As a proud YIMBY (Yes In My Back Yard!), I will be voting ‘No’ on Question 1 in support of more housing in Greenfield. The YIMBY movement is pro-housing, pro-density, and pro-public transportation as part of the solution to our housing crisis. I originally moved to Greenfield into a market-rate apartment in a 100-year-old, 4-story apartment building. I didn’t want or need a single-family house at that time. If Greenfield didn’t have these higher-density options, I may never have moved to Greenfield and found out how great it is and how much potential it has. There are some larger housing projects in the works in Greenfield, which are great, but unfortunately they aren’t even going to come close to the number of units we need (see the 2024 Greenfield Housing Study).
One of the problems with public comments on housing projects is that it’s easy to hear from people who are most riled up against it, but we don’t hear from the people who will eventually live there. We don’t hear from future new residents who only found a place to live in Greenfield due to the new units. These new people may become our friends, start new businesses, add their new voices and new ideas to our city, and be new customers for our existing local businesses. We don’t hear from people whose rents leveled out, instead of continuing to skyrocket, because we finally start building enough units to create some competition among landlords.
Instead of saying “I got mine” and pulling up the ladder behind us, let’s do what they did 100 years ago when my old apartment building was built and create some denser housing near downtown to help Greenfield grow and prosper. We need more housing of all types to bring in new people while stabilizing the housing market: affordable housing, market-rate housing, apartments, duplexes, condos, etc. So, please join me: be a YIMBY and vote ;No’ on Nov. 4 to help create new downtown housing in Greenfield.
Travis Drury
Greenfield