The problem with NIMBY

I would probably say that NIMBY, or "Not In My Back Yard", is the number one ailment of society in the US.

If a program truly is believed to be well run and a benefit to the society as a whole, then there's no way that it can possibly be a detriment to the neighborhood that it's placed near or within. Something cannot be both a benefit and a detriment. It's either a brilliant program and therefore a benefit. Or it's a worthless program (or might simply need to be run better) and is therefore a detriment. If it's a benefit, there are no real problems. If it's a detriment, then there is no real value. Anyone who says that it's a "brilliant program" but "not in my backyard", they're lying. They either think that there isn't any real benefit (meaning that they think the program will fail), or they're simply selfish. In either case, they're trying to appear to be better than they actually are.

I was watching a documentary about putting a women's veterans home into a high end neighborhood in I can't remember which neighborhood in Connecticut (it would be the states first home for homeless female veterans). I was sickened by the hypocrisy of people saying, "I'm sure it's a wonderful program, but..." That "but" means that they don't truly believe that the program is valuable because they see it as overall being a detriment to their society. One person compared the effects of the home on home values to a strip club or a sex shop--as though they're actually comparable given the benefits the "generous citizens" were happy to proclaim.

A well run homeless shelter can increase home prices because it shows that the citizens actually care about the world. A well run homeless shelter will also increase everyone's home prices as it removes the dredges of society from society (by helping them improve their lives rather than leaving them to die on the streets). Instead of living in a city of wealth vs. slum, a well run, well integrated homeless shelter brings us together as a society, illustrating that no person is better than another simply because of their luck or inherited wealth. Unless, of course, we really do live in a world where only those who are able to overcome hardship and "pull themselves up by their bootstraps" matter...which, to me, ignores the fact that it usually takes an army of people who care to convince an individual who knows nothing but hardship, oppression, and degradation to "pull themselves up by their bootstraps".

I mean, are there any highly successful people in the real world who didn't have a single person say to them at some point in their life "you can do it"?