>Instead residents write open letters about how they moved here in 1976 and under no circumstances will allow their neighborhood to be different than back then.

I think this is the hardest thing to reconcile. I mean it's easy to get riled up against some rich white NIMBYs doing this kind of thing, but now replace those rich whites with x minority like Mexican-Americans who have lived in their Mexican-American majority Southern Californian neighborhood all their life in the same homes they've always been in. Imagine ripping on them for trying to preserve their neighborhood and therefore their culture. And for what? To make it possible for more people to move in and potentially make things worse for the people already there? If it's a minority-majority neighborhood, making it possible for more whites to move in is gentrification. How do you argue for that?

I'm not saying I agree with any of this by the way, just playing devil's advocate.