It’s a common theme. You scrimp and save for years, living on baked beans and Pam’s brand instant coffee until the day you can finally put the deposit down on your first, and forever, home – the one where you dug the foundations for the para pool by hand, raised three kids, buried two dogs and a budgie – and then, just when what’s left of your Kiwi Saver comes through and you can think about relaxing, you get a flyer in your letter box (also hand-built) letting you know 150 Kainga Ora units are going up next door and would you mind parking on the berm for the next year or so during the construction phase.
It happens a lot, in any number of ways. Home-owners, multi-generational farming families, golfing pensioners who just want a quiet round, a quick pinot and someone to valet the Lexus in the meantime can – when they least expect it – find their entire lives tipped upside down and essentially ruined. Forever.
There’s not a lot you can do. The preferred option – preferred by developers, councils and those with no real skin in the game – is accept whatever deals are going and take pride in the knowledge you’re making other lives a lot better. Just not yours.
Option two is to fight, fight, fight for your rights, standing up for what’s just and what is, common sensibly, fair. The downside with that is you risk coming across like a Nimby.
And let’s face it, no-one likes a nimby.
In fact that’s the title of a new book, just published by Personal Development guru and author Eva-Mae Dedbuddy, which promises to rehabilitate the reputation of the aggrieved homeowner, one carefully chosen phrase at a time.
“Nobody likes a Nimby,” she says, “but everybody likes a concerned community member advocating for considered, sustainable growth. Luckily, it’s the same person, wearing smart-casual instead of a Swanndri.”
Every day another concerned advocate pops up in the news feed, objecting to ill-considered plans for growth in already-established well-sustained communities and gold-courses across the country, but predominantly around Canterbury and Eden Park.
Dedbuddy’s central thesis is that the objection isn’t the real issue in most cases – it’s the vocabulary. “’We don’t want the riff-raff here’ loses sympathy quicker than anything,” she says. “But’We’re concerned about the impact on our village’s unique character’ is a sentence that’s instantly greeted with nodding heads.”
She advises starting small. “Suppose you don’t want to see other people’s houses from your kitchen window? Don’t ever say that. Instead, try, ‘the land is not connected to the village.’ It sounds like geography, which is big in Aotearoa.”
One of the assumptions others make about people standing up for their property rights is that they’re snobs. “Nobody will ever accuse you of snobbery if you’re worried about a hazardous intersection,” Dedbuddy points out. “Even if the intersection in question is, functionally, the end of your own driveway.”
On the question of origineity, Dedbuddy is unequivocal. “‘I was here first’ will set off the Nimby Alert quick smart,” she says. “But ‘we are the longest-term residents and find it incomprehensible that someone can apply to subdivide our land without our consent’ will have the guys from Newstalk ZB beating a path to your door.”
Dedbuddy says that while the media can be your friend, it’s important you call the shots. “Don’t let them just turn up to a meeting. Invite them beforehand. Give them briefing notes, and morning tea, but not instant, or decaf. And don’t make jokes about Mike Hosking’s jeans, as that’ll get back.”
If the media does start to go on the offensive, Dedbuddy has a work-around. “If they accuse you of not wanting growth, don’t deny, just say, ‘we’re worried it’s going the way of Queenstown.’ Because that actually does two jobs at once – it sounds like planning expertise, and it insults Queenstown, which everyone enjoys.”
Having a spokesperson high on the New Year’s Honours board probably isn’t necessary, and can actually work against you, Dedbuddy warns. “They’re often been controversial choices, and can polarise opinions,” she says. “That can be a distraction you don’t need. And really, it’s better to show you’re ordinary folk, just like the ordinary folk you don’t want next door.”
Above all, Dedbuddy insists, the goal is sincerity. “You have to actually believe you’re protecting something,” she says. “Rural charm. Village character. The Future. And don’t try to define any of those things, because if you don’t, nobody can prove you wrong. Which makes you right, and that’s just what you wanted all along.”
Eva-Mae Dedbuddy is currently on a speaking tour around New Zealand. Tickets are available wherever good books are sold. Speaking of which, No One Likes A Nimby, by Eva-Mae Dedbuddy, is published by Outer Site Press and is available through The Nile, Amazon and WWNews Side Hustles Inc. (Autographs on request.)