What makes a good neighbor? Someone you can rely on in a pinch? Someone that will keep an eye on your house while you’re away? The type of person you would invite over for a beer and a barbeque?

What about a neighbor who will support an affordable housing “monstrosity” when others in the immediate vicinity of said development are opposed? Certainly, he can’t be a good neighbor.

That was me tonight. Tonight was hard. It was tough. It is always tough to be the lone voice in a public hearing. But when a dozen of your fellow townspeople are pouring their hearts out to the Board of Appeals about how this particular 90 unit mixed income development will destroy their quality of life, it is especially difficult.

They are wrong, of course. Well, not wrong on all fronts but their predictions of doom will not come to pass should this development get built. Studies and 40 years of experience with Chapter 40B in Massachusetts prove that predictions from critics (almost always abutters) never come to pass. There are almost always less children in the public schools than opponents claim. Traffic somehow manages to flow despite dire forecasts of gridlock and accidents. Trees grow, wetlands survive, and people adapt.

It won’t be the same, of course, but hardly anything ever is the same. And change can often mean positive change. It looks like the hospice on Randolph Avenue in Milton not far from the proposed 40B is a positive change. St. Elizabeth’s old rectory was a deteriorating eyesore that did nothing for the town or the property value of its neighbors. Goodness knows we all will welcome the change when and if the Hendries site is ever redeveloped.

But it is tougher when turkeys and deer occupy the woods surrounding the proposed site. It is harder to find the positive change. But 23 affordable apartments renting from $1,100 to $1,600 to households of modest means is a positive change in Milton. Moving the needle on the state’s Subsidized Housing Inventory from 4.9% to 5.8% with just one development is a positive change. Moving ever closer to joining towns like Canton, Dedham, Cohasset, Lexington, and Concord that have reached 10% on the state’s SHI is a positive change.

Tonight was hard. Some of the arguments made by opponents were over the top. “We will all have blood on our hands” if this development is approved, said one neighbor suggesting that people will die in traffic accidents due to the development. Route 28 is indeed a dangerous stretch of road and people do die in traffic accidents on that road each year. But implying that public officials (state and local) will have blood on their hands if this development is approved is demagoguery at its worst.

Police won’t enforce local traffic laws in the vicinity of the proposed development because “a source inside the department” tells Jonathan Hall (of WHDH-TV and a neighbor to the proposed 40B) that Milton backed off because of a Globe spotlight series on the racial imbalance of traffic stops in town several years ago. He went on to say that a disproportionate number of Blacks were being stopped “on their way to Blue Hill Ave.” Interesting sourcing on this story for someone who makes his living reporting the news. Also interesting given that both my wife and I have been deterred from violating the traffic laws by the presence of the same police department on the streets Mr. Hall claims that they don’t visit.

All of the criticisms weren’t over the top. Many expressed concern about fire truck access, school bus access, and pedestrian access to bus stops. Very legitimate concerns that the developer either has or will need to address. Addressing the housing affordability crisis in greater Boston happens on the ground in a seeming endless number of hearings like what happened tonight in Milton. Progress is slow and it is hard.