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Whose Back Yard? Not Mine!
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August 31, 2010, at 06:00 AM
Not in My Backyard's Joe Garcia
Fair Housing Center
You’re a good person. You want what’s best for the community. You actually support the idea, but just wish they would do it someplace else.
“Not in My Back Yard,” the familiar rallying cry against the fill-in-the-blank “it” of the paragraph above, now takes on new meaning in the introduction of a program with the same name that delivers training to neighborhood groups on how to lead amid conflict and change.
“Change isn’t always bad,” said Joe Garcia. Like most anything in life, “Change is often accompanied by fear, fear that is sometimes unfounded and sometimes very legitimate.”
Garcia is the program director of the Fair Housing Center, an arm of Family Housing Advisory Services Inc., the nonprofit contracted by the City of Omaha to deliver Not in My Back Yard.
The training sessions go beyond typical tutorials on such “NIMBY” topics as placement of cell phone towers, group homes or commercial developments.
Instead, Not in My Back Yard takes a broader view that concentrates on effective approaches to navigating an issue before it becomes an emotional “us vs. them” battle. A discussion of tools that can help frame a discussion, a practical guide to research techniques and an emphasis on ethics all aim to help neighborhood leaders address concerns in almost any situation.
“This is about learning how to come to the table, to talk things out, to separate myth from fact so the best solutions can be found for all involved,” said Garcia.
To learn more about the free Not in My Back Yard training, email Garcia at joe@fhasinc.org..
How does your neighborhood manage change? Email us at tips@metroneighborhoodnews.com.
