If the government provides housing for some it should provide housing for all. We should all be equal and no group should have access to housing that others do not.
19
That's why many suburban areas don't want ANY multi-family construction.
24
The only impediment see in the new rules is that there is no way to restrict the "haves" from blocking integration of America....basically, the "not in my backyard" mentality.
More needs to be done to cleanse us of our "others" and separateness attitudes about both race and economic status for any housing program to work, government funded or not. Future generations may get there....and I do feel that even if only a little bit of change happens now, our progeny seem much more accepting of people whose situations may be different from their own.
More needs to be done to cleanse us of our "others" and separateness attitudes about both race and economic status for any housing program to work, government funded or not. Future generations may get there....and I do feel that even if only a little bit of change happens now, our progeny seem much more accepting of people whose situations may be different from their own.
17
The claim seems to be that there was institutionalized racism with the creation of and decades long implementation of the Fair Housing Act. The act was part of a civil rights movement lead by the Johnson administration. You can hardly consider that broader movement - including voting rights, school integration, the "war on poverty" etc - a racist conspiracy.
The majority of public housing exists in inner cities, not out it suburbs or rural areas. The majority of poor people don't own automobiles. Having public housing located in city centers allows people to access public transportation.
Land that was used was in areas that were "economically challenged" to begin with. That provided the tax payer with more purchasing power. Since these were the areas where the people who would wind up in the projects were already living, building where the people were kind of made sense.
The thing that perpetuates federally financed ghettos are the programs themselves. In New York, per local NPR, we have three and four generations of people living in housing projects. They were intended to help people move up and out, not to provide government handouts and welfare in perpetuity.
This problem, created by government, cannot simply be solved by more government spending and redistribution. People are kept down more by these programs than they are helped. A little tough love might go a lot farther than more/different welfare.
The majority of public housing exists in inner cities, not out it suburbs or rural areas. The majority of poor people don't own automobiles. Having public housing located in city centers allows people to access public transportation.
Land that was used was in areas that were "economically challenged" to begin with. That provided the tax payer with more purchasing power. Since these were the areas where the people who would wind up in the projects were already living, building where the people were kind of made sense.
The thing that perpetuates federally financed ghettos are the programs themselves. In New York, per local NPR, we have three and four generations of people living in housing projects. They were intended to help people move up and out, not to provide government handouts and welfare in perpetuity.
This problem, created by government, cannot simply be solved by more government spending and redistribution. People are kept down more by these programs than they are helped. A little tough love might go a lot farther than more/different welfare.
38
The underlying issue is the fact that federally subsidized housing devalues the real estate in the areas which they are located. For millions of Americans their house is their only investment. Anything that is going to threaten the potential growth of that investment is not welcomed. Homeowners cannot control the rise and fall of the housing market but they can control where they buy, or build their home and have the freedom to petition their government when policies and laws threaten the value of their property. What the Fair Housing Act fails to consider is that home ownership is a privilege, not a right. Private property owners have a right to protect their land and dwellings against government encroachment.
56
What is the difference between a ghetto and a prison? In truth it is merely about the arrangement of the walls. A prison has the walls all about those we would segregate from our society. A ghetto places those we dislike outside the walls of the city. In either case we have a wall for our watchers to stand on, a gate for the outcasts to pass when we need them to serve and a self righteous attitude toward those on the other side of the wall.
The Fair Housing Act was to break down walls. All it has done was change ghettos into prisons or prisons into ghettos. Those with the means and the Will are always free to flee the inner city when the wall is breached and gather in gated communities in the suburbs.
Neither money nor legislation can overcome the fear and despite that builds ghettos. Or prisons.
The Fair Housing Act was to break down walls. All it has done was change ghettos into prisons or prisons into ghettos. Those with the means and the Will are always free to flee the inner city when the wall is breached and gather in gated communities in the suburbs.
Neither money nor legislation can overcome the fear and despite that builds ghettos. Or prisons.
7
I think such action will actually benefit most of the communities that will be effected. I'd hope that having these residences nearby will help more upscale people feel the community they should feel with everyone in their town or city. And those being helped will develop more self esteem and pride to maintain the properties and even make improvements. No doubt they will try to improve their lives, as well. The right idea. Redevelop depressed areas for museums, theaters, shops and Parks. Don't forget "amenities" with the new housing. Make it good for everyone.
2
I live in Oak Cliff, a racially diverse neighborhood south of the Trinity River and downtown Dallas, TX. It used to be a white, middle class neighborhood until the 1970's when desegregation caused "white-flight" into the suburbs. When I first moved here in the mid-2000's, I had Dallas natives tell me that Oak Cliff was dangerous and they would no longer come to visit. I have 2 large public housing high rises close to my home and a half-way house for the mentally challenged across the street, 2 houses over. My first job here was selling funeral plots and funeral insurance in South Dallas where 90% of my clientele was black - I am a white woman.
Many of the comments I am reading here have to do with people's fear of "the other" and how they will adversely affect their well being. I understand that because I had some of those same fears myself. What I have found is that exposure to people of different race, lifestyle and economic circumstances has reduced my fear. Living in close proximity to "the other" has allowed me to see them as people who want to live with dignity just like me. I am proud of the diversity in our community and the variety of people and cultures that have added so much to my understanding of myself and humanity.
Many of the comments I am reading here have to do with people's fear of "the other" and how they will adversely affect their well being. I understand that because I had some of those same fears myself. What I have found is that exposure to people of different race, lifestyle and economic circumstances has reduced my fear. Living in close proximity to "the other" has allowed me to see them as people who want to live with dignity just like me. I am proud of the diversity in our community and the variety of people and cultures that have added so much to my understanding of myself and humanity.
76
The danger here is that these laudable goals can be undermined by local housing authorities who might - driven by local leaders who want to rid their communities of public housing - feign compliance by using HUD programs such as Choice Neighborhood Initiative to demolish existing public housing in gentrifying communities - arguing that federal funding for it has been greatly diminished - and relocating the public housing units to communities with somewhat less economic opportunity. These public housing residents who might benefit from remaining - especially those in and near gentrifying neighborhoods - end up being forcibly removed from their communities as part of a gentrification process and thus are denied the economic and other opportunities and benefits the gentrification process might have provided them had they remained in place.
5
So many of these comments are funny because they are ignorant. Walk around any part of London and you find publicly subsidized Council Estates or what we'd call projects. Rick areas, poor areas, gentrified areas, whatever. IT CAN BE DONE.
32
It is gratifying that the federal government attempts to "fix" or address social and local issues with its policies. It is less gratifying when the policies do not produce the results we desire. In this particular instance, I see little if anything of a solution, only the movement of deck chairs. If the result is desegregation and the bleed out of ghettos to other areas, what plans are in place to prevent the "new" areas from becoming newer versions of the older ones that were left behind? What social, governmental, and economic lessons have been learned to prevent a repeat of past mistakes?
19
Some of the western suburbs of Atlanta show what the other side of this law can do. In the late 1970s through late 80s, the area was booming. Subdivisions, shopping malls, new schools. Then urban Atlanta began to turn out the housing project people and sent many out to the burbs. The first place impacted was eastern Dekalb County, where high property values tanked as the influx moved in. Then it hit the west. School achievement and violence began to spike, property values in some subdivisions began a slide, and white residents decamped to North Fulton or Virginia Highlands. Some of the neighborhoods of close-in Dekalb became markedly gentrified with rapidly rising property values. Amazing how things changed, and how the western suburbs of Atlanta are now not good places to live. Bottom line: The law won't change human nature.
38
"transforming racially and ethnically concentrated areas of poverty into areas of opportunity,..."
That would be interesting and how would it be done? Bring back JOBS for China? Is the government also going to pay for an economic development project? Or will the low cost housing be less that $350.000 which is what it is in my area? Yeah, 350K! Even I couldn't afford to buy into that when I was working.
Will there be "affordable" housing in Beverly Hills where they " avoid... better neighborhoods out of fear of not-in-my-backyard crusaders."?
Stop building ghettos in the first place. single family homes are the way to integrate people--not massive 200 apartment complexes where anybody and everybody can "buy in". Where I live, it is starting to look distinctly like Daly City of the ticky tacky little boxes in pastel colors that are basically ghettos.
That would be interesting and how would it be done? Bring back JOBS for China? Is the government also going to pay for an economic development project? Or will the low cost housing be less that $350.000 which is what it is in my area? Yeah, 350K! Even I couldn't afford to buy into that when I was working.
Will there be "affordable" housing in Beverly Hills where they " avoid... better neighborhoods out of fear of not-in-my-backyard crusaders."?
Stop building ghettos in the first place. single family homes are the way to integrate people--not massive 200 apartment complexes where anybody and everybody can "buy in". Where I live, it is starting to look distinctly like Daly City of the ticky tacky little boxes in pastel colors that are basically ghettos.
10
The "projects" in my majority white town have so often been bastions of poverty with overwhelmingly black residents. These neighborhoods are even fenced in! I can only imagine what it must do to the psyche of the people (children, especially) to live in what essentially is a giant cage. The message has been clear for a half-century: "The world doesn't want you".
I am not a fan of affirmative anything or forced racial integration. But a step towards ending these self-perpetuating poverty zones is one in the right direction.
I am not a fan of affirmative anything or forced racial integration. But a step towards ending these self-perpetuating poverty zones is one in the right direction.
20
How can we further undermine segregation by developing housing in appropriate locations, and at the same time insist upon currently grossly dilapidated public housing being properly repaired so a modicum of decent housing experience is available in current housing stock?
I firmly believe in the principle of mandating non-perpetualization of housing discrimination and segregation, perhaps less elegantly required under the Fair Housing Act (though it's interpretation has been logically more to blame).
Clearly, to properly act upon the FHA and repair current housing stock cannot be mutually exclusive goals. And yet I wonder how to achieve both goals?
I firmly believe in the principle of mandating non-perpetualization of housing discrimination and segregation, perhaps less elegantly required under the Fair Housing Act (though it's interpretation has been logically more to blame).
Clearly, to properly act upon the FHA and repair current housing stock cannot be mutually exclusive goals. And yet I wonder how to achieve both goals?
3
In many south Georgia communities federally funded housing projects are traps. These housing projects offer cheap living at the expense of opportunity. The money spent building and administering the projects would be better spent providing residents the opportunity to move to other locations with job opportunities.
5
When I bought my property is was zoned "Woods" next to "Commercial". The Town Council allowed an ASPHALT plant ( Zoned Heavy Industry) to be built on the Commercial Zone abutting my property with a Conditional Use Permit. They are allowed to change the zone without allowing a vote by the general public.
You can't fight LOCAL ZONING! Whoever has the money wins! That's how it's done in the US. You have a better chance of being set free if you're rich and guilty than if you are poor and innocent. Write all the laws you want. It will never change!
You can't fight LOCAL ZONING! Whoever has the money wins! That's how it's done in the US. You have a better chance of being set free if you're rich and guilty than if you are poor and innocent. Write all the laws you want. It will never change!
3
I don't buy into the 'race determines destiny' card. No matter what color you are, you deal with your circumstances and work your tail off to rise above them. If you there's a problem with the government assisted housing that's being provided than maybe that's incentive to again, rise above that lifestyle. This coming from someone who lived in what some people would call dangerous areas. I guarantee if one is on government assistance they will get free education starting with ESL classes, if need be. I struggled as a college student because my parents made the classic middle income thus no financial aid from the government yet they couldn't pay my schooling. So I went to the community college, worked and struggled a bit but I made due with what I was given.
Present day, we live in a decently wealthy suburb and have bought our first town home. Across the street we have a Somali family, Chinese man and next door a single African American mom who is nothing short of a great neighbor wih the nicest kids. How did they arrive In this nice suburb? They work hard and act like law abiding citizens. So I beg to differ that this has anything to do with race.
Present day, we live in a decently wealthy suburb and have bought our first town home. Across the street we have a Somali family, Chinese man and next door a single African American mom who is nothing short of a great neighbor wih the nicest kids. How did they arrive In this nice suburb? They work hard and act like law abiding citizens. So I beg to differ that this has anything to do with race.
21
Maybe you should read the article, or better yet, some history books, start with Reconstruction and don't stop until you get to the present.
7
you are from Minnesota (as I originally was). i remember it fondly as one of the most color-blind places i ever lived. sadly, the story that you described is not one that would occur in most of the places i've lived since 1982 -- DC, Boston, and New York among them. and those places are poorer in spirit because of that fact.
4
If you lived in my neighborhood, you would be vilified for characterizing the single African-American mom as "nothing short of a great neighbor with the nicest kids" by people who would assume that you meant you had thought she would not be. That is how bad the witch-hunting has become. I never thought I would be ostracized for saying I liked my new neighbors, but it happened. If those who can afford a $300K+ home in a moderately priced area can play the victim, then anyone can. The people making the accusations of racism, some of whom were younger whites, knew nothing about me, including that my family is racially/ethnically diverse or that I have volunteered in schools and classrooms headed by African-Americans or that I have given a substantial amount of money to my local food bank or that I have always voted Democratic even though that is not always in line with my personal financial interests, etc. They just inferred racism and bigotry and "classism" (which I find amusing because we are of the same class) from something I said and ran with it. Others, mostly Asian or mixed-race families, have already moved out, and I no longer feel welcome in what has always been a diverse neighborhood that I helped to start and to foster. In my opinion, the attitudes of those who all too quickly presume that others must have racist or other bigoted intentions are as much a threat to the new order as the old bigotry was to the prospect of living together in harmony in the past.
6
I'm curious about the phrase, " . . .the public will have a voice . . .". What sort of voice? How will it be solicited? If that "voice" doesn't express what the arbiters of policies want to hear will that "voice" still be counted?
In every instance in this former New Yorker's experience, "revitalization" has ended in higher rents. The funky, affordable, dilapidated, and actually rather better integrated than it is now Upper West Side of Manhattan turned into a yuppie ghetto within a decade or so of the construction of Lincoln Center, as those of us who treasured the area's funkiness, affordability, and diversity were pushed ever further north.
Affordable housing has to be quality housing to make it worth leaving older neighborhoods, and will fail if the residents have to travel more than an hour to a decent job, and where their children don't have a reasonable chance of success in those better schools, where expectations are higher and competition is tougher.
Quality housing costs more. Subsidized housing is rarely quality housing. People who have invested their lengthy educations and strenuous careers in homes that form a major part of their nest eggs and their children's inheritances are not vicious NIMBY bigots-their holdings property values will go down.The problem here as it always is, is a conflict of interests - real interests, not imaginary ones.
It's never quite as simple as it looks.
In every instance in this former New Yorker's experience, "revitalization" has ended in higher rents. The funky, affordable, dilapidated, and actually rather better integrated than it is now Upper West Side of Manhattan turned into a yuppie ghetto within a decade or so of the construction of Lincoln Center, as those of us who treasured the area's funkiness, affordability, and diversity were pushed ever further north.
Affordable housing has to be quality housing to make it worth leaving older neighborhoods, and will fail if the residents have to travel more than an hour to a decent job, and where their children don't have a reasonable chance of success in those better schools, where expectations are higher and competition is tougher.
Quality housing costs more. Subsidized housing is rarely quality housing. People who have invested their lengthy educations and strenuous careers in homes that form a major part of their nest eggs and their children's inheritances are not vicious NIMBY bigots-their holdings property values will go down.The problem here as it always is, is a conflict of interests - real interests, not imaginary ones.
It's never quite as simple as it looks.
20
Elizabeth Renant: The subsidies allow the housing to be of good quality. The scholarly research shows that property values don't go down around affordable housing.
1
Those cities in America with the most aggressive (or, in the words of this article, "forceful") government policies regarding housing are San Francisco and New York City. Both have vigorously enforced rent control statutes, and NYC also has a huge stock of publicly owned and subsidized housing.
The result? They are both the most expensive housing markets in the nation, with single bedroom apartments costing thousands of dollars a month. They have the highest income inequalities in the nation and deep racial segregation by neighborhood. Meanwhile, cities like Houston have no regulation of housing to speak of, and no zoning laws. Houston is a thriving city, affordable to all; it absorbed some 250,000 refugees from New Orleans, finding nearly all of them housing (and jobs) within months. Houston is as cosmopolitan as San Francisco or New York, with a varied mixture of races, cultures and social groups all mixing and learning from each other.
Sometimes less is more. Particularly when it comes to government regulation, it seems.
The result? They are both the most expensive housing markets in the nation, with single bedroom apartments costing thousands of dollars a month. They have the highest income inequalities in the nation and deep racial segregation by neighborhood. Meanwhile, cities like Houston have no regulation of housing to speak of, and no zoning laws. Houston is a thriving city, affordable to all; it absorbed some 250,000 refugees from New Orleans, finding nearly all of them housing (and jobs) within months. Houston is as cosmopolitan as San Francisco or New York, with a varied mixture of races, cultures and social groups all mixing and learning from each other.
Sometimes less is more. Particularly when it comes to government regulation, it seems.
20
Perhaps another reason for the expensive housing markets in New York and San Francisco is that many, many people *want to live there*!
13
It's amazing how pervasive the disdain for the poor is. It's also amazing how much racial dislike their is. Well for those who say poor blacks and hispanics won't be welcome in middle class areas - then what of this? Build all the low income housing among all the millions (yes there are millions) of poor whites living in ex-urban and rural areas of the country??? That is literally the only difference. Millions of whites are poor in this country. They just tend not to live in middle class suburbs or the inner city slums. So would that be fitting racial integration??
4
Democratic and Republican anti-middle class economic policy seems intent on turning 99% of the country into a ghetto anyway, so I don't think housing segregation will be much of a problem in the future, except for gated communities aside.
8
Federally financed ghettos have mean concentrated schools of poverty where over 90% of the students are black and living in poverty. This is a must do to create a society in our country of with justice and liberty for all. Otherwise these "ghetto" schools in ghetto neighborhoods become like a reservation with no hope, no future and it is near to impossible to educate students who are trapped in these settings. There is an answer here and it is to put the housing in a neighborhood where the residents are high income and the schools are suceeding.
7
Thank you for the editorial. Your emphasis, however, is on affordable housing, which is a very important issue to discuss. However, what is equally important is that this Rule will help prevent discrimination against all persons protected by the Fair Housing Act including persons with disabilities, families with children and women. It will also be used to stop discriminatory practices against middle and higher income communities of color. For example, for 50 years, the City of Zanesville and Muskingum County denied public water to the African-American community of Coal Run. Indeed, federal funds were used to extend water service to the predominately White communities in and around the Zanesville area but year after year, officials voted to not install sewer and water lines to Coal Run. The Fair Housing Act dictates that this is illegal. Had this Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Rule been in place, it would have been much harder for the City and County to discriminate against this African-American community and, more importantly, use federal funds to do so.
12
In Cleveland, there area only several neighborhoods that contradict the declining property values and are a growth area. Recently there was a new development announced on empty land behind a Senior's Public Housing High Rise...with views of downtown skyline and river below. A great place to buy in the rising white middle class relocation to urban center.
But along $400K Townhouses were to be low income with subsidized rent. Mixed Income is the new urban strategy.
Now why would a smart middle class white family risk investing in a $400K home, if next door or behind, there was real risk of negative lifestyle, ruining property values?
In other words, in the few places where property taxes are rising and middle class moving into the urban core, lets put that "at risk" by mixed income housing.
Totally stupid.
Totally do gooder insanity.
Totally mind boggling.
But along $400K Townhouses were to be low income with subsidized rent. Mixed Income is the new urban strategy.
Now why would a smart middle class white family risk investing in a $400K home, if next door or behind, there was real risk of negative lifestyle, ruining property values?
In other words, in the few places where property taxes are rising and middle class moving into the urban core, lets put that "at risk" by mixed income housing.
Totally stupid.
Totally do gooder insanity.
Totally mind boggling.
26
This just seems like the wrong approach to giving impverished people a hand up. It helps only one household at a time, but it doesn't improve impoverished neighborhoods. Why aren't we enforcing laws against slumlords and making them repair and improve their rentals in poor neighborhoods? Why aren't we funding schools in lower class neighborhoods with federal money? Why take a person out of the ghetto when instead you can improve and fix the ghetto?
4
Both approaches are possible and can coexist.
3
Good Job, President Obama! Keep that pen going and take steps to restore democracy in America! Education, decent affordable housing, health and food policies give people a leg up - not a hand out. I was once in a difficult situation and was a recipient of the FHA 236 program. I purchased shares in a government-funded cooperative housing townhouse development in a middle income area. One had to have a job to qualify to live there and the house payment was subsidized according to one's income. As one's income rose so did their share of the house payment. It gave us a leg up and most of us moved on to become home owners in other communities by selling our "shares" to another person who needed a leg up. What's wrong with that? There is more than plenty to go around in America and we should not have people getting little or mediocre education, living on the streets, going hungry or dying because they can't afford the outrageously expensive health care. We are only as strong as our weakest link. Let's work together to make American democracy strong again.
9
I think new 'housing' should be built in downtown New York. Next in the surburbs of Washington DC. Next in the downtown area of San Francisco, then Austin... The fact is, the very rich pushing these 'ideas' should be the ones that are required to live next to them. The rest of us suffer enough from big government ideology.
26
If by "downtown New York" you mean "Manhattan" - then you should know there are plenty of public housing projects in Manhattan already. In fact Manhattan has a 20 percent poverty rate.
3
Scarsdale, Mt. Kisco, and Bedford, New York, and Greenwich and Fairfield Connecticut come to mind as fine candidates for this sort of housing effort.
6
Apparently your argument is with the Congress that made the law in 1968, not with a president who is obeying his oath to see that the laws are enforced. As for building in downtown NYC, that's where I live, and I say "fine." And as for you good folk in Michigan, I hope you won't suffer too much if you have to look at poor people.
4
first, where were you, oh omnipresent editorial board, 50, 40, 30, 20, years ago when all this federally funded housing was being built in poor neighborhoods? why were you not advocating for housing to be built in Beverly Hills, and Westchester County?
Now - let's built this housing in Martha's Vineyard and Brentwood and Pleasantville and Scarsdale
Now - let's built this housing in Martha's Vineyard and Brentwood and Pleasantville and Scarsdale
15
Uh, because nobody who's not wealthy can possibly afford to live there (let alone find work) without gigantic subsidies funded by tax increases that you'd scream your head off about?
1
This might be a great thing, getting the feds out of housing subsidy. I am totally offended by the idea that we have any real Ghettos in the us, from a historical point of view a real Ghetto is something that you can't leave no matter what.
4
In Massachusetts the emphasis is on "affordable housing" for all poor people, not just minorities. 10% of the housing stock in affluent suburban towns must now be certified as "affordable". If it is not available, builders can over ride local zoning regulations to build enormous housing communities (apartments/houses), anywhere they want. The law has forced towns to be pro-active about placing low-income communities in highway accessible locations. This liberal policy has brought more poverty into the suburbs, but the problems associated with is influx have been manageable.
9
It's about time-particularly in NYC which ranks among the top 10 segregated cities. And as recent NYtimes article stated, middle class blacks often remain in "ghettos" communities because they are systemically locked out of others be it economic, racially of cultural reasons.
And it costs that middle class black family more to provide education to their children ( private school), family health care (traveling to buy better food and doctors outside of the community and access to safe and pleasant recreation.
Low income community activists have been brainwashed to believe gentrification is bad. But it is needed to eradicate the ills of poverty perpetuated by 50 years of planned segregation promoted as maintaining cultural pride.
And it costs that middle class black family more to provide education to their children ( private school), family health care (traveling to buy better food and doctors outside of the community and access to safe and pleasant recreation.
Low income community activists have been brainwashed to believe gentrification is bad. But it is needed to eradicate the ills of poverty perpetuated by 50 years of planned segregation promoted as maintaining cultural pride.
9
FAIRNESS In Olde City Philly, the streets where the wealthy lives are relatively wide with grand homes for colonial times, while the streets of workers were narrow with modest homes. But they were literally side by side, block by block. It worked well enough, the integration of the classes. It as a matter of necessity, since mobility was far more limited back in the 18th century. Now, to decrease the carbon footprint, city living has become popular again, raising the possibility of the generation of more integrated neighborhoods as families live closer to city centers and closer to each other. Most, of not all, of the public housing high rise towers have been torn down, as they had become violent places, providing a toxic, destructive environment for the residents. They have been replaced by small homes that fit in better with the community. And there has been some reduction in social problems. I hope that Obama's new regulations for Fair Housing will advance the process further.
12
More ridiculous regulations by the federal government. People work to improve their lives. They are not going to accept the government telling they have to live next to a government housing project. Why do you thing there was flight from the inner cities in the 70s? The concept that government can force people to do things which are not in their own best interests only works in a dictatorship.
31
As far as the idea that having a poor person move into a given neighborhood causes the current residents to move, I answer that "you can run, but you cannot hide." That being said I am not sure this new interpretation of the law this article discusses is the solution.
In my neighborhood a structurally sound if somewhat untended house with multiple bedrooms can be had for well under $80,000.00, often well under. What is happening is that these houses are being purchased by investors who do minimal upgrades and rent for the maximum the market allows.
Wouldn't it be more productive to limit these rapacious capitalists to a maximum number of properties and then limit the time they can hold property if they don't live within the community, and then take the available housing assistance funds and generate loans that turn the renters into owners. Giving the dispossessed an opportunity for ownership would, in my mind, create a pattern of positive reinforcement that could reverberate throughout a community.
In my neighborhood a structurally sound if somewhat untended house with multiple bedrooms can be had for well under $80,000.00, often well under. What is happening is that these houses are being purchased by investors who do minimal upgrades and rent for the maximum the market allows.
Wouldn't it be more productive to limit these rapacious capitalists to a maximum number of properties and then limit the time they can hold property if they don't live within the community, and then take the available housing assistance funds and generate loans that turn the renters into owners. Giving the dispossessed an opportunity for ownership would, in my mind, create a pattern of positive reinforcement that could reverberate throughout a community.
8
Another liberal social engineering program doomed to fail, just like public housing in the 1960s and busing in the 1970s. While you can force people to work together, you simply cannot force people to live together who don't want to as they will simply pick up and move as people whom they don't want to live next to move in. Even the wealthy white liberals in Bill and Hillary's town are aghast at poor residents moving in. This simply won't work.
25
To Paul: Ah, the "social engineering" argument. That term is almost always used when one is talking about programs that benefit others but not the speaker. Most such speakers have themselves benefited from government programs, but they don't see it that way. Why not describe US policies that have consistently favored single-family housing and home ownership in the suburbs (fed by the public funding of the federal highway system at the expense of public transportation) as "social engineering"? Have you enjoyed a mortgage-interest tax deduction lately?
3
Subsidized housing can and should have a positive effect on families. Truth be told, when complexes where people live and pay rent become subsidized, they are surrounded by loud music, drugs, mothers laying around, people drinking outdoors during the day, and children unsupervised. Their schools suffer because of parents who, too often, don't support education. People of diverse backgrounds can live together peacefully when they have similar goals and values. We need to change the way welfare (and this is) is distributed.
19
Gov. Cuomo was head of the Department of Housing and Urban Development. He is now governor of the State of New York - the most segregated state in the country. His dad (also a NY governor) began his public career with a Forest Hills segregation case. Minorities never had a chance with the not-on-my-block Cuomo's. They will go down in history as the champions of abortion to help the poor.
1
Is there something wrong with racial segregation? Yes, when it violates the US Constitution and the amendments thereto.
4
Forget building subsized housing. Just give vouchers. That being said, when my nephew was searching for affordable housing in the Bronx last summer, he was told by a rental agency that many landlords won't accept vouchers.
8
They are supposed to. NYC and Westchester County have different versions of "source of income" protection, with NYC's a much stronger law.
I have a question that I haven't seen addressed in any news reports or op-eds: what happens to the progress made in the number of minority political representatives if minorities are moved from neighborhoods where they constitute majorities to "better" neighborhoods where they are by definition minorities? I suspect their numbers would be drastically reduced, but I haven't seen any research on the subject.
4
No worries. Realtors all over America are selling the best view/water/secluded properties at highly inflated prices to foreign investors who are trying to hide their stolen wealth. No chance of any of we peons messing up their sandbox. People had better wake up to the real problems and a black or hispanic family moving next door is not one of them.
9
I take offense at your use of the word ghetto to describe poor neighborhoods. My grandparents and at least 3 generations before them lived in real ghettos. Those were places, generally walled in, that they were forbidden to leave. People living in them were forbidden to get an education sponsored by the state, to engage in most of commerce, and lived rotten lives.
Poor black neighborhoods are not ghettos. And to suggest that they exist because of racism or government policies is dubious. All the neighborhoods they live in now were previously inhabited by poor immigrants and other poor whites. And starting in the 20s, places like Harlem were inhabited by blacks were did not commit crimes disproportionately and did that have the same rundown problems.
I leave to others -- though not the fact-deprived members of the Times editorial board, to explain the decline in black life. Illegitimacy before the civil rights laws in the 60s was at 20%, now 72%, That's stupefying. Opportunities for blacks since the 60s have exploded,yet the more opportunity, the more dysfunction. To suggest that racism did it is folly.
Government can't intervene to force moms to read to their kids; or stop teens from unprotected sex; or force women to only be impregnated by responsible men. Those factors play a decisive role in the problems of housing and poor neighborhoods.
I suggest that the editors of the Times should read...the New York Times. If they did they would know these things.
Poor black neighborhoods are not ghettos. And to suggest that they exist because of racism or government policies is dubious. All the neighborhoods they live in now were previously inhabited by poor immigrants and other poor whites. And starting in the 20s, places like Harlem were inhabited by blacks were did not commit crimes disproportionately and did that have the same rundown problems.
I leave to others -- though not the fact-deprived members of the Times editorial board, to explain the decline in black life. Illegitimacy before the civil rights laws in the 60s was at 20%, now 72%, That's stupefying. Opportunities for blacks since the 60s have exploded,yet the more opportunity, the more dysfunction. To suggest that racism did it is folly.
Government can't intervene to force moms to read to their kids; or stop teens from unprotected sex; or force women to only be impregnated by responsible men. Those factors play a decisive role in the problems of housing and poor neighborhoods.
I suggest that the editors of the Times should read...the New York Times. If they did they would know these things.
129
Alex - that is a VERY skewed reading of U.S. urban history. For one thing - those poor immigrant neighborhoods existed because blacks for the most part lived in the south. When the great migration north took place - those same white groups indeed began to leave for the suburbs. Maybe you should take a look at what redlining was if you think there was no impediments to blacks. I also can't believe you seriously think the schools were at the same level. Also - aside from your sensationalism (can't blame you when that is all that is reported) - blacks have indeed made many great strides. I know lawyers and engineers and police officers and financial industry management and teachers among many. Yes many others from the same group in school didn't do well (some died - some went to prison) - but to say blacks have made no progress is just as ignorant as you claim the Times is. I can personally introduce you to many college educated - gainfully employed blacks in their 30's and 40's.
1
I'd try and explain what the word, "redlining," means, or why you can't live wherever you want if you haven't got the money and you can't find a job, but let me just suggest that you seriously need to get around a little more. Among other things, the actual world isn't an idealized Harlem frozen forever in 1935.
2
You must be reading different sections of the Times than many of the rest of us read. Some of the numbers you cite have gone up for whites as well as blacks (out of wedlock births, which are now falling for both.). Fact is, average individuals fail or succeed mostly within the parameters set up by the society they are born in. The last year has shown us again and again the subtle (and not so subtle) bias and oppression that exists for citizens of color and the slightly less oppressive biases for poor citizens. Housing might improve if businesses paid their employees a living wage instead of keeping them down until they reach equality with VietNam. Indeed, the entire poking along economy of the nation would improve if our lowest paid employees had wages keep up with the inflation of the past twenty years. But the response of Republicans like Paul Ryan has been to blame the oppressed and then use this as an excuse to eliminate the piddling monies we now use to support them. Wait until he comes for middle class programs like Medicare and Social Security, which aren't even paid for out of general funds! There ought too be an upper limit on mortgage deductions because that might stimulate the building of more homes that are less expensive. After all, profit is profit whether it comes from apartments for the super rich or those of moderate and lower income. Right now builders can't make money on these because middle and poorer income families can't afford them.
17
Smart, very smart idea.
We've got so use to segregation by poverty that we had forgotten that they were very damaging to the country in terms of fostering prejudices against people we had no chance of knowing on a personal level.
We've got so use to segregation by poverty that we had forgotten that they were very damaging to the country in terms of fostering prejudices against people we had no chance of knowing on a personal level.
3
You do not take a civilian and drop him into a war zone. He'd be killed.
So . . .
A middle class boot camp is needed:
If you take and put, one by one, a lower class family into a middle or above class household for 8 months, just the parents, the kids go to a separate live-in school, then this MAY work.
Also, let the gov't guarantee all property values.
This could work, but only for those parents who survive this middle-class boot-camp.
The rest must try again in middle class boot camp.
So . . .
A middle class boot camp is needed:
If you take and put, one by one, a lower class family into a middle or above class household for 8 months, just the parents, the kids go to a separate live-in school, then this MAY work.
Also, let the gov't guarantee all property values.
This could work, but only for those parents who survive this middle-class boot-camp.
The rest must try again in middle class boot camp.
2
What is the point in building heavily subsidized housing in expensive neighborhoods of let's say, Manhattan or Brooklyn? The segregation in the economic sphere will remain immutable even if low-income folks move into better neighborhoods to create an illusion of racial integration. Food will be expensive; the bars and clubs will be inaccessible and the neighborhood into which the low income are shunted will just not be in an integrative mood to receive them as one of their own. The problem of racial and economic segregation is deep and acute in places like NYC, so to simply give a facelift to the laws would be a cosmetic approach to solving this ugly American problem.
4
Wrong. Food is often cheaper and more fresh in wealthier neighborhoods. Also - the last thing low income people need is to waste money in bars and clubs - so it would be a good thing that they can't afford them in those "hip" Manhattan and Brooklyn neighborhoods.
1
It is an instinct left over from our cave days that we like to be with people who are most similar to us, or tribes, one might say. It is not a racist component of our makeup, it is part of our DNA. There is a reason that when we walk into a room with groups segregated by race we naturally tend to move to the group most like ourselves. Neighborhoods in our modern cities, especially New York, reflect this most clearly, hence Chinatown, Little Italy, Little Germany, and Newark across the river. The government can try to racially integrate by force as much as possible but you can't fight human nature, whether you are white, black, hispanic, or asian.
13
This is rich! IMO: It will meet even more resistance as when places like Boston tried to force bus the white kids into black schools in the 70 s... Everyone (especially Lefties) talks a great "integration" game until they actually have to endure it, and all the attendant problems with it, on their own block or in their own neighborhood.. I recommend these first Section 8 housing projects be built in tony liberal neighborhoods like Naperville, Lake Zurich, Northbrook or.... (Where is this Leftie president going to put his 'roots" down in Chicago again?) Even the thought of this happening ought to cause a fire sale on window-bars, burglar alarms and "illegal" firearms..(I can see the Lefties at the gun range now - it will be pitiful!) BTW: Providing Section 8 housing vouchers that allow people that can't even take care of themselves to move into more "civilized" areas doesn't change their manners, their attitudes, their morals; or their propensity towards lawlessness, violence or crime, does it? It merely spreads the cancer....
21
It is interesting how the NY Times continues to write various stories - editorials on this issue. This happens to be one editorial in a series or articles and editorials - that is a concerted effort to shape opinion on this little reported and understood effort by the Obama administration that has been going on for a number of years and get simpatico with their liberal constituents. Although judging from the overwhelming comments here - most people find the social engineering aspect of this abhorrent. One other thing that needs to be cleared up here; the Supreme Court decision (referenced here) was not a "big win" that now can be used to further some kind of socialist agenda - it simply allowed the "disparate impact" theory to stand - although it use is now much more narrowly defined - which will permanently reign in the Obama Justice Department from it's recent over the top abuse of this theory to shakedown, bully and scare - whoever their target is this week. Not exactly a reason to celebrate ? ??
7
No, the Supreme Court decision in the Inclusive Communities case does not narrow down the disparate impact theory. The aspects you are thinking of were already there before the new opinion was issued.
1
When I was young, I moved into what at one time was a very exclusive neighborhood with houses that were mini-mansions. I owned a white stucco two story that looked like a medieval castle complete with towers. Homes were cheap because blacks were moving into the area. At the time we had a mix of whites and blacks. Eventually the blacks took over, that was over 30 years ago and I moved on eventually though job transfers. Today that castle I had looks like a medieval ruin. It stands hollowed out and vandalized of all the light fixtures leaded windows. and oak doors are all gone. The rest of the neighborhood looks even worse. What is left is blacks only living in that once exclusive area. Keep them rounded up in the ghetto housing, save them destroying good neighborhoods. Educated blacks will move on to better neighborhoods on their own.
15
Wow, read the Readers Picks comments and see how institutionalized racism really is. Every day "Joe's and Jane's" up in arms at the idea of kids "from the hood" moving into their hoods and lowering property values. Sad.
9
The real problem is that so many ghettoized and poor people don't have access to fair housing. It is a matter of luck and long waiting lists.
12
Chicago is in the latter part of the process to shut down its infamous projects and subsidize housing in various parts of the city. It will be some years to see if this has a significant effect on the outcomes of children of these families, though there is prior data from prior federal programs to suggest that it does. One possible explanation is that more motivated individuals are more likely to move to a potentially socially isolating location to pursue job opportunities and better education for children. Will we in 20 years wonder why the economically depressed areas are even worse off than before these changes, or will we congratulate those who escaped poverty with this program? Time will tell.
3
Easy to pay for increased affordable housing, eliminate the social engineering mortgage interest deduction (home ownership is a desired goal) and use the revenue earned to build more affordable housing.
2
Thereby making the housing less affordable
What a dumb article. I am originally from Chicago, then a Florida resident. Lets be clear all the federally formed neighborhoods especially build during LBJ Great Society were not designed Ghettos, but that is exactly what the matured into. Many original residents in these government financed housing projects up and moved, usually to get ther kids out of what usually transpires. Drugs, and violence. I often witness a ghetto enrout to a client in Houston unbelievable.
10
When the government starts building low income housing on Park Avenue, East Hampton, Boca, La Jolla, Silicon Valley, and other enclaves of the super rich then maybe the middle class may buy into it.
Moving the ghetto to a middle class development is stupid. Even middle class blacks would leave. The crime will follow and the 50% high school graduation rate would stay the same.
The middle class has worked very hard for their patch of green grass in the burbs. The ghetto blacks/whites moving in would naturally resent the undeserving "successful" neighbors living all around them and trouble would soon follow.
If a black person moved next to me I wouldn't really care if he/she shared the same cultural values as me, i.e. being law abiding and hard working. But
there is anti white racism and even hatred of whitey in the ghetto. This hatred is never talked about by Charles Blow and other intelligent and successful black "intellectuals". Its always whiteys fault.
Moving the ghetto to a middle class development is stupid. Even middle class blacks would leave. The crime will follow and the 50% high school graduation rate would stay the same.
The middle class has worked very hard for their patch of green grass in the burbs. The ghetto blacks/whites moving in would naturally resent the undeserving "successful" neighbors living all around them and trouble would soon follow.
If a black person moved next to me I wouldn't really care if he/she shared the same cultural values as me, i.e. being law abiding and hard working. But
there is anti white racism and even hatred of whitey in the ghetto. This hatred is never talked about by Charles Blow and other intelligent and successful black "intellectuals". Its always whiteys fault.
21
In Galveston, TX, as part of the Hurricane Ike rebuilding, the feds and administration are forcing the continued segregation by insisting that all of the public housing for the area be rebuilt within one confined area on the island of Galveston. They're insisting that public housing be rebuilt in the most impoverished, racially segregated part of the county. So we always think its extremely hypocritical of them to blame others for the problem.
2
All the president is doing is enforcing the law. If you have a problem, take it up with Congress to change the law.
2
In looking at homes in the Washington DC area, I discovered that Montgomery Co. MD (just outside of DC) requires any builder creating a housing development of large scale (there is a minimum), no matter how luxurious (even > $1M), to build a certain percentage (15-20%) of those homes as "affordable" housing, which the county purchases, and those are then available for sale only to employees of Montgomery Co., like teachers, firefighters, police, etc. I thought that was an interesting concept which clearly attempts to combat economic segregation.
7
It wouldn't surprise me if municipalities simply refuse to take HUD money as a result of this new edict. A local leader won't be a leader for long if he dumps Section 8 residents in middle class areas. He'll either be voted out or the neighborhood would change that his voters will be gone.
Modern day liberalism in this area is constructed on faulty premises that avoid some uncomfortable realities. For example yesterday in Chicago a rapper was killed but the real horror was when the shooters sped away they ran over a stroller with a 13 month old in it. The 13 month old died. who wants to live next to people like this who are either engaged in criminal activity or are indifferent towards it?
Modern day liberalism in this area is constructed on faulty premises that avoid some uncomfortable realities. For example yesterday in Chicago a rapper was killed but the real horror was when the shooters sped away they ran over a stroller with a 13 month old in it. The 13 month old died. who wants to live next to people like this who are either engaged in criminal activity or are indifferent towards it?
15
Atta boy, Uncle Sam, having brought the unemployment back to pre-slump levels, remediated the increasing income disparity that has created a two class nation, provided affordable health care for all Americans, raised educational standards and curricula to twenty-first century levels, reduced pollution and environmental degradation and repaired our crumbling national infrastructure, let's get on with the really critical problem of segregated housing.
Right after we invade Iran.
Right after we invade Iran.
A few years ago, one of my elderly neighbors gave her house to her church and they have turned it into a home for the mentally challenged. Several of my other neighbors were outraged by this because it would lower their land-value. I was quite horrified to learn which of my neighbors put their own bottom-line over the health and welfare not to mention basic liberty of others. I am ashamed to admit that some of these folks call themselves Christians.
If you think the value of your house is more important than any other consideration, then you aren't necessarily a racist, but you are certainly selfish. Also, one of the main reasons your house's value will drop due to subsidized housing is the fact that you will no longer be able to sell your house to racists. Consider that before you start complaining about desegregation.
If you think the value of your house is more important than any other consideration, then you aren't necessarily a racist, but you are certainly selfish. Also, one of the main reasons your house's value will drop due to subsidized housing is the fact that you will no longer be able to sell your house to racists. Consider that before you start complaining about desegregation.
5
The southern "plantation system" has been replaced by "the welfare system" which had in mind all people groups being controlled by a handful of the haughty; FDR being most responsible for its birth with such notions as the 1935 Social security Act and the earlier 1933 Tennessee Valley Authority Act which provided jobs & electricity, yes, but latched the masses onto the government's nursing breast where weaning was out of the question.
3
Don't even look at in terms of legality or ethics or social justice. Look at it in terms of cold, hard self-interest. When communities are mixed and people interest, there are more opportunities to coordinate, collaborate, and solve problems. Things don't fester and explode, and you don't live in fear of The Other.
It's all too easy to cast aspersions at "those people" when you're locked away in your gated community among people exactly like yourself.
It's all too easy to cast aspersions at "those people" when you're locked away in your gated community among people exactly like yourself.
4
Most European nations see federally funded education as an essential tool of social integration.
31
This trenchant editorial makes it clear that in a truly just democratic society, the concept of civil rights is much deeper than simply "equal opportunity" or the right to apply for a home (or job, or school) without regard to superficial categories which in the Fair Housing Act are race, color, religion, national origin, sex, disability, and familial status. Equal opportunity means little if there is not also an assurance that government cannot interfere with these rights nor exacerbate the ills of segregation through its policies.
What these rules combined with the Supreme Court's recognition of disparate impact as a legitimate claim do is to effectively say to all government entities: People who are most discriminated against in the housing market also happen to have lower incomes than households headed by white, able-bodied, native born men without children; deal with it.
We want a society where each and individual is valued and live up to her or his best potential. So we cannot confine subsidized low-income housing to low-income, disproporationately Black or Latino, neighborhoods. To do this is to perpetuate ghettos for the rich and ghettos for the poor and to make meaningless the right to equal opportunity in housing.
BTW, local governments, particularly in the wealthy northern suburbs where I live and work, subsidize the housing for the rich much more than the middle class or poor through zoning variances and land-giveaways while excluding ALL affordable housing.
What these rules combined with the Supreme Court's recognition of disparate impact as a legitimate claim do is to effectively say to all government entities: People who are most discriminated against in the housing market also happen to have lower incomes than households headed by white, able-bodied, native born men without children; deal with it.
We want a society where each and individual is valued and live up to her or his best potential. So we cannot confine subsidized low-income housing to low-income, disproporationately Black or Latino, neighborhoods. To do this is to perpetuate ghettos for the rich and ghettos for the poor and to make meaningless the right to equal opportunity in housing.
BTW, local governments, particularly in the wealthy northern suburbs where I live and work, subsidize the housing for the rich much more than the middle class or poor through zoning variances and land-giveaways while excluding ALL affordable housing.
24
Alas, implementation will proceed one lawsuit at a time, just as in every civil rights law since Brown vs. Board of Education. It's a winning game plan, foot dragging by the discriminators to wear down the plaintiffs and chew up their resources with big legal bills. After a while, you run out of money or patience.
12
See how difficult it is to win any decision against status quo on "Local Zoning Issues".
What if the general population voted on it and they wanted to keep their zoning exactly as they voted in their communities? It would be the majority against "fair Housing". In the end, that's what it will be!
What if the general population voted on it and they wanted to keep their zoning exactly as they voted in their communities? It would be the majority against "fair Housing". In the end, that's what it will be!
Thirty years ago I had an experience that affects my thinking about this. My neighbor asked me whether I had signed a petition against a group home that was proposed about 4 blocks away. I was at work when the petition came around so, no, I hadn't signed it and the petition never came back around. The group home went in and it was for "mentally challenged"/Whats the right word nowadays? adults. People for whom we all have sympathy.
When I sold my house a fews years later, that group home did not affect me at all. But if I was right next to it, yes, of course it would have affected selling. Who would buy a home next to a home that is housing perhaps a half dozen mentally "retarded" people? There IS a danger. The people who are supposed to supervise can mess up. No one with young children would look at a home next to a group home.
So, it troubles me that to accomplish these good deeds, there will be people who lose a lot - the immediate neighbors - and there is no government program that will try to compensate them for their loss.
When I sold my house a fews years later, that group home did not affect me at all. But if I was right next to it, yes, of course it would have affected selling. Who would buy a home next to a home that is housing perhaps a half dozen mentally "retarded" people? There IS a danger. The people who are supposed to supervise can mess up. No one with young children would look at a home next to a group home.
So, it troubles me that to accomplish these good deeds, there will be people who lose a lot - the immediate neighbors - and there is no government program that will try to compensate them for their loss.
43
"We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good." - Hillary Clinton, 6/29/2004
Ginger, I can give you the same response I just replied to Charles. Actually, almost all the academic research shows that area property values do NOT decline after affordable housing, workforce housing, group homes, and similar housing with some type of subsidy appears in a neighborhood or right next door. You have absolutely no guarantee when anyone moves in next door that they will be good neighbors. How do you know the house next door, with that "nice" family who just moved in, isn't going to be the eventual site of some awful incident? (An example: I grew up in a "nice" white middle-class subdivision in NJ, where an adult son burned his parents' house down. Fortunately, the fire was contained and didn't spread to other properties.)
Your assumption is a common one—underlying much of the NIMBY sentiment that appears almost everywhere such housing is proposed—but is false. However, even when presented with the evidence and data, most people stick with their misconceptions and prejudices. It's an emotional response, not an intellectual one.
Under the Fair Housing Act, local governments and communities must be accepting of housing for people with disabilities and not put up extra barriers or impose conditions that do not apply to other households. There is a reason for the protection for people with disabilities under the law: people's prejudices have serious impacts on others, limiting their housing opportunities.
Your assumption is a common one—underlying much of the NIMBY sentiment that appears almost everywhere such housing is proposed—but is false. However, even when presented with the evidence and data, most people stick with their misconceptions and prejudices. It's an emotional response, not an intellectual one.
Under the Fair Housing Act, local governments and communities must be accepting of housing for people with disabilities and not put up extra barriers or impose conditions that do not apply to other households. There is a reason for the protection for people with disabilities under the law: people's prejudices have serious impacts on others, limiting their housing opportunities.
1
Good Job, President Obama! Keep that pen going and take steps to restore democracy in America! Now WE must VOTE to take your steps even further by voting only for democrats and independents who sincerely want to create a better America for 99% of us.
1
There is an old saying
You can take the pig out of the pigpen, but you can't take the pigpen out of the pig.
All one has to do is look at how rapidly any NEW public housing project begins to look like the one just torn down due to misuse.
You can take the pig out of the pigpen, but you can't take the pigpen out of the pig.
All one has to do is look at how rapidly any NEW public housing project begins to look like the one just torn down due to misuse.
19
Back in the late 70's and early 80's it went like this in the South. In middle-class suburban neighborhoods- white- eventually somebody would accept a realtor's offer, not caring about the color of the buyer, just glad to make the sale. Surprise, surprise, the buyer was a black family and boom, the neighborhood was broken open. The seller socially slimed- because then it would begin- more houses up for sale and many white families fleeing the integrated neighborhood and forced to buy a more expensive home in a new development. The prices would drop fast in the old neighborhood as more black families took advantage of the good deals that the panic of white flight created. Their racism basically tore a hole out of their own pocketbook. But what is happening now, the more high-priced developments are integrated with black families, but nobody cares since they usually have expensive homes with covenants and all are in the same economic class. But on the low income side, the old white neighborhoods have often become ghettoized and some decaying. Integration is almost impossible to force by law, but over time it is happening, but with an implied class/wealth criteria.
4
What is happening in America's cities is by design. Canada's largest cities Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver have seen their cores become havens in the new economy with downtown Toronto and Vancouver becoming unaffordable and Montreal with its large student population becoming party central for the world's young and affluent.
While the descendants of the owners of the owners of the steel mills, factories and packing plants of the South end of Lake Michigan live in the lily white suburbs by the lake north of Chicago the descendants of the workers are confined to an area South of the city where the filth and the garbage and the toxins still remain on what should have between America's inland Riviera.
When driving through Gary Indiana it is not difficult to see even through the poverty that a hundred years ago this was the richest city on Earth, nor is it difficult to see that this is the rapacious American economy that sucks everything from the land and its people leaving behind despair and hopelessness.
Gary, Indiana should have a museum chronicling its history from extreme wealth to what it is today. It should remind all Americans that regardless of their race, colour or creed when their usefulness is over they will be abandoned just like the toxic slag mountains on Lake Michigan's most southern shore.
While the descendants of the owners of the owners of the steel mills, factories and packing plants of the South end of Lake Michigan live in the lily white suburbs by the lake north of Chicago the descendants of the workers are confined to an area South of the city where the filth and the garbage and the toxins still remain on what should have between America's inland Riviera.
When driving through Gary Indiana it is not difficult to see even through the poverty that a hundred years ago this was the richest city on Earth, nor is it difficult to see that this is the rapacious American economy that sucks everything from the land and its people leaving behind despair and hopelessness.
Gary, Indiana should have a museum chronicling its history from extreme wealth to what it is today. It should remind all Americans that regardless of their race, colour or creed when their usefulness is over they will be abandoned just like the toxic slag mountains on Lake Michigan's most southern shore.
3
Certainly all members of the NYT editorial board live in racially and economically integrated neighborhoods and send their kids to the local public schools.
17
I look forward to the building of homes for the poor in the neighborhoods of the elites. Why not begin with the neighborhoods of the members of The New York Times Editorial Board? Please tell us what neighborhoods you live in! This would set a good example for the rest of us.
27
Reminds me of Rosie O'Donell, a liberal who was quite outspoken against former Mayor Giuliani and his polices. She had a homeless person removed from the sidewalk in front of her Nyack home (which was ensconced safely behind a large white fence).
Turns out the homeless person was actually John Tierney, a NYT columnist, testing her response, which was entirely predictable. Here's the story, which is timely since the homeless are once again out in greater numbers in NYC:
http://www.nytimes.com/1999/12/18/nyregion/the-big-city-allowing-some-le...
Turns out the homeless person was actually John Tierney, a NYT columnist, testing her response, which was entirely predictable. Here's the story, which is timely since the homeless are once again out in greater numbers in NYC:
http://www.nytimes.com/1999/12/18/nyregion/the-big-city-allowing-some-le...
2
It gets harder everyday to stay a Democrat. My story is similar to that of many of today's middle class. Raised in a poor neighborhood by good, hard-working parents. Worked my way to a college degree. Got a government job. Saved money. Quit job. Started business. Received no SBA loans or government grants, just credit cards and life savings and long hours. Made money. Bought a nice house in a community with excellent schools and safe streets.
If you want to live in my neighborhood, work for it.
If you want to live in my neighborhood, work for it.
27
Developers at the ready, empty out the minority neighborhoods. Gentrification can speed up! NYC's highly segregated schools will benefit too.
2
"Last week, the Obama administration took an even more important step —" A journey of a thousand miles begins with one step. Maybe. But given our rate of progress, which makes molasses in the Arctic look hasty, we'll not finish this journey with rewritten rules. The NYT's conservative writers, and the Comments sections, give proof of the immutability of the conservative mind. There is no Liquid Plumber for such blockages.
1
Not In My BackYard (NIMBY) is a general problem, and not simply in the USA. It stands in the way of high density, rational, efficient housing, all too often.
1
If you wish to live in 'high density rational housing' then by all means, do so. I do not wish too and so far I am not being forced into it. This is still the land of the free, but not for much longer.
4
This is yet another example of what we Conservatives point to--when attempting to educate Liberals on the limitations of using the federal government to solve social problems. Federal solutions always cause more of the problem than the "help" was meant to solve.
Interference in our lives by the federal government has:
Seriously impaired our local school--which were once the finest in the world.
Allowed chaos to rein in our immigration system
Caused the cost of higher education to skyrocket
Created dependency in large swaths of our minority communities
Driven U.S. companies offshore with high tax rates
Messed up our health care system.
Squandered the funds in our Social Security fund
Allowed millions to sign up as "disabled"--when they couldn't find employment.
Created segregated ghettos trying to help "the poor".
The Feds can't even run their own government without huge deficits.
They can't even get the U.S. Post office to make money--or break even.
As Ronald Reagan once famously said, "The scariest 9 words in the English language are, I'm from the government, and I"m here to help."
The biggest mistake this country ever made, is in deciding to vote for politicians who promised to use the federal government to "help people". If people need help--let the states do it. They're much closer to the problem--and much less like to muck it up.
Interference in our lives by the federal government has:
Seriously impaired our local school--which were once the finest in the world.
Allowed chaos to rein in our immigration system
Caused the cost of higher education to skyrocket
Created dependency in large swaths of our minority communities
Driven U.S. companies offshore with high tax rates
Messed up our health care system.
Squandered the funds in our Social Security fund
Allowed millions to sign up as "disabled"--when they couldn't find employment.
Created segregated ghettos trying to help "the poor".
The Feds can't even run their own government without huge deficits.
They can't even get the U.S. Post office to make money--or break even.
As Ronald Reagan once famously said, "The scariest 9 words in the English language are, I'm from the government, and I"m here to help."
The biggest mistake this country ever made, is in deciding to vote for politicians who promised to use the federal government to "help people". If people need help--let the states do it. They're much closer to the problem--and much less like to muck it up.
9
If federally subsidized housing is just a euphemism for building housing projects in middle class towns then this political decision will fail utterly. Worse, it will lead to the social unrest last seen during the forced school busing programs of decades past. Rather than unite Americans, it will divide them.
Politically, the neo conservative right wing will be reinforced with millions of otherwise moderate middle class white voters who will bitterly remember the democratic party's association with such a program.
I grew up in Hartford, living next door to Charter Oak Terrace, D Section. COT was and where it still stands, remains a housing project that is characterized by gangs and the ripple effect of gang violence and culture. Hartford is a major gang / drug distribution center for NYC gangs and the white flight out of the city reflects the ascendancy of the gang culture. Building "mini" COTs in West Hartford, Newington or other suburban towns surrounding Hartford will not change black poverty but it sure will destroy the quality of life built by the people who live in those towns.
Sorry, but culture always defeats good intentions, especially when those intentions are administered through bureaucratic government policies.
Politically, the neo conservative right wing will be reinforced with millions of otherwise moderate middle class white voters who will bitterly remember the democratic party's association with such a program.
I grew up in Hartford, living next door to Charter Oak Terrace, D Section. COT was and where it still stands, remains a housing project that is characterized by gangs and the ripple effect of gang violence and culture. Hartford is a major gang / drug distribution center for NYC gangs and the white flight out of the city reflects the ascendancy of the gang culture. Building "mini" COTs in West Hartford, Newington or other suburban towns surrounding Hartford will not change black poverty but it sure will destroy the quality of life built by the people who live in those towns.
Sorry, but culture always defeats good intentions, especially when those intentions are administered through bureaucratic government policies.
22
The real tragedy in all the Great Society entitlement programs has been their abysmal racist focus. In America anno 2015 we are faced with the amalgamation of the various component groups, an organic process that occurs through marriage and other human alliances, a process that has obviated affirmative action initiatives altogether. When the Supreme Court pronounces on the affirmative action in education decision currently before it, it must next address those vestiges of Great Society and tackle race-based employment and housing quotas. High time we abandoned the relegation of the now-defunct HUD to Uncle Sam's slumlord, as people of every description, which itself should not bear a belabored mention, may go to their housing lender and qualify for whatever shelter they can afford to purchase, without prejudice.
4
How this is done must be watched carefully. Chicago's "projects." the single largest housing for low income in the city, were torn down claiming those living there would be moved to more integrated housing with better opportunities. Like state hospitals were torn down with similar promises in the 60's and 70's, no such housing materialized in Chicago to replace what was torn down. Meanwhile, developers who made the most of the opportunity, gentrifying to the south. So called housing "reform" increased homelessness.
In New York developers bought up rent subsidized apartments and renovated through "capital investment" loopholes in the housing rules doubling the rent. Thousands of housing units left the low income market where only a paultry few hundred were added back in the lotteries.
Cranks: before jumping down my throat that the market rules rents and if you can't afford to live in competitive areas then get the hey out, just one entire day considering how much each person you encounter that contributes to how your day goes from babysitter before you can leave, who prepares your coffee you pick up on the way on to the office, your lunch, your dinner. where you work who brings your mail, delivers urgent changes to the deal your're working on, waters the plants and cleans, who cuts your hair, cleans and presses your suits and gets that stain out of your favorite tie.
If your accept their work, they deserve the respect of a decent home just as you do.
In New York developers bought up rent subsidized apartments and renovated through "capital investment" loopholes in the housing rules doubling the rent. Thousands of housing units left the low income market where only a paultry few hundred were added back in the lotteries.
Cranks: before jumping down my throat that the market rules rents and if you can't afford to live in competitive areas then get the hey out, just one entire day considering how much each person you encounter that contributes to how your day goes from babysitter before you can leave, who prepares your coffee you pick up on the way on to the office, your lunch, your dinner. where you work who brings your mail, delivers urgent changes to the deal your're working on, waters the plants and cleans, who cuts your hair, cleans and presses your suits and gets that stain out of your favorite tie.
If your accept their work, they deserve the respect of a decent home just as you do.
2
No one 'deserves' anything.
This is yet another overreach disaster by the most dangerous tyrannical president ever. Yet, the GOP in Congress will do nothing, as they stand for nothing.
The Feds will empower themselves to change local zoning laws to their liking. So add this tyranny to the gay marriage, sanctuary cities and other 10th Amendment violations foisted upon we the people.
The Feds will empower themselves to change local zoning laws to their liking. So add this tyranny to the gay marriage, sanctuary cities and other 10th Amendment violations foisted upon we the people.
8
It's so easy to blame it on someone else, in this case the feds.
3
When will we finally learn what the people know, which is that government is NOT the solution but the problem. Poverty cannot be countered with giving "fish" but by teaching people how to fish and giving them the incentive to fish. Successful option rely on a bit of tough love at times but they have worked for many and will work for many more. Handouts and freebies are dangerous because they remove our natural and instinctive behaviors that help us to survive.
12
When you live in subsidized housing you probably come from a broken home where the father is absent. How is that going to change?
11
Typically The Times has lost all common sense. Seems they do not understand what a ghetto is, which is simply a place that people of the same economic status want to live. So, there will be rich ghettos, and poor ghettos, that may or may not be also racially clustered. Furthermore, missed are the human concept of tribes. We have had them for 50,000 years, and no reason to believe we will not have them for the next 50,000 years, climate change permitting. Also forgotten is that the wealthy are highly mobile, the poor not so. The idea that the government can enact anything that is 'common-sense' is truly an oxymoron. Mankind is wired for segregation, its called tribalism.
7
At the end of the day, all politics is local, and forcing middle class and wealthy people to live with people they consider part of the lower classes is not going to fly. This isn't only about racism and segregation. It is about class consciousness as well, or classism. Supposedly, this doesn't exist in America, but that is a big lie.
If you want to know what classism is and what it feels like, attend a few social functions where the people in attendance are either way below your social station in life, or else way above it. See how you get treated by the other people at the social function, and evaluate later how it feels to you. I bet you won't like it.
If you want to know what classism is and what it feels like, attend a few social functions where the people in attendance are either way below your social station in life, or else way above it. See how you get treated by the other people at the social function, and evaluate later how it feels to you. I bet you won't like it.
10
Back in 1965 I remember my sociology professor asking the class if ghettos make the people or do people make the ghettos. I don't think we came to an a satisfactory answer then and it does not appear the questions has been answered now.
7
After reading 25 comments, I've counted about 11 comments pro and 8 comments contra. This is in the supposedly liberal Times. Maybe it's NIMBY liberals but I am hoping it is conservatives. Or those non-existent "independents"
Some contra "gems" sofar:
- "Leave it to this Administration to continue to find ways to impose the heavy hand of government on individuals. They are not even safe in their own homes."(26 likes!)
Gotta love that assumption that the poor = 100% criminal
- The issue here is not racial integration but rather social class.
Ah, the classic fallacious "it's class, not race" defense! Completely ignoring that white middle class is bending itself backwards to prevent blacks access to decent jobs, education, the justice system, health care, loans, etc etc. 88! likes!!
- People work too hard to have heavily subsidized families living next to them.
Implying that the poor are not people. So Christian!
- You can put people in towns with better schools, but the businesses still won't hire them.
If they're your neighbors, you increase the chance of people being hired.
- ethnic pride. (...) blacks or Hispanics (...) choose to live together creating ethnic pockets.
Blaming the victim and purposefully ignoring that the ghettoes are created by whites, not blacks. It's like saying that people choose to be poor.
- Let it start with Obama and his ilk
Projection: they assume Obama is as racist as they are.
Some contra "gems" sofar:
- "Leave it to this Administration to continue to find ways to impose the heavy hand of government on individuals. They are not even safe in their own homes."(26 likes!)
Gotta love that assumption that the poor = 100% criminal
- The issue here is not racial integration but rather social class.
Ah, the classic fallacious "it's class, not race" defense! Completely ignoring that white middle class is bending itself backwards to prevent blacks access to decent jobs, education, the justice system, health care, loans, etc etc. 88! likes!!
- People work too hard to have heavily subsidized families living next to them.
Implying that the poor are not people. So Christian!
- You can put people in towns with better schools, but the businesses still won't hire them.
If they're your neighbors, you increase the chance of people being hired.
- ethnic pride. (...) blacks or Hispanics (...) choose to live together creating ethnic pockets.
Blaming the victim and purposefully ignoring that the ghettoes are created by whites, not blacks. It's like saying that people choose to be poor.
- Let it start with Obama and his ilk
Projection: they assume Obama is as racist as they are.
4
More segregation supporting gems:
- [b]You can solve the poverty problem a lot better by bussing money into the ghetto instead of bussing poor people out of the ghetto.[/b]
Ignoring the fact that bussing money in to the ghetto has been done for 50 years and increased segregation.
- [b]A simple matter to avoid the reach of the racially obsessed: Don't take the money. Problem solved.[/b]
Yes, let's tell all alcoholics the same! Just don't drink! Problem solved.
Yes, let's tell all alcoholics the same! Just don't drink! Problem solved.
- [b]You can solve the poverty problem a lot better by bussing money into the ghetto instead of bussing poor people out of the ghetto.[/b]
Ignoring the fact that bussing money in to the ghetto has been done for 50 years and increased segregation.
- [b]A simple matter to avoid the reach of the racially obsessed: Don't take the money. Problem solved.[/b]
Yes, let's tell all alcoholics the same! Just don't drink! Problem solved.
Yes, let's tell all alcoholics the same! Just don't drink! Problem solved.
3
Sadly, cities like our beloved NYC and DC are the most guilty. On the East side all one has to do is go above 96th Street and welcome to Ghettolandia. Of course, not all the housing in Spanish harlem is public housing but there is public housing everywhere. To effectively follow the law and these new decisions NYC would need to tear down some or all of these high-rise ghettos and integrate people into regular buildings all throughout the city. It could easily and profitably be done. Just require that a certain percentage of housing in every rental building be for public housing. Why won't they do this? Because wealthy liberals don't want people from the ghetto to live in their rental buildings or neighborhoods. The prefer the 96th St. dividing line to real housing integration. I reiterate that NYC is the worst offender of any city agains these laws.
10
What about the people that own these buildings? Why should they be forced to rent below market to anyone?
The obvious answer is for the government to own all real estate and housing. Then the government could assign each of us a place to live based on the particular social engineering goal which was fashionable at the time. If that goal was not reached then they could move us around to try another scheme.
Sounds perfectly reasonable to me.
Sounds perfectly reasonable to me.
8
The public has been told that there is no redlining, but we see it has not gone away, In fact it was a big part of the deep recession orchestrating by the Wall street mafia. The four Republican on the Supreme court like to pretend that there is no discrimination or segregation, they lied. Jim Crow and segregation and discrimination is alive an well and written into law by five Republcians on that court. Kennedy is also a part of that 99% of the time.
The problem here has more likely been resistance from below: a reluctance to see Federal dollars go elsewhere. How will the new regulations deal with accusations that the Federal government has "red-lined" predominantly black communities? Individual incentives -- in the form of subsidized and guaranteed mortgages for individuals moving to communities where they are in the minority -- may work better.
2
Local governments have typically provided affordable housing in poorer areas often characterized by high concentrations of minorities (ghettos). Of course, housing in poorer areas will always be more affordable. The problem is that this has only served to reinforce the ghettoization of minorities. Now, after 50 years of federal intervention that has only made the situation worse, the NY Times, the Supreme Court, and the Obama Administration are riding to the rescue. I have no problem with the Supreme Court decision; federal programs should not perpetuate racial segregation. However, I am unconvinced that the Obama Administration or any Administration can fix affordable housing grants. As long as minorities are more likely to be poor, they are more likely to live in poorer neighborhoods and to need federally subsidized housing. You can provide affordable housing in different neighborhoods, but as soon as you do, property values in that neighborhood will decline at least a little, which will lead to a downward spiral in property values in the neighborhood. Poorer individuals moving in and downward property values will be mutually reinforcing. And to the extent that poverty is concentrated among minorities, the newly subsidized neighborhoods will be ghettoized. Affordable housing grants are like most Great Society programs; minorities would have been better off if the federal government had not subsidized a cycle of poverty.
22
Actually, almost all the academic research shows that area property values do NOT decline after affordable housing, workforce housing, group homes, and similar housing with some type of subsidy appears in a neighborhood. Your assumption is a common one—underlying much of the NIMBY sentiment that appears almost everywhere such housing is proposed—but is false. However, even when presented with the evidence and data, most people stick with their misconceptions and prejudices. It's an emotional response, not an intellectual one.
1
If I asked any Palo Altan friend why black people "all lived in East Palo Alto" when we were growing up, most would say, "They just prefer to live with their own kind."
What they don't know is that, until the 70s, even wealthy, educated, black home buyers were forced by realtors to buy in East Palo Alto, a mosquito-ridden, smelly, marshy unincorporated area isolated by a highway.
[See an excerpt of "Dreams of a City": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LspP665TSuQ ]
We moved to Palo Alto in '78. A white realtor helped convince a white loan officer to lend my single white mom $63K to buy a small 50s-era home in the SAME ZIP CODE as EAST Palo Alto. In '81, she sold it for $132K. Today it is worth over TWO MILLION. No major renovations.
Imagine you came in the early 70s, ready to buy a home in Palo Alto, but told you HAD to buy in East Palo Alto (don't assume the Fair Housing Act was actually enforced). You had a decent down payment, but were only able to get a loan with bad terms since you were buying in a "bad" neighborhood (Google: "redlining"). Ten years go by. Now you think, "Hey! Maybe NOW I can move to Palo Alto!"
Well, by then you can't AFFORD Palo Alto--a house there is twice as much, by then.
And by 2015, your home in East Palo Alto would be worth $2M if it were in Palo Alto. Instead, it's worth $600K. 1.4 MILLION DOLLARS YOU DIDN'T MAKE.
We've had decades of affirmative action in favor of white people, and it's time to figure out some way to make it right.
What they don't know is that, until the 70s, even wealthy, educated, black home buyers were forced by realtors to buy in East Palo Alto, a mosquito-ridden, smelly, marshy unincorporated area isolated by a highway.
[See an excerpt of "Dreams of a City": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LspP665TSuQ ]
We moved to Palo Alto in '78. A white realtor helped convince a white loan officer to lend my single white mom $63K to buy a small 50s-era home in the SAME ZIP CODE as EAST Palo Alto. In '81, she sold it for $132K. Today it is worth over TWO MILLION. No major renovations.
Imagine you came in the early 70s, ready to buy a home in Palo Alto, but told you HAD to buy in East Palo Alto (don't assume the Fair Housing Act was actually enforced). You had a decent down payment, but were only able to get a loan with bad terms since you were buying in a "bad" neighborhood (Google: "redlining"). Ten years go by. Now you think, "Hey! Maybe NOW I can move to Palo Alto!"
Well, by then you can't AFFORD Palo Alto--a house there is twice as much, by then.
And by 2015, your home in East Palo Alto would be worth $2M if it were in Palo Alto. Instead, it's worth $600K. 1.4 MILLION DOLLARS YOU DIDN'T MAKE.
We've had decades of affirmative action in favor of white people, and it's time to figure out some way to make it right.
98
So what happened to gentrification? Remember, the argument that the rich yuppies were running minorities out of historically black neighborhoods in the inner city? We have had articles galore in the local Houston paper about this subject. So what is the problem? Make up your minds, for cripes sake.
13
Other than section 8 vouchers I would like all government out of housing. Look at New York City. Public housing is a disaster. Fix the apartments and give them to the tenants. Then the city should walk away. Let the tenants run their own buildings that they now own. Government is not capable as New York City has shown.
5
this is nonsense, unless you have some examples where this worked.
But today the low-income housing tax credit under Section 42 of the Internal Revenue Code is the largest source of financing for affordable housing development, but IRS which regulates the LIHTC program, administered by state housing agencies, has not even started to formulate any regulations to implement the requirement under the affirmatively further fair housing requirement of section 3608(d) of the Fair Housing Act. It is time for IRS to step up to the plate and implement its obligations to affirmatively promote fair housing.
1
Old Saying: "People in Glass Houses Shouldn't Throw Stones....."
And most people talking about "Ghettos", don't live in them-- It's time for a 're-think'.
And most people talking about "Ghettos", don't live in them-- It's time for a 're-think'.
7
Try as you might moving people with bad behavior into good neighborhoods will not make them act any better. The money would be better spent preventing single motherhood and parenting classes.
75
Since this column is about racial integration, are you saying that all poor blacks behave badly? Also, have you read the research showing that finding ways to integrate poor people into better neighborhoods with access to good schools and jobs really does make a difference in the long term outcomes of their children?
If these laws had been enforced and applied appropriately, America would be without the lack of opportunity, poor schools, no jobs, easy access to drugs and guns, high crime ghettos that exist in every city across America.
Our country is still way too segregated with White neighborhoods doing very well while poor Black neighborhoods suffer with the approval of most thanking God that they do not have to live there.
The Supreme Court ruling now allows Obama to enforce the Fair Housing Act of 1968 and America (especially its minority communities) will be better because of it. Once people with ethnic backgrounds start to live together, they will come to see we really are 99.9% the same.
Maybe then the pigmentation of one's skin will not matter and truly all will be treated equal for the first time in America…..I can dream. This is the importance of Fair Housing.
Our country is still way too segregated with White neighborhoods doing very well while poor Black neighborhoods suffer with the approval of most thanking God that they do not have to live there.
The Supreme Court ruling now allows Obama to enforce the Fair Housing Act of 1968 and America (especially its minority communities) will be better because of it. Once people with ethnic backgrounds start to live together, they will come to see we really are 99.9% the same.
Maybe then the pigmentation of one's skin will not matter and truly all will be treated equal for the first time in America…..I can dream. This is the importance of Fair Housing.
Fantasy disproven by experience. I am most definitely not the same as the ghetto rat living two apartments over, living off of his woman, threatening to beat her kids, parking in everyone's way. We are very integrated in this city but white and black still tend to segregate wherever the law allows, and retain conflicting cultural norms despite liking cheek to jowl.
2
How about eliminating the federal program about housing? It would seem not to be a core responsibility of the feds and of course we need to get rid of many expenses. Great place to start trimming the federal government to address excessive debt.
1
Bad schools are everywhere and are the fault of the teacher's unions and are abysmal colleges of education. That's not going to change, no matter what color people live in the neighborhood.
Your neighborhood shall be integrated, whether you like it or not.
Considering the dearth of Whites clamoring and suing to be handed unearned subsidized housing in Black neighborhoods, the real effect of this pernicious nonsense is the destruction of White neighborhoods through the forced injection of ghetto Blacks.
Diversity means chasing down the last White person.
Considering the dearth of Whites clamoring and suing to be handed unearned subsidized housing in Black neighborhoods, the real effect of this pernicious nonsense is the destruction of White neighborhoods through the forced injection of ghetto Blacks.
Diversity means chasing down the last White person.
9
I think the segregation is more economic than racial and economic discrimination, as we all know, is rampant in a capitalist society. People live where they can afford to reside based on the market values in the respective communities and I can't think of anyone anywhere being refused housing where they choose to live on the basis of their race. I don't live in a McMansion and I don't drive a Mercedes. I reside where I can afford to live. To go what the government proposes will only extend the issue further with people leaving those affected communities for more affluent areas that maintain the economic barriers. It probably would be a fool's errand in an economically free society.
10
It is really very simple.
For two million dollars of Federal money, a city can purchase a single apartment in an affluent NY City neighborhood (thus meeting the mandate set forth in this article) or they can buy a two four story multifamily homes in a poor neighborhood in Brooklyn.
The cities try to create affordable housing for the most amount of people with their Federal dollars. It is not racist. It is not even stupid. Get sixteen families off the streets with the money or lift up one very lucky family to a very nice neighborhood. Anybody who thinks elevating one family - while leaving fifteen others on the streets - is a preferable solution has never lived on the streets.
For two million dollars of Federal money, a city can purchase a single apartment in an affluent NY City neighborhood (thus meeting the mandate set forth in this article) or they can buy a two four story multifamily homes in a poor neighborhood in Brooklyn.
The cities try to create affordable housing for the most amount of people with their Federal dollars. It is not racist. It is not even stupid. Get sixteen families off the streets with the money or lift up one very lucky family to a very nice neighborhood. Anybody who thinks elevating one family - while leaving fifteen others on the streets - is a preferable solution has never lived on the streets.
29
And where will all this new subsidized housing be built? In the Hamptons and Beverly Hills or in lower middle-class areas? It's just another example of government meddling at the expense of average working people, the ones Hillary claims to care about so much.
51
Racial ghettos aided in the excessive stop and frisk, where it was finally declared unconstitutional in NYC. To meet quotas, cops just drove over to the separated minority n.hoods, and stopped any resident they could. even without cause. Found little evidence of any crime. It was an offense to the bill of rights, as well as mostly a waste of time and money. White n. hoods never saw stop and frisk on their streets.
We need stories about the towns in the US with the most racial integration and how they fare. I recall once seeing a PBS documentary about a NJ town where blacks and whites both live and where they get together in meetings to decide policy for their town, with good results.
We need stories about the towns in the US with the most racial integration and how they fare. I recall once seeing a PBS documentary about a NJ town where blacks and whites both live and where they get together in meetings to decide policy for their town, with good results.
5
Cops are assigned specific neighborhoods to patrol. They don't drive over to minority neighborhoods to "meet quotas." You are delusional if you think crime aren't rates aren't higher in black neighborhoods than white neighborhoods. The primary indicator is not the number of arrest but the number of victim reports.
2
Why don't whites ostensibly concerned with integration move into minority communities -- not the hipster-gentrified ones...
81
I can throw in my two cents about that. If I did that now, in my retirement, I would be willing to take a huge loss on the property value of my home and leave less inheritance to my children and grandchildren, that is a good reason to not do the practice you are stating. It is a government responsibility to ensure that federal funding does not allow racial segregation, just as it was a government responsibility to pass the law for the Civil Rights Act.
Charles, you need to come to Brooklyn and Harlem where hipsters are indeed buying up and moving into poorer communities that have townhouses and are along subway lines. In this town money drives even housing patterns, not just bias.
Many do. Next ill-informed, silly question?
2
As this trenchant editorial indicates, integration was a mandate under the Fair Housing Act since the Act became law of the land in 1968. However, it was never clearly defined nor properly enforced. It is important to keep in mind that construing fair housing (or other civil rights for that matter) as simply about "equal opportunity" is only part of the equation of the totality of Justice for All. Separate is not equal. Three cheers to the Obama administration for recognizing that affordable housing "over there" in a nation where lower income people are disproportionately Black, Latino, differently abled, and female-headed households of all races is tantamount to perpetuating a caste system. Now it's not only immoral, it's illegal.
41
and it was done by white liberals who created personal political power bases for the last 50 years. Let's be honest, you don't like business, and have done your best to scare companies away. You've destroyed the public schools by dumbing down not only the curriculum, but the standards. You've made a mess of everything in the large blue cities, and now you want to stick the end results in our nice communities. Thanks for nothing.
3
Ya' know what "freedom of association" is, pal?
I am reminded of King Canute...
The dysfunctional behaviors will simply be moved into a nice well-behaved middle class neighborhood...
... which will be promptly be vacated by folks of all hues - black, white and brown - as the petty crime, harrasment, vandalism, gangs and dysfunction reigns....
... and so on....
You don't change behavior by shuffling the deck chairs
The dysfunctional behaviors will simply be moved into a nice well-behaved middle class neighborhood...
... which will be promptly be vacated by folks of all hues - black, white and brown - as the petty crime, harrasment, vandalism, gangs and dysfunction reigns....
... and so on....
You don't change behavior by shuffling the deck chairs
16
So, lucky people eligible for subsidized housing must get to live on 57th Street or in luxury towers in Yorkville or Upper West Side, where most middle class people who are ineligible for such subsidized housing could never afford to live? What is this about closeness to jobs? This city has spent a fortune on mass transit -- any job in NYC is reachable from any neighborhood, period. One might have to get up a little earlier in the morning? Schools: have open enrollment.
8
Are we in China where the government tells everyone where to live. How about the government gets out of the housing business or give vouchers so people can live where they want.
Can someone please tell me where i am suppposed to live. i am obviously not capable.
I have always tried to buy a house in the safest neighborhood with the best schools that gives me what i consider a good value for my money. Next time i will check with the federal government so i can make sure i am not upsetting there social-economic balance of the neighborhood before i move.
Can someone please tell me where i am suppposed to live. i am obviously not capable.
I have always tried to buy a house in the safest neighborhood with the best schools that gives me what i consider a good value for my money. Next time i will check with the federal government so i can make sure i am not upsetting there social-economic balance of the neighborhood before i move.
13
Blacks, and to an extent Latinos, are always destined to live in ghettos full of crime and poverty because their cultures are incompatible with the US's. From past government "social experiments," moving them into white neighborhoods and schools hasn't worked in the past because the results were white flight and whites sending their kids to private schools. The results will be the same today. The government is better off leaving white neighborhoods alone and instead divert its attention towards trying to eradicate a mindset amongst blacks and Latinos that are holding them back.
8
In America, we think of poverty as a social disease. I remember reading some years ago about how people in one northern Virginia area near DC were concerned that lower priced houses were being built. One woman was concerned that her children would be growing up living near people making less than 200K/yr. The shame!
This "fear of poverty" actually has some facts to back it up. Success, it turns out, is attributable to where you live and who you associate with as much as brains and education. Zip codes count. This is reflected in the statistic that indicates that 80% or more of people hired have some personal connection, a friend, relative or classmate, to the place where they go to work.
The big deal, Ivy League schools, and those of equal or near equal reputation, are the meeting places for success. Are the resulting social networks just as important as education or more so? Perhaps. The "top schools" where social networking places long before they attained the reputation for superior education.
One woman at Harvard who went on to become one of the top people in Silicon Valley was reported to have told her mother, concerned about lower grades, "Mother, we are here to meet each other, not worry about grades."
My family moved from a very rural, very poor school in Oklahoma to eastern Pennsylvania as I entered the 9th grade. There was a world of difference. People read books and cared about them and many fathers had laid down the markers of success for their kids.
2
Suburban Long Island is one of the most racially segregated regions in the nation. Cross a highway and you are in another world. Take a drive on Peninsula Boulevard over the Southern State Parkway. One side is Hempstead, arguably the most blighted village in the state, wi
1
This editorial is the final supreme height of illusion. You have left all reality behind. You cannot get people, calling themselves "non-profit" or otherwise, to build housing for Government-cheap costs in neighborhoods where people from everywhere - from all over the First World - are hovering, waiting to pay market rates to move in immediately. No one will take the deal. Don't you get it?
7
It will be interesting to see if this actually helps integrate cities in the U.S., or of it causes further segregation. I'm not convinced it will do any good, and it might do harm.
.
I foresee more, uglier battles between housing advocates and suburban communities. Suburban communities will be painted as racists and haters. The housing advocates will be cast as naive and greedy, and accused of having ulterior motives. Some cities and towns may try to avoid the battles altogether, by refusing Federal funding for low income housing.
.
Meanwhile, nothing will change in poor minority neighborhoods. If anything, they will get worse. Cities will be afraid of investing in housing in these neighborhoods, lest they be sued. Housing advocates and HUD still won't fight the forces that make life so miserable for the poor. They won't, for example, force slum lords to abate lead in affordable housing. They won't encourage policies that limit displacement in gentrifying neighborhoods.
.
I really hope I'm proven wrong here. But only time will tell.
.
I foresee more, uglier battles between housing advocates and suburban communities. Suburban communities will be painted as racists and haters. The housing advocates will be cast as naive and greedy, and accused of having ulterior motives. Some cities and towns may try to avoid the battles altogether, by refusing Federal funding for low income housing.
.
Meanwhile, nothing will change in poor minority neighborhoods. If anything, they will get worse. Cities will be afraid of investing in housing in these neighborhoods, lest they be sued. Housing advocates and HUD still won't fight the forces that make life so miserable for the poor. They won't, for example, force slum lords to abate lead in affordable housing. They won't encourage policies that limit displacement in gentrifying neighborhoods.
.
I really hope I'm proven wrong here. But only time will tell.
8
This is a very good start to reducing inequality - in opportunity as well as society.
That's be honest- this program is designed to put more wealthy "black" people into wealthy "white" neighborhoods. It is yet another Obama program that gives special benefits to middle-class and wealth "black" people instead of middle class and poor Asians, Indians, Arabs, or recent legal immigrants. All Obama does is give privilege to people like myself instead of helping those really in need- that is why the inequity gap has increased in his presidency.
http://dailycaller.com/2015/01/20/reminder-income-inequality-got-worse-u...
And for the record, how do they define "black"? Can anyone define themselves as "black" a la Rachel Dolezal?
http://dailycaller.com/2015/01/20/reminder-income-inequality-got-worse-u...
And for the record, how do they define "black"? Can anyone define themselves as "black" a la Rachel Dolezal?
6
Long Island is one of the most segregated regions in the country. Cross a highway and you are in another world. A good example of this is driving along Peninsula Boulevard over the Southern State Parkway. On one side is Hempstead, arguably the most blighted village in the state, with the worst school district on the island. On the other side is Rockville Centre, with gorgeous homes, a bustling downtown, and one of the best high schools in the nation. The divide between the two is so stark it can hardly be believed.
The island is a patchwork of municipalities and school districts, each with its own socioeconomic flavor. Minority residents are concentrated in certain hamlets. Wyandanch. Brentwood. Central Islip. South Huntington. North Bellport. Hempstead. Over time these areas of the island have grown darker and poorer, and crime has surged. Shootings happen with depressing regularity in some of these communities. Meanwhile the richer, whiter parts of the island live in another world.
This can't go on forever. Long Island is becoming multicultural, a reflection of the city at its western end. The blighted areas of the island are growing because the only places that the poor can afford can live are those communities. We either accept reality and build subsidized housing in richer parts of the island, or we slowly turn whole corridors into pressure cookers of blight and crime, and our self-imposed segregation will blow up in our faces.
The island is a patchwork of municipalities and school districts, each with its own socioeconomic flavor. Minority residents are concentrated in certain hamlets. Wyandanch. Brentwood. Central Islip. South Huntington. North Bellport. Hempstead. Over time these areas of the island have grown darker and poorer, and crime has surged. Shootings happen with depressing regularity in some of these communities. Meanwhile the richer, whiter parts of the island live in another world.
This can't go on forever. Long Island is becoming multicultural, a reflection of the city at its western end. The blighted areas of the island are growing because the only places that the poor can afford can live are those communities. We either accept reality and build subsidized housing in richer parts of the island, or we slowly turn whole corridors into pressure cookers of blight and crime, and our self-imposed segregation will blow up in our faces.
5
Does this include the wealthy Upper East Side, where the local school district just happens to have a northern border of East 96th Street? And we all know many white school children live north of East 96th Street in East Harlem - a handful.
8
Like the noble old busing program which bused black and white student students to the others school this is will surely fail and will generate anger. Now what this housing rules will do is it will bring the problems of the poor areas into the middle class suburbs. But what Obama is trying to do is to make it impossible to move to a good neighborhood. Its doomed as so are we.
17
"Fair housing" and desegregation will not end discrimination or poverty. Neither will subsidized housing, or new rules.
The only way to end concentrations of poverty and segregated, concentrated living conditions is to greatly improve the access of those people who struggle with poverty and unemployment through greater, guaranteed access to jobs and education.
It is a myth and misbelief that poverty is a result of segregated housing. It is a greater myth that ending segregation by imposing rules to assure desegregation through housing and lending rules will also end concentrations of poverty.
Exactly how is poverty ended by assuring fair housing? What does housing have to do with achieving success or getting an education?
There is only one way to end poverty, crime, ignorance and hopelessness.
We must bring back jobs to America. We must invest in our work force. We must stop making foreign trade agreements that send American jobs overseas. We must improve the quality of education and make certain that everyone gets a fair chance of receiving a good education or job training.
The only impediment to fair housing is fair accessibility to real jobs and a real future through education and job training for real, well paying jobs.
People struggling to make ends meet cannot afford any housing, fair or unfair. People with good education and good jobs can move to the neighborhood of their choice.
Let's "revitalize" America through jobs and education.
The only way to end concentrations of poverty and segregated, concentrated living conditions is to greatly improve the access of those people who struggle with poverty and unemployment through greater, guaranteed access to jobs and education.
It is a myth and misbelief that poverty is a result of segregated housing. It is a greater myth that ending segregation by imposing rules to assure desegregation through housing and lending rules will also end concentrations of poverty.
Exactly how is poverty ended by assuring fair housing? What does housing have to do with achieving success or getting an education?
There is only one way to end poverty, crime, ignorance and hopelessness.
We must bring back jobs to America. We must invest in our work force. We must stop making foreign trade agreements that send American jobs overseas. We must improve the quality of education and make certain that everyone gets a fair chance of receiving a good education or job training.
The only impediment to fair housing is fair accessibility to real jobs and a real future through education and job training for real, well paying jobs.
People struggling to make ends meet cannot afford any housing, fair or unfair. People with good education and good jobs can move to the neighborhood of their choice.
Let's "revitalize" America through jobs and education.
25
The problem is that public education in the US is financed by local property taxes, ensuring that rich neighborhoods get much better schools than the poor. This should change.
1
"What does housing have to do with achieving success or getting an education?" Many cities and towns organize their elementary and secondary schools geographically. You go to school in your neighborhood. And as we know school tax money does not rain on each school equally. Unlike some places where schools receive the exact same amount per student, them what has tend to be them what gets, so to speak. This leaves some schools scraping by for equipment, repairs, textbooks, salaries for good teachers while others have the latest doo-dad: computer and science labs, gymnasiums with equipment and staffed athletics, art and music programs, advanced placement courses, libraries, classroom assistants etc. And that makes a difference to your school experience and what/how well you learn and opportunities, like justice, if delayed or lesser are essentially denied.
Thr job has started when I see section 8 housing at Martha's Vineyard.
Then President Obamas house keep won't have to drive so far.
Then President Obamas house keep won't have to drive so far.
12
They were ignored because people don't want it. Watch more communities reject federal housing aid. Given the usual impact of government help, that may be the best thing that could happen for the poor of those communities.
58
Bravo! Everyone knows the poor are best left out on the streets until the industrial incarceration system can catch up with 'em! Let's save government intervention for subsidizing prison companies!
In the south Bronx and other poor areas of the city, you see the opposite. New buildings that require incomes from prospective tenants that are much higher than the median income of the area. Then people with higher incomes began to move in and push poorer people out once landlords realize they can charge a lot more rent money.
We obviously have a shortage of affordable housing because the shelters are overflowing with individuals and families who have no hope of obtaining permanent housing without govt assistance. The politics and political correctness as usual overshadows the reality of the issue. And affordable housing is really a misapplied term. What is affordable to you may be prohibitively expensive to me. Regardless of racial or ethnic diversity.
We obviously have a shortage of affordable housing because the shelters are overflowing with individuals and families who have no hope of obtaining permanent housing without govt assistance. The politics and political correctness as usual overshadows the reality of the issue. And affordable housing is really a misapplied term. What is affordable to you may be prohibitively expensive to me. Regardless of racial or ethnic diversity.
66
Yeah but the problem is that the South Bronx neighborhoods were a publicly created ghetto. When the Cross Bronx Expressway was built - the whites all moved above it. The blacks and Puerto Ricans were then hemmed in once they moved across from Harlem. Of course we know the government was complicit in the banks redlining areas of cities all over the country. What made the situation in the South Bronx so much more pernicious was the fact that everyone knew the insurance companies were paying out the fraudulent claims of landlords who had their own buildings burned down (hence the term "the Bronx is burning"). That destroyed what was left. The reality is putting mixed from low to middle income is the best thing that was done in rebuilding those neighborhoods. In fact - if you ask me they need more middle income developments. Keeping poor all in one place only ensures slum living.
1
Politics has only a little to do with the South Bronx issue. For years the area languished under both Dems and Reps. But, voila, given the push out from the super rich buying up Manhattan apartments, driving rent to astronomical heights and "suddenly" all the close in, along the subway line outer borough real estate become places to make BIG MONEY. As usual, it is money that drives everything in real estate.
There's poor whites too. Are they segregated?
Telling people where to live with a check.
Telling people to get health insurance or pay a fine.
Telling people to get auto insurance or they pay a fine or go to jail.
Background checks by employers and landlords.
Cops making many more times than the poor they prey on and jail.
Angry people taken to be evaluated by robot cops.
Government "Permits", even for yard sales.
"Permits" needed to lawfully assemble, already a Constitutional right.
Human nature just about fully outlawed by millions of laws.
Sounds like a Communist nation, doesn't it?
It's America, once the "Land of Freedom", now, "the "Land of Laws".
If I were black, I'd definitely want to live with other Blacks.
The bigots call their homes "Ghetto's".
Telling people where to live with a check.
Telling people to get health insurance or pay a fine.
Telling people to get auto insurance or they pay a fine or go to jail.
Background checks by employers and landlords.
Cops making many more times than the poor they prey on and jail.
Angry people taken to be evaluated by robot cops.
Government "Permits", even for yard sales.
"Permits" needed to lawfully assemble, already a Constitutional right.
Human nature just about fully outlawed by millions of laws.
Sounds like a Communist nation, doesn't it?
It's America, once the "Land of Freedom", now, "the "Land of Laws".
If I were black, I'd definitely want to live with other Blacks.
The bigots call their homes "Ghetto's".
17
"If I were black, I'd definitely want to live with other Blacks."
Because whites are so racist .... like you are?
Getting sick and tired of this tired old line of "all whites should be helped before any cent goes to blacks". In terms of hours of hard labor per capita, blacks contributed far more to this country than whites.
Because whites are so racist .... like you are?
Getting sick and tired of this tired old line of "all whites should be helped before any cent goes to blacks". In terms of hours of hard labor per capita, blacks contributed far more to this country than whites.
2
Perhaps if humans would treat others humanely, governments (sic. "We the People") wouldn't need to come up with rules as a counter balance against our tendency to make life nasty, brutish and short....for others.
The more crowded people are, the more they step on each other's toes. Do you really think you are not obnoxious to others on occasion?
The Federal Housing Administration (FHA), now an organization within the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) aided and abetted the creation of White wealth while simultaneously creating Black poverty through it racist and discriminatory lending practices during the 1940s, 50s, and 60s, as it spearheaded the suburbanization of America.
Ta Nehisi Coates, in his brilliant and historic article in the Atlantic Magazine, lays out the role the FHA played in creating the ghetto through “redlining,” denying loans to qualified Blacks, and requiring that racial restrictive covenants be placed in deeds denying the sale of homes to Blacks.
The FHA’s redlining of black neighborhoods and the construction of public housing in poor black neighborhoods had a huge role in creating the concentrated poverty that many communities are still grappling with today.
It’s only fitting that HUD would attempt to right the wrongs created by one of its entities, although the FHA was established well before the creation of HUD, which came out of the urban rebellions of the 1960s and was followed by the enactment of the Fair Housing Act which came into being following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Ta Nehisi Coates, in his brilliant and historic article in the Atlantic Magazine, lays out the role the FHA played in creating the ghetto through “redlining,” denying loans to qualified Blacks, and requiring that racial restrictive covenants be placed in deeds denying the sale of homes to Blacks.
The FHA’s redlining of black neighborhoods and the construction of public housing in poor black neighborhoods had a huge role in creating the concentrated poverty that many communities are still grappling with today.
It’s only fitting that HUD would attempt to right the wrongs created by one of its entities, although the FHA was established well before the creation of HUD, which came out of the urban rebellions of the 1960s and was followed by the enactment of the Fair Housing Act which came into being following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
28
In a recent NPR interview, Mr. Coates noted that he moved back to a 'Black' neighborhood, from a 'nice' neighborhood simply because he, in the final analysis, decided he 'liked living with Black people' ; quite understandable , of course. Many/most, people feel this way, ; all ethnicities/races. That fact, world wide , keeps areas 'segregated' and will do so indefinitely!
1
A story earlier this week in the NYT's about the efforts in Dallas to give larger federal vouchers to move people out of cities and into the suburbs with better schools, had some of the most brutal comments ever posted in the NYTs. It is a pipe dream to believe people paying 10K or more in property taxes are going to welcome federally funded section 8 housing in their area.
144
No-one expects the 1 percenters to "welcome" subsidized housing. But that's NOT a reason to just give up and cry "oooh the rich are too strong, let's give them all they want". MLK is a good example of someone who didn't whimper and just gave up. Or gave in. And thanks to him, there's a slight chance people won't have to pay the price he did.
It is a challenge right here in Stamford, CT. Because of development downtown some section 8 housing has been moved into under utilized rental properties in neighborhoods where people are paying the $10K+ in property taxes. Unfortunately these moves also seem to correlate with a perceived increases in crime in those neighborhoods. Most neighbors would be more tolerant if it wasn't so easy to identify these properties. When the housing authority moves people they should provide some kind of counseling that informs them of the expectations in their new neighborhood. Stuff most of us don't even think about. Regular upkeep of the property and expectations with regard to use that are different from downtown living where you might have maintenance people and/or a super takes care of things. Simple stuff like mowing the lawn, trimming the shrubs, parking cars in the driveway and not on the front lawn, pulling empty garbage cans in away from the street, etc. I hear these complaints all the time. Most complaints are tied to quality of life issues that are different.
1
If you place subsidized housing in the center of a good middle class neighborhood, the value of the existing houses will drop precipitously. Is it any wonder why current residents would be opposed to that happening? Their opposition would not be a result of racism or snobbery but of economic reality.
172
And if that placement is mixed WELL, so not with a mini-ghetto in that neighborhood, AND it happens all across the country, prices will bounce back. No-one, least of all progressives and/or blacks expect this to go easy. Toronto is an example where it has happened. Amsterdam, Oslo are others. Sure, without the history of slavery, it was easier, but still.
So have you reasoned out why that happens? Racism and discrimination against African Americans is a given in this country.
Aaron,
If you place good subsidized housing in the middle of luxury condos on Toronto's lakefront you get a lot of angry people who cannot afford to live in Toronto's core screaming bloody murder. The people living in the luxury condos are quite content to have their cooks, janitors, cleaning staff living close by but the wrath of middle class wage earners jealous of the good fortune of cooks and bottle washers, baby sitters and charwomen is a sight to behold.
If you place good subsidized housing in the middle of luxury condos on Toronto's lakefront you get a lot of angry people who cannot afford to live in Toronto's core screaming bloody murder. The people living in the luxury condos are quite content to have their cooks, janitors, cleaning staff living close by but the wrath of middle class wage earners jealous of the good fortune of cooks and bottle washers, baby sitters and charwomen is a sight to behold.
not to be a "downer"...
however,
given the recent choices made by states to turn-away
Federal Medicaid funds to expand and enhance medical
coverages,
it would not be a "surprise" to observe these same actors
walking-away from "housing" assistance.
sadly,
these days,
the differences among us are made in the extreme,
and the similarities are short-shrifted and caste aside.
bravo to the NYT for an effort toward a more positive potential,
makes all of the new condos in the City
more affordable and shareable, doesn't it?
5
Yes, i wouldn't be surprised if some states do this either, although in this case it's the feds who are acting like idiots. it certainly isn't going to help the poor, far from it.
2
Good point. Let's vote for Clinton and hope she can replace a conservative justice with a liberal one.
Or, we can try to convince the present SC, but fat chance.
Or, we can try to convince the present SC, but fat chance.
More fiddling around the edges to look good rather than Real Change from President Obama, who has turned out to be one of the most total and aggressive corporate presidents ever (TPP, anyone? Public housing privatizations, anyone? Packing key administrative top jobs with corporate representatives, anyone?). The article refers to the building of subsidized housing, as if meaningful levels are being built. How much "subsidized" housing is being built today, under the private free market, pray tell? Only token levels because the neoliberals continue to pursue an aggressive agenda of starving the government of money and cutting social programs while bestowing unlimited amounts on the military budget. In early 1970s, 3 million were built under the federal programs in a few years. But those were the days when a more progressive consensus still ruled. So the law sounds good, but this rule applies to subsidized housing the funding for which continues to be cut. There is not meaningful amounts of federal subsidized housing being built today for this rule to apply to. Changing the rule just makes Obama sound good especially via the neoliberal media which seems of late to boost him at every turn. Changing the rule is another example of fiddling-around-the-edge actions that do not really challenge the 0.0001% on the biggest and most important issues. Obama will never do that.
6
Blah blah. We're not gonna give up on the ACA just because Obama is a hawk in foreign policy. Not gonna happen.
FISA, TTIP, drones etc these are bad things. The good things Obama has done, FAR, FAR outweigh the bad that he has done.
Only conservative "christians" kick their daughters out of the house if she gets a tattoo/smokes pot/does some shoplifting.
FISA, TTIP, drones etc these are bad things. The good things Obama has done, FAR, FAR outweigh the bad that he has done.
Only conservative "christians" kick their daughters out of the house if she gets a tattoo/smokes pot/does some shoplifting.
Psssst! POTUS doesn't have power to legislate. Congress does. Write your Congressman.
yes, "a more progressive consensus" ..... that gets credit for creating the towers that warehoused hundreds of thousands of black people and took away any hope of their ever rising above gov'ment subsistance.
You, and your friends, created the inner cities of this country. And we will never let you come into our neighborhoods and replicate your previous disasters.
You, and your friends, created the inner cities of this country. And we will never let you come into our neighborhoods and replicate your previous disasters.
4
May I use this venue to air my idea to help minorities: Peripheries of most cities' downtown areas have been decaying for decades. The unemployment rate in cities has been quite high. The population of many cities has been shrinking, while the suburbs bulging. NYC maybe an exception while Detroit became too typical.
I moved into St Louis in 1973 (Horrifying and exaggerated tales of crimes in the city drove me to live in a small apartment in Afton, about 12 miles from downtown, drove 6 mile to work in a large State Hospital in the City). The city's population then was 626,xxx, now only 324,xxx. The metro St Louis population was a little over 2 million, about the same as today.
While the city populations depleted, the number of decaying and abandoned buildings rose. If a developer like Donald Trump (hate to plug him) is given a free hand with sufficient funding to rebuild US cities, w. good mass transit systems, w. a stipulation to hire minorities as half the workforce & emphasizing to hire unemployed (for at least 1 yr.) black men with police record, including felons, the crime rates will come down saving in penal expenses; St Louis homicides shot up by 60% in 2015!
It is well known, black, even white men with any criminal record have a hard time finding employment. If an ex-con is hired, $3/hr. federal subsidy should be given to employers, to reduce recidivism. A $3/hr federal subsidy to US-BORN ADULTS WHO'VE PAID IN 4 QUARTERS IN PAYROLL TAX would also help.
I moved into St Louis in 1973 (Horrifying and exaggerated tales of crimes in the city drove me to live in a small apartment in Afton, about 12 miles from downtown, drove 6 mile to work in a large State Hospital in the City). The city's population then was 626,xxx, now only 324,xxx. The metro St Louis population was a little over 2 million, about the same as today.
While the city populations depleted, the number of decaying and abandoned buildings rose. If a developer like Donald Trump (hate to plug him) is given a free hand with sufficient funding to rebuild US cities, w. good mass transit systems, w. a stipulation to hire minorities as half the workforce & emphasizing to hire unemployed (for at least 1 yr.) black men with police record, including felons, the crime rates will come down saving in penal expenses; St Louis homicides shot up by 60% in 2015!
It is well known, black, even white men with any criminal record have a hard time finding employment. If an ex-con is hired, $3/hr. federal subsidy should be given to employers, to reduce recidivism. A $3/hr federal subsidy to US-BORN ADULTS WHO'VE PAID IN 4 QUARTERS IN PAYROLL TAX would also help.
15
You obviously haven't worked with these people. A wounded mountain lion has a better attitude and will be more help. They don't want to work, they want to rehash the past.
3
Cheaper and less corrupt to eliminate the minimum wage. If you eliminate the minimum wage and public housing, some of these single mothers would become live in maids to upper middle class families. Their children would grow up in a better neighborhood with better schools.
I spent 7 years in a Federally funded housing project as a child. Ours was unusual, in that it was in a working class neighborhood and most of the residents were white. This was in the 50s and there was no crime. I went to good schools and had an excellent public education in our wealthy suburban town without which I would probably never have had an opportunity to go in the direction I did. (I am a professional now). Subsidized housing was very helpful to us.
You can build "affordable" housing but you can't build community and neighborhoods. People tend to stay together for good as well as not so good reasons. The "ghetto" part has to do more with culture and social class. Yes, in some areas, it has to do with race, but it isn't always so that race is the basic issue. Income matters as does education.
New York City has lots of experience keeping people alive via various forms of social support. Some people have been on welfare for four generations. The women have children to get money on which to live. There are other abuses fostered by working the system. You cannot make someone want to get off welfare and you cannot allow people to live, by the thousands, in the streets, if you want to have a livable environment. Many people have tried all kinds of ideas and none of them, alone, seemed to have worked to solve this problem, and it IS a problem.
Sooner or later corruption and failure happens. Maybe some of this can be changed by government intervention, but maybe not.
You can build "affordable" housing but you can't build community and neighborhoods. People tend to stay together for good as well as not so good reasons. The "ghetto" part has to do more with culture and social class. Yes, in some areas, it has to do with race, but it isn't always so that race is the basic issue. Income matters as does education.
New York City has lots of experience keeping people alive via various forms of social support. Some people have been on welfare for four generations. The women have children to get money on which to live. There are other abuses fostered by working the system. You cannot make someone want to get off welfare and you cannot allow people to live, by the thousands, in the streets, if you want to have a livable environment. Many people have tried all kinds of ideas and none of them, alone, seemed to have worked to solve this problem, and it IS a problem.
Sooner or later corruption and failure happens. Maybe some of this can be changed by government intervention, but maybe not.
51
great post Jeanie, well written, and from the heart.
The President is taking no prisoners
2
I'm not worried. The local politicos/administrators will find a a way to get the money yet keep the people where they belong.....unfortunately
1
It's the socially prejudiced divisive mindset, rooted in history and reinforced by long frozen unequal power relations that's manifested through various distorted forms of social interaction and lived life patterns in a given society, which is beyond correction simply through legal intervention. It's imperative then first to redraw and redefine the fundamentals of power equations through available democratic political means, which if done honestly, would automatically minimise the need to periodically review the problem of ghettoised community life in segregated residential areas.
3
Depends how that power is used. Here in NYC we send a Black politician to jail for corruption at a rate of about one every six months. The rate for non-black politicians is about one a year.
1
The Government and you fail to recognize the true underlying reasons for segregation; money and ethnic pride.
The builders of subsidized housing very logically sought to contain costs just like any other business. That is why projects were built in economically depressed locations.
Then there is ethnic pride. That is not limited to blacks or Hispanics. Italians, poles, Irish, Indians, Pakistanis, and on and on choose to live together creating ethnic pockets.
The real reason Blacks and Hispanics are segregated in the subsidized housing is due to societies bigotry. You can put people in towns with better schools, but the businesses still won't hire them.
There is a certain bigotry in assuming blacks and Hispanics are the segregated. Maybe they want to be together. Did you think of that?
The builders of subsidized housing very logically sought to contain costs just like any other business. That is why projects were built in economically depressed locations.
Then there is ethnic pride. That is not limited to blacks or Hispanics. Italians, poles, Irish, Indians, Pakistanis, and on and on choose to live together creating ethnic pockets.
The real reason Blacks and Hispanics are segregated in the subsidized housing is due to societies bigotry. You can put people in towns with better schools, but the businesses still won't hire them.
There is a certain bigotry in assuming blacks and Hispanics are the segregated. Maybe they want to be together. Did you think of that?
4
@ Patrick on Long Island - Patrick, I had to check to see that you do list an American location as your "place of writing". As a dual-citizen American (Sweden also) the past 10 years of reading the Times OnLine has taught me that a true American, especially one who writes Time OpEds, does not have "ethnicity" in his or her vocabulary. So thanks for that.
As concerns people choosing to stay together, I note that the Swedes who came to Worcester, MA, my forebears included, chose to live together, had their own church or churches, and had a very fine Swedish cemetery where some of my forebears are buried. As you point out, entering a minefield, the existence of ethnic clusters has many roots so any researcher or columnist should at least acknowledge that.
Larry
Only-NeverInSweden.blogspot.com
As concerns people choosing to stay together, I note that the Swedes who came to Worcester, MA, my forebears included, chose to live together, had their own church or churches, and had a very fine Swedish cemetery where some of my forebears are buried. As you point out, entering a minefield, the existence of ethnic clusters has many roots so any researcher or columnist should at least acknowledge that.
Larry
Only-NeverInSweden.blogspot.com
The "Fair Housing Act" again? Seems to me we should have been able to "get it right" since 1968 - we have had nearly fifty, yes 50!, years to do so. But, you should have written "'For the new rules to be effective, we seem to be in need of people and groups which care, and will enforce, the rules we already have. We, the "government, that is", have become so skilled at passing laws and ignoring them that we do not know we are doing it. (except for the "ignorers and pocket-fillers" which are "in" on the game. In 50 years, the NYT will be able to submit this same report, all they need do is change the date, and perhaps, a few locations. These areas are not "federally financed ghettos" - they are federally financed perpetuations. (sigh)
6
Elaine, you do realize that in your response you talk about those blacks you have known who want to get out of their housing but CAN'T? Just like your own situation but you were in a "nearby" area. Everywhere in the world poverty generates criminal behavior and anger and the denser the living conditions the more you get. Sadly, your experience shows exactly the how and the why of the antagonism directed at blacks by poorer white families. Ironically, of course, both are the victims of inadequate incomes, lesser educational opportunities, subtle system biases, taxes that have lost their progressivity and the intentional stirring of feeling of antagonism by people like The Donald, instead of offering ways to ameliorate the problems. They used to call it, "Divide and Conquer." Maybe they still do.
1
As a former director of a public housing authority, I find it surprising that, when issues of housing discrimination and isolation of racial minorities, public housing is rarely mention. This is a large program, created and funded by the feds, which, for years has perpetuated racial segregation. In many areas, the concentration of blacks, in particular, is over 95%. Combined with the physically deterioration of "the projects" the solution to the whole problem is to "vouchize" them on a selective basis and sell the land to help fund the cost of the vouchers. I see a lot of verbiage about "integration" but here is a concrete idea that would, if properly administered, provide real integration and housing opportunity to many families.
44
excellent post, my observations as well.
1
That is a local ZONING problem and not even the ACLU will represent anyone on a local zoning issue so Good Luck on that one. They'll just stop building low income housing!
11
It is time for local governments to reject federal housing aid. By rejecting Federal aid the Government's social engineering experiment will not be foisted upon communities' residents. n fact, once the Government is out of the way supply and demand will determine who can afford to live where.
And if Scarsdale ends up with few Black and Hispanic families, too bad. People work too hard to have heavily subsidized families living next to them. And if it's such a great idea of mixing low-income into upper-income enclaves let it start with Obama and his ilk who are pushing it. Let's see how Sasha and Malia like dealing with kids from the hood.
And if Scarsdale ends up with few Black and Hispanic families, too bad. People work too hard to have heavily subsidized families living next to them. And if it's such a great idea of mixing low-income into upper-income enclaves let it start with Obama and his ilk who are pushing it. Let's see how Sasha and Malia like dealing with kids from the hood.
115
Don't build projects. Period. Jane Jacobs told us a long time ago what was wrong with them, regardless of the race of the tenants. Residential structures need to be mixed in with retail establishments, etc. What we need to to to end racial and economic (class) segregation is to offer vouchers to poor people to live in a certain percentage of the units in market priced housing, and it need to be a massive program, involving condos and coops, as well as rental housing. The voucher units should not exceed 20% of any specific building, but the program as a whole need to be massive.
16
Spot on, except that I'd just give the poor enough money (and the jobs to go with it) so they could choose housing themselves, on the basis of tier own perceived wants and needs.
I don't think we understand just how inefficient, corrosive, and corrupt government programs that presume to manage every part of a poor person's life are.
I don't think we understand just how inefficient, corrosive, and corrupt government programs that presume to manage every part of a poor person's life are.
3
There is hasn't been any real Federal money for public housing construction in 30 years. Also, you may have noticed that no big projects have been constructed in even longer than that. Something like what you are describing, however, does exist, and it's called Section 8 housing subsidies, which is essentially a voucher program. There are also smaller public housing efforts—nothing like the huge complexes Jane Jacobs critiqued—that have been developed by localities and non-profits. But these have been confined to already economically depressed areas. As have building which accepted Section 8. Presumably what these rule would do is prevent more affluent areas from excluding these housing programs. It would NOT suddenly lead to the construction of projects of the 1950s-1970s type in those areas, because no one will be building those anywhere, probably ever. There's no money for it, and even if it ever became available, it would be spent very differently.
1
And what do we do about the projects that ALREADY EXIST?? You're comments seem nice, but ignore reality.
Also, why 20 percent? the percentage of subsidized housing should reflect the number of American kids living in poverty which is now 33 percent, not 20.
Also, why 20 percent? the percentage of subsidized housing should reflect the number of American kids living in poverty which is now 33 percent, not 20.
A simple matter to avoid the reach of the racially obsessed:
Don't take the money. Problem solved.
Better yet, abolish the whole program.
Don't take the money. Problem solved.
Better yet, abolish the whole program.
73
Let alone every thing else, including the good old boys system of whole sale bigotry, racism, inherent long standing discrimination by race, skin color, ethnicity, and origin, the real indifference in society has always been based socioeconomic. Not only for housing, but just about every other aspect of living where inequality all around determined everything. The poor masses in particular black folks and minorities have always been dumped in the worst ever neighborhood festered with poverty, illiteracy, no health are, heavy crime and government/ state authority that just ignored any and all above condition.
Even to this day in many rural and urban communities where even utilities are subsidized, one too many utility companies have so called rural exemptions, where they ripoff the poor and minorities with impunity.
Even to this day in many rural and urban communities where even utilities are subsidized, one too many utility companies have so called rural exemptions, where they ripoff the poor and minorities with impunity.
6
Most people who live in poor African American neighborhoods are neither criminal or antisocial.
16
Elizabeth, yes, of course, that is true.
But let me give you an example, the T----'s who used to live across the street from me.
The grandparents owned their house -- good people. Their kid also lived there, and was a broken down alcoholic. Their kid had two sons, small-time drug dealers, who stood in the street surrounded by admiring local kids and were periodically shot at and stabbed.
The grandparents described their own grandsons as "scum." Eventually, they got fed up with the situation, sold their house, and moved back down south. the drug-dealing kids remained, but moved to other neighborhoods in the city.
Now, you are a middle class person. Where do you choose to live, across the street from two drugs dealers, or in a safe middle-class neighborhood?
The people who come up with these policies just aren't realistic. Communities naturally segregate by income and there is no way the government can stop that. These policies will only make the segregation *worse,* because middle class people can moe faster than the government can build projects.
But let me give you an example, the T----'s who used to live across the street from me.
The grandparents owned their house -- good people. Their kid also lived there, and was a broken down alcoholic. Their kid had two sons, small-time drug dealers, who stood in the street surrounded by admiring local kids and were periodically shot at and stabbed.
The grandparents described their own grandsons as "scum." Eventually, they got fed up with the situation, sold their house, and moved back down south. the drug-dealing kids remained, but moved to other neighborhoods in the city.
Now, you are a middle class person. Where do you choose to live, across the street from two drugs dealers, or in a safe middle-class neighborhood?
The people who come up with these policies just aren't realistic. Communities naturally segregate by income and there is no way the government can stop that. These policies will only make the segregation *worse,* because middle class people can moe faster than the government can build projects.
13
Maybe but enough of them are to yield violent streets, horrible schools and a dearth of businesses.
13
You wouldn't know it from a lot of the other comments here.
The ghettos of America are due to a lack of investment. You can solve the poverty problem a lot better by bussing money into the ghetto instead of bussing poor people out of the ghetto.
3
Thank you, New York Times! Now I hope you will regularly check to see what HUD, Treasury, and state and local governments are doing to comply. Let's not forget about Westchester County, where the Clintons, Senator Schumer, and other government "leaders" live. Let's see them provide some real leadership.
18
Can you say, "FHA budget cutbacks by Congress"?
I knew you could.
I knew you could.
7
We hail this new rule as a critical step for equity and opportunity in America! After working with 74 regions across the country that piloted the rule over the last three years, we saw lots of earnest determination to address the segregation, disinvestment, and lack of opportunity faced by far too many people of color. For the first time, housing and transportation agencies, together with community and neighborhood organizations, actually considered where poverty and racial segregation existed, what school test scores were, where people faced toxic exposures in their living environments, and whether people had good transportation access to jobs. Once they had looked at this data, it caused agencies to add transit service to job centers and on shift schedules; to locate job incubators in places with high underemployment; to tie suburban transportation funding to expanded affordable housing; to spend rental subsidies in neighborhoods with higher performing schools. The rule will not immediately change the deeply embedded challenges of racial segregation and concentrated poverty born of decades of discriminatory lending, zoning, disinvestment, and exclusionary practices. But it will definitely bring more awareness, creativity, accountability, and public will for making good investments with our federal funds, and having those investments build on the promise of opportunity for many currently consigned to low-opportunity places. Thank you, Obama Administration!! -PolicyLink
9
when are you liberals going to fess up and admit that your warehousing of blacks into specific neighborhoods for your own personal political gain is what destroyed both those neighborhoods and millions of lives? And now you want some sort of gigantic multi-trillion dollar program to reshape the entire nation into the disaster that you created? Not going to happen.
4
Yes, the first place to put subsidized housing is on the upper West Side.
52
Actually, the Upper West side has a few housing projects, and a disproportionate share of social welfare residence facilities, all dating to the era when it much poorer than it is now. From the front door of my building, one street east there is a housing project that covers several square blocks. Two blocks north, there's a residential facility of the type I describe above; and four blocks south there's another one. This area, the Upper West Side on the 90s and 100s, has many such facilities. But strangely enough, the combination of those people, with richer people closer to the river and Central Park, and people of varing incomes in between, doesn't seem to cause any problems. What you imply is some uptopian, but unworkable, notion that Upper West Side liberals would never tolerate themselves is, in fact, exactly how much of the Upper West Side lives.
48
I live in the exact stretch of the Upper West Side, am black, and don't live in a housing project. The problem is that even with the proximity, the groups tend to lead completely separate lives. There are neighborhood organizations and I almost never see any minorities participating, even middle and upper-class class people. Almost everyone at the meetings and events is white, many are Jewish. I don't know why that is.
13
H.U.D should avoid concentrations of poverty, white as well as minority, and try to assure that communities try to maintain some housing for, say, the poor workers who help keep them up. The poor should not have long commutes from the nearest area they can afford to live.
4
It is "overreach" by the Obama Administration. This effectively makes the federal government someone's neighbor without his knowledge or say so.
The rules were likely ignored because they were onerous and/or infringed upon people's decisions about where they choose to live and with whom.
Leave it to this Administration to continue to find ways to impose the heavy hand of government on individuals. They are not even safe in their own homes.
The rules were likely ignored because they were onerous and/or infringed upon people's decisions about where they choose to live and with whom.
Leave it to this Administration to continue to find ways to impose the heavy hand of government on individuals. They are not even safe in their own homes.
114
Uncle Sam is my neighbor if he works to prevent too many foreclosed houses in my neighborhood, which will wreck my property values. If he does this (which he didnt in our recent meltdown) he is a good neighbor. If, however, he lets the vagaries of the market and the plottings of speculators wreck my neighborhood, he is a lousy neighbor.
Since the housing market has national and international consequences, the housing market is my neighbor, and a very powerful one. Personally I would like to rely on neighbor Uncle Sam to help deal with the housing market when it turns manic or depressive (since markets by their very nature are bipolar). Sometimes it takes the heavy hand of government to rescue us from the heavy hand of the economy or the market, or even the weather.
Since the housing market has national and international consequences, the housing market is my neighbor, and a very powerful one. Personally I would like to rely on neighbor Uncle Sam to help deal with the housing market when it turns manic or depressive (since markets by their very nature are bipolar). Sometimes it takes the heavy hand of government to rescue us from the heavy hand of the economy or the market, or even the weather.
4
Oh come on. I live in Palo Alto and I have NO say on who buys a house next door. It's not like we are given flyers warning that someone outside of our ethnic or racial group is going to move in. I like it this way. I like diversity. Anybody who can afford to live in this community is OK with me. If they put in subsidized housing, I would be pleased because this gives children access to great schools and contacts with others along the way that will serve them throughout their lives. There are good people who happen to be poor. Many of them are women trying to raise their kids as best they can.
7
I think you've probably benefitted from "The heavy hand of government" more than you think.
Between 1930 and 1950 60% of all homes purchased in the United States were financed by the FHA, yet less than 2% of these were made to non-white homebuyers. Whole communities in major American cities were "redlined," effectively preventing African Americans and Hispanics from getting access to government financing. In one startling case in the 8 Mile Wyoming Neighborhood in Detroit, MI, a wall was built around an existing black neighborhood to ensure that an all-white subdivision could be created and financed by the FHA.
Here is a nice sign of the times: http://cdn.loc.gov/service/pnp/fsa/8d13000/8d13500/8d13572v.jpg
If you're wondering why the typical white family has 20x the amount of wealth as the average black family, the answer is simple: home ownership and the transfer of assets going all the way back to the 1930s. Imagine what would have happened if African Americans had had access to legitimate credit and mortgage financing. Even today African Americans are much less likely to get approved for a mortgage than Whites. If you think we've moved on from the legacy of the 8 Mile Wall, just drive over to Grosse Point where Christmas trees block Kercheval Road, the main thoroughfare that used to be contiguous with Detroit.
http://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/wayne-county/2014/12/12/gros...
Between 1930 and 1950 60% of all homes purchased in the United States were financed by the FHA, yet less than 2% of these were made to non-white homebuyers. Whole communities in major American cities were "redlined," effectively preventing African Americans and Hispanics from getting access to government financing. In one startling case in the 8 Mile Wyoming Neighborhood in Detroit, MI, a wall was built around an existing black neighborhood to ensure that an all-white subdivision could be created and financed by the FHA.
Here is a nice sign of the times: http://cdn.loc.gov/service/pnp/fsa/8d13000/8d13500/8d13572v.jpg
If you're wondering why the typical white family has 20x the amount of wealth as the average black family, the answer is simple: home ownership and the transfer of assets going all the way back to the 1930s. Imagine what would have happened if African Americans had had access to legitimate credit and mortgage financing. Even today African Americans are much less likely to get approved for a mortgage than Whites. If you think we've moved on from the legacy of the 8 Mile Wall, just drive over to Grosse Point where Christmas trees block Kercheval Road, the main thoroughfare that used to be contiguous with Detroit.
http://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/wayne-county/2014/12/12/gros...
76
T'was snide and was well out of view
And fit many an exec's view
But it's out in full sight
So please do it right
To desegregation be true!
And fit many an exec's view
But it's out in full sight
So please do it right
To desegregation be true!
40
The issue here is not racial integration -- segregation is always wrong -- but rather social class. And if you build low-income housing projects in middle class neighborhoods the middle class people will move, because they are strongly averse to crime and antisocial behavior. End result, new street, same isolated ghetto population, same pathology.
This kind of ham-handed social engineering is particularly harmful in urban areas where a delicate balance has been established that allows people from different groups and widely varying economic strata to live in close proximity to one another, sometimes only a block or two away. Destroy that balance, and you end up with Newark or Detroit, and then just try to integrate.
This is the kind of thinking that makes me embarrassed to be a liberal.
This kind of ham-handed social engineering is particularly harmful in urban areas where a delicate balance has been established that allows people from different groups and widely varying economic strata to live in close proximity to one another, sometimes only a block or two away. Destroy that balance, and you end up with Newark or Detroit, and then just try to integrate.
This is the kind of thinking that makes me embarrassed to be a liberal.
263
There's plenty more to embarrass liberals where that came from. ;-)
Reminds me of the Community Reinvestment Act, which counted government benefits as income. These mortgages were very desirable because they helped meet these kinds of "housing goals."
These types of rules become insidious. Even a bank's merger was subject to its compliance with the CRA.
Reminds me of the Community Reinvestment Act, which counted government benefits as income. These mortgages were very desirable because they helped meet these kinds of "housing goals."
These types of rules become insidious. Even a bank's merger was subject to its compliance with the CRA.
35
Josh,
when I moved to Chicago I could not believe that education was largely funded by local property taxes. I came from very conservative Alberta where every child came to school with the same amount of dollars. To see schools with facilities the rival of any university walking distance from schools that should have been abandoned fifty years ago was shocking.
The juxtaposing of Toronto's poorest with Toronto's richest in downtown Toronto ended a hundred year cycle of poverty in less than a generation.
The underlying reasons for crime are socio-economic and drug and alcohol abuse. Racial and economic segregation merely reinforces the feelings and excuses for improper behaviour.
when I moved to Chicago I could not believe that education was largely funded by local property taxes. I came from very conservative Alberta where every child came to school with the same amount of dollars. To see schools with facilities the rival of any university walking distance from schools that should have been abandoned fifty years ago was shocking.
The juxtaposing of Toronto's poorest with Toronto's richest in downtown Toronto ended a hundred year cycle of poverty in less than a generation.
The underlying reasons for crime are socio-economic and drug and alcohol abuse. Racial and economic segregation merely reinforces the feelings and excuses for improper behaviour.
102
"...middle class people will move, because they are strongly averse to crime and antisocial behavior."
And the poor aren't?
This isn't about race or "class". This is about financial means, and, seemingly, financial meanness.
And the poor aren't?
This isn't about race or "class". This is about financial means, and, seemingly, financial meanness.
47
Assuming that the Supreme Court resolved the issue of federal money being spent in ways that perpetuates segregation we, as a society, should be looking at the expenditure of federal money that subsidized "for profit" companies. Segregation is not, exclusively, a matter of housing but has the effect of stratifying society. If taxpayer monies are used either as direct or indirect subsidies for profit-making businesses a form of welfare is created where those with the least support and create those with so much more. The federal government becomes an engine of income inequality stealing from the poor and giving to the rich.
53
The poor finance nothing. Isn't it stealing from the rich?
7
All tax expenditures feed someone's profit. Every dime. That is why there is so much of it. I work for a company that makes hundreds of millions of dollars off a federal poverty program. Lots of money in poverty.
8