becoming a test of what it would take to defeat neighborhood concerns and develop affordable housing that was integrated into rather than segregated from low-poverty communities.

That’s when the real animosity started to emerge, according to Phoebe Trepp, the director of Willis Dady, the local homeless services organization that would provide assistance at the development…

City leaders are also interested in spreading affordable housing throughout the city, rather than clustering it in the poorer southeast quadrant. Susie Weinacht, a City Council member at large, says that city staff want “housing options available throughout the community.”

Is there a better way to do this whole process? Toward the end of the article, an official says that affordable housing initiatives work best when the support is from the grassroots (rather than planned by local or larger governments). This is probably true. Yet, how does one convince working-class to upper-class residents that it is in their interests to live near affordable housing? This is an incredibly tough sell to make to many Americans.

It is also worth asking about how the neighborhood fares within five, ten, twenty years of the construction of affordable housing units. Are the fears of Cedar Rapids neighbors unfounded? Does a denser development significantly alter the character of the community and drive existing residents away? Having some of these facts may not matter to some residents but showing some data could help ground the discussions in reality rather than emphasizing possible negative effects.