Residents of Wilmington's 40 Acres neighborhood—where median home prices start at $1.2 million and finish at "if you have to ask, you can't afford it"—gathered Tuesday for a community meeting to formally apologize for being insufferably wealthy, then immediately voted to block a proposed affordable housing development that might allow working-class people to live within three miles of them.
"We recognize our privilege," explained homeowners association president Katherine Sullivan, speaking from her $2.3 million renovated mansion. "We acknowledge that generational wealth, tax advantages, and systemic inequality have allowed us to live in completely insulated luxury while the rest of Wilmington deals with poverty, crime, and crumbling infrastructure. Having said that, we absolutely will not tolerate any development that might reduce our property values or introduce economic diversity to this neighborhood. The poors can stay poor, thank you."
The meeting, held at the exclusive 40 Acres Country Club (annual dues: $45,000), featured presentations on affordable housing, economic inequality, and the urgent need for mixed-income development in Wilmington—all of which the residents politely listened to before unanimously voting to oppose any such development anywhere near their neighborhood.
The proposed development would have created 60 units of affordable housing approximately one mile from the 40 Acres neighborhood, well outside its boundaries and completely unconnected to the wealthy enclave. Nevertheless, residents mobilized immediately to kill the project, citing concerns about "neighborhood character," "traffic," and other coded language for "we don't want poor people nearby."
"I'm very progressive," insisted resident David Morrison, who drives a Tesla with a "Black Lives Matter" sticker to his $400,000/year job in corporate law. "I donated to Bernie Sanders. I support affordable housing in theory. But this particular project would be visible from my backyard if I stood on my roof with binoculars. That's unacceptable. Poor people should exist, just not anywhere I might have to acknowledge their existence."
The 40 Acres neighborhood has successfully blocked every proposed affordable housing development in north Wilmington for the past twenty years, using a combination of: zoning appeals citing "concerns about density," traffic studies demonstrating that six additional cars per day would cause "gridlock," environmental reviews claiming affordable housing would damage the watershed (unlike their own mansions, which apparently don't produce sewage), and direct political pressure on city officials who depend on 40 Acres residents for campaign contributions.
"They're extraordinarily effective at killing anything that might benefit anyone who isn't already wealthy," explained City Councilmember Maria Santos. "They dress it up in progressive language—'smart growth,' 'environmental concerns,' 'neighborhood character'—but it's just NIMBYism as class warfare. They want Wilmington to address poverty and inequality, they just want it addressed somewhere they never have to see or think about it."
The neighborhood's resistance to affordable housing is particularly galling given that many 40 Acres residents work in professions—medicine, law, finance—that depend on working-class labor they refuse to allow living nearby. Their children attend private schools staffed by teachers who can't afford to live in Wilmington. Their homes are maintained by contractors and landscapers who commute from Pennsylvania because housing near 40 Acres costs more than they make annually.
"I employ three people full-time to maintain my property," explained resident Patricia Chen, who inherited her $2.5 million home from her parents. "They're wonderful people. They just can't live anywhere near here because housing is too expensive. I don't see that as a problem I should help solve, though. That seems like a them problem. I need my property values protected."
The meeting featured testimony from affordable housing advocates explaining that Wilmington desperately needs mixed-income development to address its housing crisis, growing inequality, and the fact that teachers, nurses, and other essential workers literally cannot afford to live in the city they serve.
"We listened very respectfully," noted Sullivan. "We even nodded sympathetically. But then we voted no because we simply cannot allow economic diversity in this neighborhood. Our property values depend on exclusivity. If working-class people could afford to live nearby, how would we justify our $2 million home prices? The entire value proposition of this neighborhood is that poor people can't access it."
40 Acres residents, when confronted with the contradiction of claiming progressive values while actively blocking policies that would reduce inequality, became defensive.
"I vote Democrat," insisted Morrison. "I support universal healthcare, higher minimum wage, affordable housing—all the progressive priorities. I just don't support them here, in my neighborhood, where they might affect me personally. That's different. That's just being practical."
The neighborhood's opposition to affordable housing extends beyond direct blockage. Residents have also successfully lobbied for zoning laws that make mixed-income development essentially impossible, opposed public transit expansions that might make the neighborhood accessible to non-car-owners, and funded political candidates who promise to maintain "neighborhood character"—meaning wealthy white people living in expensive houses.
"40 Acres is a perfect example of how progressive politics and actual progressive action are completely disconnected in America," explained sociologist Dr. James Park. "These are people who vote for progressive candidates, donate to progressive causes, and express progressive values—right up until those values threaten their own privilege. Then suddenly they're fierce opponents of the very policies they claim to support."
As of press time, 40 Acres residents were drafting a strongly-worded letter to the editor about Wilmington's affordable housing crisis, to be written from their $2 million homes, printed on expensive stationery, and mailed from the neighborhood they've successfully kept unaffordable for everyone except themselves and people who inherited generational wealth.
When asked whether they saw any hypocrisy in opposing affordable housing while claiming to care about inequality, Sullivan seemed genuinely confused.
"We do care about inequality," she insisted. "We just care about our property values more. That's not hypocrisy, that's just prioritizing. Poor people can live somewhere else—anywhere else, really, as long as it's not near here. That seems perfectly reasonable to me. Why would anyone expect us to support policies that might slightly inconvenience us? We're progressive, not stupid."