(Image by Angela Schlafmütze used under CC 2.0 via)
People must learn to accept their disabled neighbors, a Rhineland court ruled this week in a case that—thankfully—has attracted controversy. A woman in the town of Kaltenengers, near Koblenz, filed suit against the construction of a home for severely disabled citizens near her apartment block. According to the Rhein-Zeitung, the woman and several other residents had expressed outrage at the supposed imposition upon their community, while their court arguments sparked outrage among the public. The plaintiff claimed that, “The vocalizations and noises made by the disabled will injure our own psychological well-being.” Talk about not-in-my-backyard.
All of us have sympathy for the NIMBY mindset to some extent. I’m fine with my neighbors playing music as long as it’s the right kind of music. (ZZ Top, yes. Opera, no. I can attest that nothing pierces through paper-thin walls at 2 am like a soprano aria.) When it’s the night before the most important exam in your academic career, you want everyone within a five-mile radius of you to shut up. When it’s the night after you’ve passed that exam with flying colors, you wish those prissy neighbors interrupting the celebrations to tell you to pipe down would let go and live a little. Such moments serve as reminders that Everybody matters is easier said than done.
There will always be debates about pristine parks, where the grass is there to be looked at, versus people’s parks, where the grass has been picnicked to the brink of death. (Berlin votes today on that very issue in deciding the fate of Tempelhof Park and, for many, the definition of Berlin itself.) But NIMBY descends into a segregationist mentality the moment we reject the idea of certain types of people outright. And in this court case, pitting disabled residents against their huffy neighbors, it makes you wonder who is really the most challenged in becoming a well-adjusted member of society.
Painting On Scars 
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