Sunday, May 18, 2014

NIMBY elitism and autism

I see where the other half of the Ford Team is in hot water for casting aspersions on the bona fides of a group home for autistic teens.

Employing a time-tested NIMBY strategy, Ford opined that the residence, home to three autistic kids and their full-time supervision, had destroyed the neighbourhood.

Oh-oh... you know what that means... declining property values!

It wasn't that long ago that popular wisdom held that property values would go down when brown people moved onto your street. We now properly view that attitude as archaic and racist.

Swap out "brown people" for "autistic teens" in that equation and you're in Toronto in 2014.

Any marginalized group is fair game to keep out of your neighbourhood.

We have to reject that rejectionist attitude.

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