I mean, what evidence do we have that their stance is “I got mine, fuck you”?

This sub is full of people who are a) lying to themselves about how they would react in similar situations (big condo building next door, homeless shelter next door, whatever), and b) vilifying anyone who says “wait a minute, this building might suck in this location”.

Honestly, did you find plans for this project? Assuming no, how do you know these neighbors are being assholes? How do you know fewer units than the developer started with us worse? Just because of our housing shortage? So we should just jam high density shit everywhere, when there’s actually plenty of developable land for housing that isn’t in established neighborhoods?

NIMBYs are a fundamental problem with housing development throughout the greater Boston area - in my own neighborhood (suburb) I am someone defending increased density from NIMBY attacks. That doesn’t mean the developers should get to do whatever they want, or that the maxed-out site is always the right answer. You can be a YIMBY and still fight for appropriateness in these project.

Coming this hard at anyone who speaks up and trashing them as a NIMBY is also just the other side of the same “housing extremist” coin. NIMBYs are, yes, assholes who only care about themselves and their weird fantastical sense of their communities - but as I said, not everyone questioning development is actually a NIMBY. Screaming about it isn’t going to help solve the problem, it’s only going to further alienate these people as individuals who are not from their communities stomp their feet about forcing through multi family residential.