Oh, Lord,... what a total boondoggle. There are no other words for it.
6
..so short sighted - a de minimis number of families would be able to participate - what about everyone else?
The federal government has abandoned the inner cities - they need infrastructure rebuilt, new housing and new or refurbished schools.
There are over 100 high schools in New York City with graduation rates at 50% or below. Those schools are in the poorest neighborhoods - many in the Bronx and Brooklyn.
It's time to fix up the neighborhoods and schools, not send families, or bus our children to other neighborhoods.
2
If the Housing Mobility Demonstration Mobility Act is passed, I propose that the 2000 families who receive the housing vouchers be housed next door to those Senators and Congressional Representatives who vote in favor of the Act.
In fact, I believe that this should be a condition of the Act.
My guess is that the "rare moment of bipartisanship in Washington " will become a record breaking moment of bipartisanship. , as member of Congress and the Senate vote against the bill, unanimously.
6
One way out of poverty is to defer having children. One way to encourage this is to get all governments out of obstetrics. This is one part of medicine that does not qualify for government "insurance". Paying for a planned event is not insurance. You end up with sub-prime kids. If the event was not planned that makes the case even stronger. No obstetrics mandate. Cheaper for the rest of us.
4
This is a classic aristocratic rich people’s solution to pit the very poor against the hard working upwardly mobile middle class. The real problem is that the rich take all the cream and leave the rest of us to fight it out blaming each other.
2
I had this conversation with a few friends quite some time ago. The idea I had was that lower income families should be mixed into more wealth/well-off areas due to access to better... Well better just about everything.
Success in this life is largely based on opportunitues and connectivity. Public housing in its current state provides neither.
I chose to purchase a house in a poorer area because I could get more bang for my buck. I fixed up the house and turned the yard into a garden. Then a funny thing started happening to the slum all around me. People started cleaning their properties up too. Now my block, and the blocks all around me, are indistinguishable from any other working to lower middle-class neighborhood in the US. Running away from a problem is not going to fix it. New poor will just replace the old poor and the slums will remain slums. Responsible government that goes after slum landlords to clean up their properties, and government grants, initiatives, and even volunteer organizations like Habitat for Humanity, can go far to change a neighborhood and create a better lifestyle for the inhabitants.
6
High net-worth individuals and their families make up a significant portion of my client base. I have observed that perhaps the greatest hobby of the rich is complaining. They can complain about almost anything no matter how small. I offer this because when you hear the wealthy speak out against location equity or any social program for that matter, remember that they also speak out against their personal trainer, their barista, waitperson, banker, lawyer, politician, country club board, grandchildren and more. Keep talking, keep educating them, they are more malcontent than malevolent and can be shown the light.
Why should taxpayers endorse millions under a new system of vouchers within a regime of corrupt leadership? The first $50 million for "demonstration project" is NEW CONTRACT(S) which should be solved by existing government services for far less.
"The House Appropriations Committee has approved $50 million for the demonstration project, most of which would pay for a variety of services to help families find out about housing in better neighborhoods and to move to those areas."
So, "connected" real estate management firm(s) will get $50 million and an official mandate to gather information on residents who are in the way of PRIVATE urban construction project(s). Who knows what they'll do to lure and possibly coerce residents to leave?
Armed with this information, the government-paid firm(s) will direct/sell references to "connected" property management firms, so the most stable, MAGA-friendly schmoes-to-be-displaced can be invited to more 'suitable' neighborhoods and the less 'suitable' can be dispersed wherever.
The city wants future tax base $ and rid of poor people, so they're going along with developers' MOST profitable plan - NO or INADEQUATE low income housing. Plus, the government's help clearing the unwanted out.
The touted vouchers is an unending stream of taxpayer dollars directly into the pockets of surrounding rental market where everybody's rent will explode.
QUIT DOING DEVELOPERS' BIDDING!
2
What a pile of steaming baloney.
Has anyone and everyone noticed that there's little, if any effort made in regentrifying these lousy neighborhoods and that the movement, be it in what the NYT is opining about in this editorial or in something like school busing, is only a one way street?
I lived through the failed school busing experiment in the NYC schools back in the '70s. Sure, let's put the (largely) black kids on a bus for 30-45 minutes, ship them to the largely white neighborhoods to learn and interact among kids they don't know, don't want to know and have nothing in common with and in a place they don't want to be. And, in some sociologists' twisted form of "Pygmalion" combined with a dose of osmosis, these kids would come out smarter and with more of a desire to learn.
In addition, please note that the busing, like this voucher program, ran only one way. The buses never headed TO South Jamaica in the morning.
Section 8, Affordable Housing, the Housing Voucher Mobility blah, blah, blah, call it what you will, is a boon, first, to the builders--builders who file 'builders remedy' lawsuits as towns struggle to meet arbitrary quotas. There's no money to be made building upscale housing in Bushwick or Bed Stuy. And it's also a boon to the do-gooders who live in their fancy neighborhoods who feel that throwing money at a problem will make them feel better about themselves, but as long as those people getting the vouchers don't live in THEIR neighborhoods.
5
I find this proposal to be foolishly shortsighted and downright offensive. And not because I'm afraid that "poor people" might hurt the resale value of my Long Island McMansion. I think it is ridiculous to accept this notion that areas of the US are essentially failed states that are beyond hope and should just be abandoned as exclusion zones.
The systematic poverty of the ghetto is not the result of a natural disaster or accidental radiation leak. It is the purposeful result of preditory economics and policies designed to punish poor people for their poverty. The war on drugs. A sadistic minimum wage that won't pay for rent in any city in the US. The worst healthcare system on earth (even the upper-middle class can't afford the average $200,000 ER bill!). Schools left to rot and crumble while companies and sports stadiums are given billion dollar tax breaks.
Instead of paying people a few grand to evacuate, how about we increase the minimum wage? Institute a higher tax rate for "capital gains" over $1,000,000/year and even higher one for gains over $10,000,000/year. Ban artificial inflation of share prices through stock buybacks. Tax companies that lay off thousands of employees and outsource labor. Enact a universal basic public healthcare plan, like every other nation on earth. Pay teachers more than $23,000/year and build schools that aren't decaying and lead-filled.
23
Excellent relevant points. In addition, how about making it difficult, if not impossible for those elected and selected policymakers, local to national, of all parties, ideologies, who continue to BE personally unaccountable for the implications and outcomes of their harmful words and actions to continue to remain in their positions.Who they are and what they have done-factually- to be noted in media. With their photos.Local, state and national. Each day.And by their "third strike," these violating politicos are OUT. Outside where they can no longer harm. Hurt. Limbs. Lives. Values.Ethics.Wellbeing.
Surely a range of technical issues needs to be considered and effectively worked on so as to avoid human judgmental errors. And to learn from unexpected outcomes in our ever-present reality of uncertainty. Unpredictabilities. Lack of total control notwithstanding what we plan and do. With whom. "a Better Future" demands learning each day from each day. Our complicities with unaccountability needs active "outing!" Beyond words. Demands facing human created, and sustained, paradoxes.How likely is it that "Congress should move poor families to healthy
neighborhoods," when the same policy makers remain complicit in both separating children from parents-whatever their citizenship- and anchoring an evergrowing "semantic surrealism."These children were not simply separated.These minors were "kidnapped" by salaried-stranger-adults who are responsible for temporary/permanent traumas.
1
What about more subsidization of affordable housing for all, not just the poor? What about raising taxes rather than giving tax breaks to the richest corporations and families/individuals who don't need them?
There is a major crisis in housing in this country. Luxury housing is being built at the expense of affordable housing for working Americans, retired Americans, and yes, poor Americans some of whom, through no fault of their own, will never be middle class. But moving a poor family into a rich neighborhood will not solve all the problems. There's still a ton of prejudice in this country towards poor African Americans no matter how law abiding they are.
I don't think we want a repeat of white flight. I agree with the idea but it needs to be aimed at more than just poor people. There are plenty of working class and middle class American families facing similar issues when it comes to housing. Create a program for people that will not end when they make more than 40K or 50K/year and you might have something worthwhile.
28
@hen3ry: "I don't think we want a repeat of white flight. "
When the phone lines were cut at our house and I had to chase the would be perps away with a firearme (oh-oh, guns!) in Detroit we decided it was time to move. When we did so we could hear liberals like you shouting "White Flight!" from a distant and safe location.
3
@Jp Did you read what I wrote? Or did you just see the words white flight and decide that you knew what I was saying?
I made some very concrete suggestions. I also admitted that I don't know what the answer is. However, the answer isn't to keep poor neighborhoods in bad shape or have programs that cut out the working and middle classes.
The answer is to stop red lining areas, stop offering African Americans of all economic classes more costly mortgages, and to stop giving tax cuts to corporations and people who don't need them. Then take that money and put it into improving America for all Americans, not just some Americans.
@hen3ry: "White flight" - your words, not mine.
Redlining? Prior to July 1967 my neighborhood had two major supermarkets (Kroger and A&P). Both were looted in July of 1967. Neither returned - and I don't blame them. The Kroger re-opened as a second tier supermarket. The cries of "red lining" went out when people noticed we no longer had major supermarkets in our neighborhood. BTW, one of the stores was recently used as a backdrop in scenes from a Transformer movie.
In terms of mortgages a determining factor for rates is one's credit score. Someone from a higher economic class can have a horrible credit score. They would be charged more.
Before you raise the "generations of wealth" false narrative, we never sold our original land in Detroit. It's assessed at all of $102 (that's USD) in value. That's some kind of wealth basis. The residents had turned what was once a modest lower middle class neighborhood into a war zone.
First of all, my family benefited from this kind of social engineering. It's part of what allowed me to go to college and medical school. It was a good investment: I'll pay the government back and then some for what it's done for me and my family -- and happily, too.
Here's the things that helped me: access to a great education, mentors who believed in me and access to succesful adults. My wealthier friends had parents with college degrees, nice homes and stable families. It showed me what was possible with focus and education. Mentors showed me how to play the admission game, find money for college and simply believe that I could succeed. And a great education allowed me to excel.
The thing is, I think we could do more good by bringing those things into poor neighborhoods rather than exporting a few lucky kids out. Invest in schools, mentorship programs, social workers, parks, etc. Make it clear we care just as much about the kids in the poor neighborhoods as we do in the rich ones, and we as a society believe they can succeed.
3
It doesn't require a genius to see the instant resentment this program would create. Picture someone who has been working hard in school and in his or her career to purchase a nice home in a decent neighborhood with good schools for the kids. Now, tell that person that every third house on the street will be given for free to a poor family, no purchase or work necessary on their part (and paid for by taxpayer dollars). See the issues? This is how you create Republicans and wind up with Trump.
11
Pointing directly to this Op/Ed: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/28/us/ben-carson-hud-fair-housing-discri...
For 13-years ('92-'05) I lived a half-mile north of where the proposed site for building where the proposed site (voted down) was to be built. No matter the subsidies it comes down to affordability to purchase the goods and services provided in the high-end retail establishments.
Integration and the voucher programs are great initiatives and should be built from the ground up. Integrate the students into the schools even if it means a :05 - :10 longer bus ride.
___
Relocation drove up the adult earnings of these children in all five cities involved in the study — a finding that held true for whites, blacks and Latinos, as well as for boys and girls. The longer children lived in better neighborhoods, the greater their eventual gains.
___
The studies show CHILDREN perform better. What about the parents?
4
This makes a lot of sense: Get people out of the ghetto.
But to make it work, for every family sent to a wealthier neighborhood, real estate developers should get a tax credit for building in the poorer neighborhood: Underwrite Gentrification.
The rich neighborhood can absorb the handful of poor and the poor neighborhood will have new real estate development, mass transit improvement, better food selections, more policing, better sanitation, schools will (slowly) improve, and the cost of living in the old 'hood will increase correspondingly.
(I am amazed at how many varieties of kombucha & kefir there are in an average deli in Williamsburgh; and you don't need to buy them from a guy behind bullet proof glass and passed though a bullet proof lazy susan.)
End ghettos by gentrifying them, eventually the relocated poor can move back and become part of the gentry after they have gotten a good education and built wealth.
The poor people in the poor community who cannot qualify for trans-plantation, will slowly be eased out or die off, but the community should rest assured it is better for all of society.
Now gentrification will happen in the 'hood regardless, by giving official recognition and monetary incentives, we will just speed up the process and make it transparent.
A good place to start a federal program would be ChiRaq ( https://heyjackass.com/2018-deadliest-hoods/ )
1
My anecdote goes back to the early 1980's when my racially mixed family lived on a completely integrated block in west Philadelphia. Two single mother households occupied a duplex through a program sponsored by HUD. Drug overdoses occurred on their steps and home robberies , including my own, ensued. It was not unusual to see young men sitting in cars in front of the HUD house for hours and I believe they were casing houses to rob. Soon several black families with children moved out. I overheard one of my son's black playmates say that those people didn't belong on the block; they were ghetto people. The unintended consequence was to destabilize an already fully integrated block of white and black middle class folks.
4
Here's a thought: maybe invest these resources directly in the neighborhoods that desperately need them!
10
The whole premise of this article is seriously misguided, as well as shallow, as well as just another example of "feel good" social engineering, by which people in healthier communities try to make themselves FEEL better, by doing things which have no useful effect, and actually can cause more problems.
Bussing or moving people to "better" neighborhoods often has no effect but moving serious social problems and dysfunctional, anti-social people to those better neighborhoods. One can see this happening in many areas. In my city, which is a small city in larger metropolitan area, there aren't any "bad neighborhoods", but there are areas where there have been generations of criminals. Families that for generation after generation have had little to offer to their neighbors and community, but crime, vandalism, drug dealing, and gang activity.
These are, by every outside measure, "good neighborhoods", with "good schools." Yet, there is a deeply dysfunctional, anti-social element living right in this area. Their surrounding environment, wealthy as it is, healthy as it is, has no effect on them, because their dysfunction and in truth their sociopathy is deeply ingrained. It won't be solved by physically moving them here and there.
Quit with the patronizing social engineering, and recognize that all people have choice, and that if anyone wants something enough, they can work to attain it. Paying attention in school rather than acting out is a good start for kids.
6
Let me see if there is a double standard: the banisters who created the 2008 crisis do not go to jail, get bailed out personally for their leadership into over leveraging everything, and the middle class gets stuck with a burst housing bubble. Meanwhile, to solve poverty, we don't get to keep the ACA, and Medicare and Medicaid will get cut in the next few years, but we should move more precarious families, who will be even more precarious through Trumpublican policy, into currently stable neighborhoods. Let's move them next door to each member of the Editorial Board of the NYT. Would that work? I'm for it. Its the only rational thing to do.
3
Accepting Section 8 vouchers doesn't make sense for the landlord of a good building because agency oversight of the landlord is intrusive and demands more than the rental payment justifies while not putting corresponding requirements on the tenant to behave appropriately.
And mixing disadvantaged kids with very bright kids in school on the grounds that they are both "special" drags down the learning environment for the bright children (and endangers them physically) without noticeably lifting the troubled children. This is not a solution.
The people who advocate these kinds of programs need to volunteer their homes and families to be part of them.
10
Housing, a most important subject, in addition to public education and affordable healthcare, seems as important as ever, and with general agreement 'in the abstract'. The question is, how do we match the general agreed-upon need for finding friendlier housing environments, conducive to a more just society where better jobs, and transportation, are a given, with the negative specifics seen in the past (i.e., all is well but not in my neighborhood)?
Does the phrase "unintended consequences" ring an alarm bell when reading this article? This is just a like busing program but using houses instead. A noble concept but a total failure when implemented in reality. Liberal white guilt and a paternalistic belief that if only blacks and the poor could be exposed to white middle class ( note: there is no way busing or housing vouchers would be used in upper class neighborhoods or schools) values they would thrive.
I lived through the implementation of the busing era in D.C., and I know from first-hand experience it led to the destruction and ruined of some of the best high functioning schools to the worst. The housing voucher program would do the same to middle class neighborhoods too. But if the Editorial Board really wants to try this program, go for it, but start it in their neighborhoods of northern NJ and CT, and the upper west side first.
10
What do these communities think would help them? What do the mayors, pastors, teachers and police for example think would help? If the schools are underperforming how can they be improved?
It seems a cruel gamble to hold a lottery to help a select few move to neighborhoods where they may be ostracized for their religion, race or cultural differences in our increasingly intolerant country.
1
So these poor families will start paying for overpriced coffee at Starbucks and their food stamps will go far at Whole Foods or Gristedes in their new neighborhoods?
Address the problem of poverty in impoverished neighborhoods. Poverty is a scourge in our country. We took millions out of poverty with tbe WPA. How about reviving that, or is that too much to ask the current population living in our racist, dog-eat-dog culture ruled by oligarchs?
4
The suggestion that the poor should be given vouchers to move into "healthy" (read: white affluent areas) sounds like a liberal's dream come true. I am a liberal (or am I?) but my initial gut reaction was not a positive one. It seems illogical just to change a poor person's location because the problems will just move with them. The answer to poverty is to raise the minimum wage for low-paying jobs for the uneducated. When I was growing up in the 50s and 60s, I had a neighbor who drove a truck for Rheingold's and they lived a solidly middle-class life. Those days are gone in this age of income inequality where investment portfolios rather than salaries are the only path to upward mobility. There are far too many jobs that do not pay a living wage, forcing the working poor to rely on government assistance. Poverty brings with it attendant problems of violence, drug addiction, children unprepared to compete in school with those who have a more privileged upbringing.
This suggestion wouldn't fly on Long Island where parents pay enormous tax bills to have their children attend the very best schools. There is an entrenched culture of privilege which gets passed down through the generations. Get in a top-rated school district, send your child to a good college so he or she can be prepared as much as possible to deal with the inequities of the 21st century economy, and the beat goes on.
Poverty is a complex issue and moving people does not solve the problem.
11
I think this is all a fine idea, somewhat bewildered as to why any Republicans would support it, but much more importantly:
I assume that all of you folks on the Editorial Board have made sure that that some of these folks will be able to move into the neighborhoods that all of you live in, yes???
12
Terrible idea. Poor families in New Orleans must be returned to the exact same poor neighborhoods they were living in before Katrina. That’s the way out of poverty. Wait, what?
1
And, when we've moved all these folks from the poor unhealthy neighborhoods, who is going to be left living there? or, well you tell me...!?
5
If a program makes it easier for a low-income family to
"escape" its surroundings, why won't it automatically
contribute to the decay of such neighborhoods through
the draining of their more-competent residents?And why
won't the addition of a highly-unassimilated minority
automatically bring down the standard of living in the
receiving neighborhoods?
arcaneone
Mevasserat, Israel
7
What if all the charter school billionaires had put their money into desegregation instead of breaking up the public schools?
3
Put that money into better education for poor neighborhoods.
3
Perhaps money would be better spent providing for school vouchers, to get the kids out of the union dominated public schools. That way they can learn core values, practices and habits for a brighter future. It's not so much where you live but rather the choices people make that define the future. This experiment won't amount to anything because we don't have the additional money to implement any meaningful change, and the housing units don't now exist. We already have the school funds why not use what we are currently spending for a better outcomes. This is a situation where the politicians are not going to bite the union hand that feeds them. So, they vote for this stupid piece of junk. Sadly typical.
3
By all means, move those poor people out so their neighborhoods can be gentrified for wealthier white people. Move them out so that speculators can buy their properties for a song and then three years later flip them for three times the amount they paid.
How ironic that if you get them out their old neighborhoods will be so much nicer in a few years.
But the places they can afford to go in the 'burbs? The new ghetto.
Excuse my cynicism, but we've seen this story before. This is such a naked attempt to get unconvenient people out of the way that I can't believe it's being taken seriously.
It's happening in my own city, without any Congressional help.
5
No, they should nor.
1
If a few families from a sick neighborhood move to a healthy one, what happens to those who are left behind to languish in the sick neighborhood? Isn't better to use that money to heal the sick neighborhood so that everyone benefits?
5
In debating problems of Mid East and North African immigration to Europe, many are believe that if European, U.S., and UN influence on stabilizing, if not changing, regimes abroad had been different then the masses wouldn't want to leave. Of course economic sanctions and military intervention are serious tactics. Here in the U.S. we don't need to resort to force. But we should concentrate on creating reasons for people to stay and even make blighted neighborhoods desirable. Otherwise, faux-patriotic populism will continue to grow, even after the current Mussolini wannabe is gone..
3
Ahh. The money will rub off on you "effect" at its finest. In SF, you have section 8 housing alongside multimillion dollar victorians and you have kids who are bused from a low testing school to a high testing school all in the name of opportunity. Ride the MUNI around the of the school day and you'll see that there really is no effect. All you see is resentment, behavioral issues and lack of respect. This is an example of failed social engineering. Congress cannot be a replacement for proper parenting.
34
This is not why I voted for Republicans how the heck did this get through the House?
5
This is pathetic victim-blaming nonsense. People don’t need to escape “bad” neighborhoods — those neighborhoods need to be liberated from economic exploitation and under-investment. For each family that gets out, 100 are left behind. why? Because they somehow deserve it? Neighborhoods aren’t poor because people fail; people are poor because their neighborhoods fail them. Redistribute wealth, not people.
5
Wages that respect work will end poverty, there is no other way. Well, there is, but revolutions usually end badly for everyone.
7
Congress' role is to move families from one neighborhood to another? The Times is anticipating the fall elections, and the vast increase in wisdom, judgment and compassion that the House of Representatives will exhibit when the Democrats take over.
I prefer to leave it to those with wealth--huge, conspicuous wealth, of the sort so obvious in the Bay Area--to open their neighborhoods and houses to poor families. Or, alternatively, to have them issue grants in lieu of actually opening up the guest bedroom.
Perhaps Larry Ellison would part with just one of his many billions of dollars? Sergey Brin (of "do no evil" Google)? It's not like they're going to miss it. A billion dollars would go a long way toward this problem in the Bay Area alone. C'mon, guys.
4
On what planet does racist trump sign this proven path out of poverty for poor people, especially if they are brown or black?
3
at the end of the day, white people (collectively) are not going to do anything that jeopardizes their power and privilege. this hyper greediness and selfishness of the West is tiring.
4
No. Congress (and the NYT) should get out of the social engineering business.
13
To the Editors and to your Wall Street friends: Do make sure to include your neighborhoods at the top of the list!
12
So NYT is happy with relocation to 5th Avenue, UES, Williamsburg, Park Slope, (insert other area)?
9
"Congress should move poor families to healthy neighborhoods"
Q: Your neighborhood or mine?
12
“Congress should move poor families to healthy neighborhoods…”
This is the end of journalism as we know it! Can anybody be so tremendously stupid? Is it possible that some of the most influential people in America are so incompetent?
What was the main message of this editorial? That the poor people are unhealthy? That being poor is something like mental illness?!
China was extremely poor country. That didn’t stop it from becoming one of the most powerful nations in the world, set up to become the strongest economy in the world in the near future?
What would have been the best solution according to the NYT editors a few decades ago? To move all of them as the refugees to America to help them out?!
Being poor is not the national problem. Having the incompetent and corrupted free press certainly is!
It is exactly the free press that brainwashed the poor youth with the endless disgusting commercials into being addicted to the drugs, guns, alcohol, sodas and fast food, as well as to ignore the education and idolize the celebrities and professional athletes.
3
Interesting that the liberals supporting this effort are the same ones talking about open borders and letting in unlimited numbers of people from war-torn, gang-ridden, immensely poor parts of the world.
Cognitive dissonance much?
10
People built their good neighborhoods with blood and sweat.
Now they want to pock mark them with people who never learned to take care of and maintain their houses.
Another affirmative action program.
11
This is stupid. Give them free college vouchers for their kids instead. College graduates (especially STEM) have ALWAYS had millions of open and highly paid jobs available, yet Americans seldom if ever, go into those fields.
I call laziness, STEM is really hard.
5
The easy part is voting the money and handing out vouchers. The hard part is providing support services for existing neighborhoods and new residents. Do we have any capacity whatsoever to learn from the experiences of others and of the past, or are we really so stupid that we can only learn from our latest mistake (and the fallout to the victims of our latest mistake be damned)?
2
I find it very difficult to believe that Trump and Jared would sign on to such a plan. They are the furthest thing from favoring integration you can find. Of course it will work. You see stories on TV all the time about how businesses are so desperate for workers they drop the drug testing requirement and are training inmates to do their work and hire them even while they are in prison. For every gang member living in poor neighborhoods, how many people do you think live in those places who would be so happy to have a way out? The reason there are so many skeptics is that the people who live in poor neighborhoods are portrayed as preferring that to an alternative that offers them a step up. A picture that fuels and reinforces the racist stereotype. And doesn't look at what caused these folks to wind up there in the first place.
1
Gated communities. There would be a whole lot more of them, with barbed fences - that remind one of an alien detention facility - to keep out the sprinkled poor folks air-dropped into the neighborhood.
Not sure that the government or the state can sprinkle them within though.
This will not end well. If it gets off the ground, that is.
4
This plan is, at its core, a push to integrate housing. Sounds like a great idea. But as one who lives in an area where that has been done, through the county housing authority -- through section 8 -- I can tell you this doesn't come close to working out like you think. You don't address whether people will rent or own. A big difference. And you don't consider the impact on people already living in neighborhoods when some of these poor move in and instead of embracing the change, they wreak havoc on the neighborhood. As usual, the editorial board just writes from the ivory tower.
19
Anything that helps reduce poverty is welcome. But Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes! It's election time and one where the GOP fear that the polls will have no gifts for them. I'm cynical enough to suspect that when the GOP of today (GOP-T) agrees to spend money, they see a return on their investment--in privatizing prisons, for example. So now we have a POTUS boasting that he's cured unemployment, yet hundreds of thousands languish in poor slums with poor services. Education is part of the solution to poverty, but justice is the overall cure-economic and social justice. But to the GOP-T, that amounts to socialism. So itty-bitty cosmetic changes are preferred.
2
why not study the history of the Upper West Side or Chelsea neighborhoods of Manhattan, which are housing integrated, before drawing any conclusions?
before extrapolating, why not review the Harvard study for methodology and potential bias in their conclusions?
3
This is terrible politically, and is the sort of thing that fuels Trump voters. People live in not quite so bad neighborhoods would also like to move to better neighborhoods with better schools and services. That people poorer than themselves get paid to jump ahead of them to the good neighborhoods while they get left behind is what really makes people angry at the government, affirmative action, and the like.
16
I suggest the vouchers should first be used to move people into the buildings and neighborhoods of the Times' Editorial Board and the Congressmen who support this legislation. Lead by example rather than word.
20
So once again we are treating a problem with taxpayer money. I applaud the effort because it is up to the government to provide basic wellbeing. But we should be using government to put forward policies that encourage employers to pay a living wage. The government should be a last resort to poverty relief. I know plenty of poorer people who would like nothing better to work than sit around an apartment all day. These people are intelligent enough to know that minimum wage is not as much money as what the government hands out. So why not raise the minimum so that it would pay more than a hand out. Brilliant right!! So why the heck has it not been done, go ask a republican, because I sure do not know why We The People are not intelligent enough to push this forward. You know we talk about studies all the time, I know of a study that confirmed that people are happy paying there own bills with the money that they themselves earned. I also read a study that confirmed that people think handouts should be for emergencies not a way of life. So lets see we can combine these studies and create legislation to make companies pay a living wage so We The People can help people in emergencies instead of a way of life.
17
Here, here! A person who works 40 hrs a week should be paid well enough that they don't require govt assistance.
7
@oscar jr
"...it is up to the government to provide basic wellbeing."
Utterly false. At best, it is up to government to stay out of the way of your own "pursuit of happiness." There's no guarantee in the Constitution that your pursuit will be successful, nor any provision, if you fail, that the rest of us will be compelled to finance the rewards you failed on your own to earn.
14
@Henry Miller Positively, absolutely correct and very well put. Nothing in the Constitution permits redistributive social engineering, and, in fact, the Tenth Amendment should preclude it completely. Perhaps Mr. Sulzberger and the members of the Times editorial board should share their residences with the unwashed multitude.
Attack a social condition from the mid-point or lower and the result will lack significant lasting effect. Children might temporarily benefit from being relocated to improved social surroundings, but will the responsible adults maintain the skill set to survive?
$50 million for 2000 households means $25,000 per household, where funds "would pay for a variety of services to help families find out about housing in better neighborhoods and to move to those areas." This doesn't strike me as solving anything. Sorry, perhaps a privately funded social program may have a positive outcome on a local level, but a federally-funded demonstration isn't going to help anyone, except those that pocket the cash. This is what I have come to expect from US Congress; glitz with out lasting value.
Secure solid educational reforms on the elementary and secondary levels, where federal dollars guide states to enact beneficial improvements. Legislate to provide post-secondary education funding through student loan programs were the needs are greatest, in state universities and community colleges.
Education will enable the working poor and lesser to overcome their issues, not a pluck and drop transplant.
4
Anyone that trusts Republicans to do the right thing by poor people who want to move into better neighborhoods has been under a rock for fifty years.
If the Republicans design and implement a housing voucher system, I guarantee the real goal will be to enrich Trump and his real estate allies.
Why do Democrats and the NY Times refuse to see that Republicans don't care about anything except making the rich richer. I mean, how much evidence do you have to be buried under?
7
You can no more solve a problem by moving it to another location than you can heal a broke finger by putting a bandage on a toe. Better schools and jobs programs will bring the people back into society. Help the people where they live so once they become employable they will build up the area they live.
6
Hold on... These lawmakers seem to agree that the conditions in certain neighborhoods are toxic to the social, psychological, physical, and economic development of the people living there. They cite research that - absent said toxic conditions - people of all kinds thrive in environments with access to safe, stable housing, schools, and public spaces. And their "hopeful" and "promising" solution is to create some hunger games style system where certain lucky families get "saved" from their toxic neighborhoods?!
The toxic conditions are a product of aggressive, systemic disenfranchisement, not some natural disaster! Poverty in America is a direct economic counterpart of affluence and wealth. Perpetuating the myth that lifeboat-ing individual families out of poverty has anything to do with equity or justice is simply insulting.
It is a distinct and sad moral low for the NY Times to support a policy that effectively declares certain American neighborhoods toxic and uninhabitable and simultaneously condemns the majority of human beings living in those neighborhoods to just suffer through.
33
Not a real good solution.
Some years ago a lot of lower and middle income families moved to Des Moines from Los Angeles to get their kids away from gangs. Many of them were single mothers, drawn to the middle management jobs in Des Moines.
So now Des Moines has a gang problem, lots of shootings and murders.
Poverty and crime need more comprehensive solutions than a change of address.
10
This does not make sense to me. Is the idea to abandon the poor neighborhoods? Move everyone out and just leave them empty? This would seem to be the logical end result of such a policy. If the rich have already left and you give the poor money so they can leave too, who is going to live there? Shouldn't we instead invest in those neighborhoods to make them better? This seems to me to be the same strategy as school vouchers, which seemed to be intended to kill the public schools, rather than make them better. Except that this makes even less sense. Why would we want to just create ghost towns out of whole neighborhoods?
5
To all fairness, once you move people out, you could redevelop the neighborhood and encourage mixed population in. Of course, it would be great to improve neighborhood without moving the people, but was it successfully done before? The study showed that moving people worked, what program of improving of poor neighborhood showed much promises?
1
You are exactly right. Except you forgot the part where young (mostly white) professionals move in, fix up the neighborhood, attract businesses and investment, and then get attacked for causing gentrification and inequality.
5
Why is it that when a neighborhood is gentrified, the neighborhood begins to get better sanitation services, better policing, junkies are pushed out, better food stores open. Why cant poor neighborhoods get these better services and facilities—without the gentrification that causes high rents.
1
You’ve got it backwards. It’s not better sanitation, it’s less garbage. It’s not better policing, it’s less crime. The junkies don’t get pushed out, there are just fewer drug dealers and crack houses.
8
low wages cause poverty. jobs that pay enough to live on are the cure.
6
focus on making employers pay a living wage -- nice neighborhoods are great, but employers need to stop stealing labor with below subsistence wages
6
What a nonsensical idea. The government moving people around? This is so wrong and ridiculous because you suggested nothing to fix the real issues with poverty stricken area. Do you not realize that the neighborhoods that are now slums were once nice robust areas? All your suggestion will do is turn nice areas into new slums because you don't understand the cause of the problem. One thin for sure is that involving the government in any solution with insure its failure.
5
Bipartisan and good for the poorest? Go for it!
1
How about we start with the "basics?" Let's do everything we can to see that children are raised in two parent (Mom and Dad) households. Let's bring back a sanctity to marriage, so that there are a lot fewer "single moms." Let's decrease the number of children being born out of wedlock. I assure you, if you do that, you will see a dramatic improvement in your housing situation.
10
And how do you propose to achieve that? Forced people to get married?
1
Experience has shown that wealthier people with families don't move into poorer neighborhoods willingly. They let the Bohemians without kids gentrify the place first, pushing all the poor people out, before they will set foot there. This goes for both affluent republicans and democrats.
Handing poor people a voucher to buy their way into better neighborhoods may be the only effective way to create integrated neighborhoods and end the warehousing of the poor, because it forces open the gates.
7
@Kenneth
Shall I assume that you would like the gates forced open on your block , say , next door to your home ?!
1
This is an expansion of Section 8, the fallacy in this opinion is the reality of Tenant Screening. Tenant Screening allows all landlords the ability to screen their future tenants. Tenant Screening usually entails the following: a retail credit report, how a tenant pays their bills and an eviction report, has the tenant been evicted from housing in the last 7 years. There are other tools such as pay to rent, similar to mortgage, can the tenant afford the housing. Of course section 8 changes this particular aspect. Tenant screening also includes a criminal report.
Landlords are weary to put individuals that can't pay their bills, don't earn enough monies, have been evicted in the past and have a criminal history, into their available units.
Tenant Screening is legal if performed consistently on all tenants.
Landlords also have a responsibility to grant all their tenants a safe and decent place to live. Tenant Screening gives a landlords the necessary tools to make good housing a reality.
3
I lam a teacher in a healthy neighborhood in Chicago. Within the healthy neighborhood is a well maintained Section 5 housing highrise. The children walk who reside in this buildng walk to school with all the other children in the neighborhood and benefit from an organized community that works to include all. I saw graduate of our school return today. He returned to be an assistant to the football coach. This child came from a struggling neighborhood in Chicago and over the three years he attended our school he grew and was surrounded by supporting students and school staff. Our school is located in a neighborhood surrounded by thriving commerce and supportive merchants not to mention the Cubs. Not all neighborhooods have the resources and community organizers that are the cornerstones of successful neighborhoods. Helping families who choose to move to a healthier place is good for all.
3
Improve poor neighborhoods with better grocery stores mass transportation side walks and green spaces. Policy should be to make all neighborhoods safe anf allow healthier lifestyle.
11
I think we could have a better effect by asking what parts of our economic system are contributing to the creation of these poor neighborhoods.
9
As in medicine, there are a lot of pluses and minuses in any proposed treatments of societal inequalities and these can be addressed just as they are in medicine. That said, many commenters seem to be infected with nimbyism. I would guess that many of these people would be agains`t vaccinations. They consider themselves people on the hill and have no need for those on the other side of the tracks.
1
Instead of an absurd and disrespectful lottery to get a few folks out we should be investing in the education, infrastructure, housing, and livelihoods of those existing neighborhoods to raise ALL their residents' standards of living.
7
@Meghan Cope What are an individual's civic and social responsibilities to help themselves? Less children born out of wedlock. Children raised in two parent (mom and dad), two income households. Respect for the institution of marriage. There are individual responsibilities to contribute to a healthy society. It's not just about government "investing" (i.e., spending) in more programs.
5
@Falcon78 It is many of the policies and laws that create the divide between the rich and the poor, that assist to create poverty. It is not just about blaming the poor. When jobs are sent oversees who do you blame? The poor don't create that. Let's pay a living wage, respect workers and let everyone share the wealth.
@Falcon78 Two parent homes sometimes consist of two moms or two dads. Children thrive in those families also.
Everything about this editorial drives me crazy! First, let's start with the graphic. Since I was a little boy growing up in this great country, every poster or advertisement for the underserved or "needy" always had brown people in it. My issue with this is if Whites make up the majority of this country, and there are more poor or impoverished Whites than middle class or rich Whites, then these "hand-out" ads should reflect this reality.
Second, the title must have been chosen by a liberal. If there was a ticket for a quick trip from "Poverty to a Better Future", the people that received that ticket would be back in poverty before they could blink! One of the biggest reasons why most people (Black, Brown, or White) remain in poverty, is due to a lack of proper education, lack of resources, and lack of opportunities.
If you are going to integrate poverty stricken people into "nicer" neighborhoods, you better make sure that these people were not part of the reason why their old poverty stricken neighborhood was poverty stricken. But, if they are hard working people who care about their environment, and they want to live a better life, then they would be a plus to any neighborhood that they settle down in, whatever their race!
Abdel Russell
9
This has been tried before. The results are not promising. President Clinton started a similar program in 1994 called “Moving to Opportunity Initiative,” which moved thousands of families from government projects to higher-quality homes in in several counties across the US. The 15-year experiment bombed. A 2011 study by HUD found that adults using more generous Section 8 vouchers did not get better jobs or get off welfare. In fact, more went on food stamps. And their children did not do better in their new schools. Worse, crime simply followed them to their safer neighborhoods, ruining the quality of life for existing residents. Dubuque, Iowa, for example, received an influx of voucher holders from projects in Chicago & it’s had a problem with crime ever since. A recent study linked Dubuque’s crime wave directly to Section 8 housing. HUD tested this new theory in Dallas in 2012 with disastrous results. Starting in 2012, the agency sweetened Section 8 voucher payments, and pointed inner-city recipients to the far-flung counties surrounding Dallas. As government-subsidized rentals spread in all areas so did crime. Now Dallas has one of the highest murder rates in the nation, and had to call in state troopers to help police control it. For the first time, violent crime has shifted to the bedroom communities north of the city. Although HUD’s “demonstration project” may have improved the lives of some who moved, it’s ended up harming the lives of many of their new neighbors.
7
Actually, the new study addresses these studies as well. The new studies followed the families longer and showed that the move was especially beneficial to the younger children, although it had no impact on adults and older children (teenagers).
3
The poor in this so-called country are here to serve the wealthy. The rest is just more distraction.
1
Been there, done that before. Doesn’t work. Look at NYCs efforts and public housing, going back generations. The dreaded projects. I live in a beautiful, professional neighborhood in VA that no black, professional Americans will move into. The bottom line, it’s not the best choice for their children’s educational future to be put into the hot house stew that is the suburbs of white, Asian, Indian, Jewish, whatever. My black professional colleagues get it. Protect your children in a suitable environment where they can thrive. Took me awhile to get that.
2
After Florence does its damage the government will need the money to force migration out of low lying flood prone areas. The media forgets about the forced migrations that occurred in the aftermath of Katrina. Poor disadvantaged people were bused to other cities with the anticipation they would set up permanent residence and make a new life for themselves. There was one forced migration of poor people from New Orleans to Houston, with a resulting (CENSOR ALERT!!) increase in crime in Houston. I haven't heard much about other cities that received refugees from New Orleans.
3
But didn't this forced migration just recreated poor neighborhoods? It didn't create mixed neighborhoods.
1
Easier solutions:
Living wages
Basic income subsidy to all families
1
@Michael Piscopiello You can give everyone a "basic income", but without some education and mentoring, a lot of people would not spend the money properly.
3
Many of the poor inner-city neighborhoods we are talking about here are extremely well located, and would be extremely desirable places to live, if only there weren't so many poor people living in them now. So yes, we must... um... relocate these people to the suburbs as quickly as possible, away from all the distractions of the big city. Trust us, it's for their own good!
5
It begs the question, what happens to those left behind in the poor neighborhoods?
3
I am a middle class divorced woman who works hard to live in a good neighborhood. Part of what I do for a living includes home visits in public housing and poor neighborhoods! I don’t want to live with the poor, no way! Garbage all over the place, notes in hallways asking residents not to leave garbage in the stairs, porches full of junk, unemployed and maybe unemployable people screaming and fighting in the stairs, I have seen it all. Thanks but no thanks.... I am working hard enough to live in a civilized neighborhood and don’t worry I am not in the 1% and I am not even making a 6 figure!
13
@Star Gazing
Sounds familiar. My mother used to like in a pleasant apartment near Chicago. Neat, clean, well taken care of until the complex accepted Section 8. Suddenly the entry lock was broken, fixed, broken again, trash was everywhere, beer cans littered the foyers, puddles of urine in the elevators. It was trashed. She moved asap.
5
I have often thought the strategy in this editorial has profound implications for mideast peace.
In my "If I were King" musings, I would spend dollars building the best settlements which could be made in the West Bank with the sole proviso those units could only be filled with alternating Israelis and Palestinians in the neighborhood.
It is impossible to hate a neighbor when you realize he has the same goals you have about raising a healthy and happy family irrespective of his religious beliefs (or, in the case of this editorial, economic status).
1
The Upper West of Manhattan is a rich neighborhood with a large number of subsidized rental units, why not study the results and unintended consequences before starting a new program? the UWS has had a history of up and down cycles. that make it an ideal place to study for future policy moves.
3
There is simply not enough housing to do that; better neighborhoods are more expensive because the demand is higher. The more supply you pull off the market for low income families, the more middle income families you then push into marginal neighborhoods. By helping a select number of families, you hurt a larger number of families.
The solution is to provide better services, amenities and schools for ALL neighborhoods and provide quality support services for those in poverty. The other solution is to start making employers pay living wages. Most of these families in poverty have someone who works. We are subsidizing corporations when we cover the gap in wages. We are making it possible for them to have "on demand" labor pools that they can pay poorly and not provide benefits for by providing food stamps and rental assistance for THEIR workers.
6
How about we all live in the places we can afford? I know I have a hard enough time paying for my own home I really rather not subsidize another household because they “want to live in a better neighborhood”.
So, Id like to move to Beverly Hills but I didn’t have the 7.6 million for the home.
I asked some neighbors to help me out and they told me to know my place and live where I can afford.
Good advice. We all can’t live where we want, drive what we want and make what we want.
If we are all equal then we all lose.
Plus, thats simply not the way capitalism works.
12
@Crossing Overhead
You know what. The Constitution does't say anything about capitalism. Capitalism wasn't even a word when the Constitution was ratified. It says nothing about "enfettered free markets," "Supply Side Economics," or any of the other propaganda of the mega-rich.
What it does say, is that Congress should tax and regulate trade (not labor), and promote the general welfare.
So the Constitutional test for our laws should be whether they increase the general welfare. Do they make most people's lives better? Not, why should I pay for making other people's lives better. We pay to make other people's lives better because the Constitution says to, and that is how you make your own life better.
Having a permanent underclass of poor people locked in bad situations with no way out is bad for the country and bad for you. If we could get people out of the stress of poverty, they would be more productive.
There are many government programs that more than pay for themselves in the value added to our nation.
For example, if we went to universal healthcare, we would be healthier in general for less money. I know that because every other industrial nation provides better healthcare to all inhabitants for less money.
Having said all that, I don't trust Republican programs to help the poor. They are never what they seem and always an excuse to transfer money to rich people. Republicans are against the general welfare, but only for the particular welfare of their rich donors.
6
I suggest that transplanting our desperate poor from our most dysfunctional neighborhoods to middle class ones won’t work any better than emptying out Syria and North Africa into Spain, Italy, Germany, Hungary or Poland, where we’re seeing the populist response. But you can destroy entire communities by such attempts and alienate a generation of middle-class Americans.
Are we to empty-out Detroit and Southside ol’ Chicago, just to inflict people unprepared to live middle-class lives ... on Pleasantville? When the transplanted and the hosts share few values and outlooks? They won’t be welcomed but shunned. We’ll see blood in our streets as middle-class schools and communities generally will reel to a level of violence they’ve never seen.
The solution to entrenched poverty is for us to invest massively in schools, parental assistance programs and intensified law enforcement in our poorest communities … and time. Better-prepared kids will complete secondary and post-secondary educations and training programs, becoming accountants, welders, plumbers, businesspeople, lawyers, and work at many other middle-class occupations and professions. In doing so, they will ADOPT middle-class value systems and they will be able to AFFORD homes in middle-class communities, where they’ll be better accepted by those already there because they’ll speak the same language.
THIS is the ticket to a better future that doesn’t pit class against class in America, turning our poorest …
11
… communities into ghost towns and our middle-class communities into armed camps full of hatred, violence and shattered dreams.
If liberals want to take their monumentally naïve recipe for the destruction of middle-class America to voters in November, you’ll get clobbered. We don’t save our impoverished by giving up on their communities: we must save those communities.
11
@Richard Luettgen
You make a great suggestion with regard to education being a ticket out of poverty. However, you make many assumptions about the poor that make me feel like you have never been around the poor.
To assume that education is the answer is to ignore the reality of the situation. Many of the poor do not possess the basic needs in life that the middle class takes for granted.
Transportation is the biggest hurdle for rural poor. Even urban poor have to pay for public transit. Housing is also at the top of the list. People need to have appropriate housing. The problem being, who would rent to poor people? To think the poor will be educated to the point of being an accountant, etc. is naive. Poor people do not have role models in their life. Their life has been consumed by seeking the basic necessities for survival. Their kids learn that at an early age. The values they learn are nowhere near middle-class values. Education alone will not solve the problem of poverty in our society. Values don't automatically come with education. They have to be learned by each person. In most communities, the poor are invisible. They don't vote. They live in neighborhoods the middle and upper classes do not go near. They do not have positive contact with the government.
Until we quit ignoring the systemic reasons poverty exists we will get nowhere. Education and assistance only go so far. Our society needs to realize that poor people do not choose to be poor. It is inherited.
And what MUST be done to save the impoverish communities and why it hasn't been done?
There is a presumption that poor people will take these vouchers. Detroit has had private programs in place since the 1980s to move poor families to better neighborhoods, train adults for the middle class has ns in the suburbs, and set them up with transportation. Researchers have found that many interested people are pressured by those "left behind" not to take these opportunities. Often it means cutting ties to friends and family. They saw the new communities shun these transfers so they did not have the social/family network needed to want to stay in the new place.
There are success stories and many of Detroit's failure could be more about Michigan's 4 "lost decades" and bad economic situation than just selling out your people and disrespecting your community. I grew up in public housing. I know I would have benefited from such a move. We did move to a more suburban public housing project and it didn't seem to help because the income wasn't there to pay for the extras that would have given the highest benefits. The kids treated us project kids really bad and many of the teachers didn't want to be burdened with dumb poor kids. And yes, the drugs, crime, and violence sadly followed us because our parents refused to cut ties with bad people.
8
"The Harvard study showed that taxpayers as a whole benefit when poor families with children migrate to such communities, with tax revenues that flow from rising incomes possibly offsetting the cost of vouchers."
How is does this happen when it goes on to say that voucher families are trapped in extremely poor neighborhoods are likelier to be stricken by violence, health risks and other problems?
How do incomes rise when they move to healthier neighborhoods if they are more likely effected by physical health problems, lower educational attainment and possibly violence?
Why don't the programs that help in healthy neighborhoods not work in their original neighborhood?
Why is moving people to functioning neighborhoods better than improving original neighborhoods? Why do we hear that gentrification is bad? Wouldn't it be better to manage gentrification?
Doesn't this all imply that poor people must move to healthy neighborhoods and integrate those values and assimilate into that culture in order to have success?
And what happens if those who move bring the unhealthy social conditions to the healthy neighborhoods specifically because of government actions? Who's accountable when these programs hurt functioning working communities?
11
Moving poor kids to a wealthier neighborhood won’t move the needle by itself. These kids need tutoring, and programs to support them before/after school and during the summer. Programming, mentors, tutors and attendance. Moving alone is not enough for the majority.
6
It amazes me that this bill would get bipartisan support, and the cynic in me wants to know: what's the catch. This reeks of the kind of social engineering that is bound to fail.
A more reasonable solution to me would be to offer tax incentives for healthy businesses to enter poor neighborhoods and bring them up. Revitalize the area, create opportunity, expand the tax base, improve the school, and no one needs to get dislocated. Oh yes, and you could redistribute taxes better so that all school, regardless of income, have the basic they need: computers, text books, sports and arts programs and mentors.
I'm not a free market acolyte, but I know plenty of people who do think that business can solve all social problems. let's ask them to put their money where their mouth is and improve poor neighborhoods.
16
@SydBlack
Millennials want to live in the cities and want to gentrify poor neighborhoods. Corporations want to be in cities with mass transit and high numbers of younger college grads. The suburbs are starting to decay. Congressional support for this type of program is a given.
Make no mistake, this is really not about helping the poor as much as it is about removing the poor to so rich people can have prime city real estate. Nearly every country has the rich people in the city and the poor on the outskirts.
13
@SydBlack
Excellent points. I would also add that moving young families away from their old neighborhood and supportive extended family will have negative consequences. Far better to improve the neighborhood they already call home.
8
I've been begging our community to integrate (ie, ditch the real estate segregation and "steering") instead of bus for decades (ironically, two elderly white women thanked me for saying this). Our community instead opted for "magnet schools" so that they could making busing look voluntary. The cost is excessively high school taxes, waste, pollution and traffic that have driven out something like 18% of minorities. I was begging my mother to leave in 2001, and I'm starting, very late, to pack my bags and get ready to go. Busing just isn't a long term sustainable solution, economically and ecologically. Isn't it about time we all learned to live together?
4
This research is an example of big data and deceptive results. The gains were negligible and only for children younger than 8 at the time of the move. Older siblings and parents had no benefits and boys in another study were shown to have been criminalized. This program helps landlords not poor families. We studied HOPE VI relocations in the esrly oughts in Tampa. We found mostly negative results, both for relocated families and their nee neighbors.
21
What a great, cost-effective way to increase integration and eliminate busing of minority/poor students; just move minority/poor families into richer neighborhoods with better schools.
There's certainly no chance that this policy could accelerate the movement of better-off families of all races to private schools and/or the suburbs, nor could it adversely affect property values in the receiving communities.
Social engineering is wonderful, isn't it? Never any unintended consequences.
23
The bipartisan push for social mobility and better opportunity through inclusive housing programme is a right move to achieve social integration goals and economic well-being of society as the ghettoised segregated community living always breeds social distrust and anger turning such residential areas as the cesspool of ignorance, poverty, and crime.
4
I see only the phrase "healthy neighborhoods" but nowhere do I see if these families are to be helped to move only to apartments or in some cases even to be helped to buy their own home.
As always I turn first to my experience in my own Swedish city, same population as my home-away-from home, Burlington VT. An essential part of that experience is that over the past 18 years I have had contact as a Red Cross volunteer with between 1000 and 2000 individuals who came here as asylum seekers (signatures in books I have kept). The other part is that I am familiar with the apartment-complex neighborhoods in which they live.
Since Statistics Sweden (S SE)has high-level SES data on every one of us and on every district I am sure that I could use that data to rank these neighborhoods to see if my ranking matches S SE ranking.
S SE data would almost certainly also show that very few of the families in the lowest SES ranked neighborhood experience poverty as experienced in, for example, Burlington.
Conclusion: Congress program is a drop in the bucket not worth trying.
What is needed are programs for better apartment housing, universal health care, and programs to raise the economic level of all families with children.
None of that will happen in the next 2 years. We will have to wait where we includes all those poor families.
Only-NeverInSweden.blogspot.com
Citizen US SE
13
@Larry Lundgren Just remembered an important detail. Several years ago I read, do not know where, that Burlington VT housing (private homes, all ?) was of rather low level condition and I know from visiting various homes where students had apartments and even a student housing Redstone that everything was at far lower quality than anyone accepts here.
In my mind and experience Sweden sets an extraordinarily high level - too high - and when one of my daughters was a student at UVM she lived in a room in a house where students lived that probably would have been closed down here.
At the university right next door to me here in Linköping, that daughter lived one year in student housing and she had private room and private bathroom (that was the lowest level) with shared kitchen. Student rooms just down the street are at a quality level I never saw in the US.
Perhaps as a result housing is one problem that Sweden does not seem to know how to solve.
I knew a Swedish Berklee School Boston student who brought his girlfriend to live in his apartment in Southie - she could not imagine living there. Think Dennis Lehane stories.
I would love to see research done comparing American housing with Swedish. When I lived at Columbia MD, that apartment was Swedish quality.
3
@Larry Lundgren
I grew up in South Burlington and despite that being the 50s to the early 60s, and as I look back, people were grouped together as per income back then, however they had jobs and housing. As per homes today whew, you are very correct! It's a drop in the lake. Still that is a University Town and it has all of the good opportunities. Then the fuel or heating bills in winter! It was nothing back then, but today it's 25x worse.
Yes, universal Health Care and on an equal par with every politician in Washington. It will take a new generation to pick up this fight and they will. Out West in the Bay Area, one can forget about housing unless you have millions and major millions. No one should go hungry or have to work 70 hours a week just to stay alive. It's pathological. We are all "trapped in America", for now it seems and yes I have thought about leaving the country and if I did, out goes any housing voucher and I love this crazy country and yes I am a California person now. Those winters were far too brutal for my spirit and soul.
Maybe we will have to wait till the people rise up and become involved as there is so much $$$$ to do good in and outside of government. However, just wait till this nonsense clears out of Washington.
In London we have poor families occupying half million pound flats in central locations. I don't know if that helps them more than having the same money spent on skills training would. Because it seems currently to end up just providing government subsidised unskilled labour for their wealthier neighbours.
34
move kids to healthier neighborhoods? Gee, let's see. They're passing all sorts of regressive legislation such as doing drug screenings on people who apply for welfare programs. They're cutting medical insurance coverage for the poor. They're rolling back the regulations so that the air and the water are more polluted, not less. With all of that work by Congress, where will the healthier neighborhoods be? For example, methane leaks from wells in Pennsylvania are estimated to send 100 thousand tons of methane into the atmosphere. That's 30 times more polluting than CO2, meaning that the equivalent in carbon pollution would be 3 million tons. Methane pollution can travel for hundreds of miles. It does not distinguish among neighborhoods. My point is that the levels of pollution in middle class areas are increasing thanks to Congress. So there is less of a difference in levels of pollution between poor and middle class areas. Of course it's still the right thing to do to move people to less-polluted areas. But that's not a fix. The right to do for everyone is to implement stricter controls on air and water pollution.
8
@John Jones
The amount of methane being released is not causing a degradation of air quality. Try to get your narrative straight. Theoretically, it increases global warming.
The regulations that Obama crammed down after Trump won the election were improper. Rolling them back does not cause a reduction in air quality because they were never implemented.
When the EPA enforces the law that prohibits NYC from dumping a million gallons of raw sewage into the waterways, which they do every year despite its illegality, they can worry about creating new regulations that they plan to selectively enforce.
11
You're effectively talking about positive eugenics as applied to housing. This is an exercise in social engineering. Aside from being ethically compromised from the start, you're going to get hostility from the neighbors in those wealthier neighborhoods. "Not in my back yard" is the phrase that comes to mind.
Expect negative, particularly white, entrenchment from locals. Add to that, transportation and poverty are inextricably linked. You can't move people with high demands for public mobility to a new area without expecting a certain amount of poverty to follow them. You should see my first point.
You are absolutely inviting resentment from the locals. They will not listen when you tell them about the social benefits. You are in for a whole world of trouble when you make federal policy local. This discussion really needs to take place in town and city councils. You can force the community to have a discussion but forcing the issue will not end well.
One small step forward, one giant leap back.
21
@Andy the program will also cost more per family, so fewer families will get assistance.
IMO, the whole safety net program for the chronically poor should be rolled into a comprehensive program, rather than food, housing, medical assistance being separately administered.
10
What's happening to us is that the rich white people are moving in and ruining our neighborhoods. They certainly aren't going to have traffic and overdevelopment in THEIR 'hoods.
1
In the mid 60's we tried this, and destroyed neighborhoods. This demonstrator is likely to succeed, as it isn't big enough to create a concentration of poor people in otherwise middle and working class neighborhoods. But, I fail the followon will fail for ignoring the lessons of the 60's, which spread urban blight and destroyed property values.
13
A few years ago I might have agreed with this.
Now I am doubtful.
I suggest the NYT Editorial Board listen to Malcolm Gladwell's "Revisionist History" the particular episode - "Miss Buchanan's Period of Adjustment". It revisits the Brown vs Board of Education decision and it's unforeseen and generally undocumented and unexplored consequences.
I am way left, but I, like many, get tired of the 'elites of the left' always deciding they know what is best for others.
I would ask - what happens to the towns that these kids get out of? What happens to the kids that don't get out? Republicans LOVE their vouchers. Not everyone is going to get one. Who doesn't?
Meanwhile the families left behind are in an even bigger hole. Some sort of wretched ghost town? Why not ask these communities what they need to make their neighborhoods better?
It seems to me like this is the USA throw away culture on a grand scale. The end of that story is that there is no "away". So fix and use what you've got. Stop wasting time, money, and people's lives.
54
What about all the kids who won't get a voucher to richer schools? This policy move makes sense in a lot of ways but it has some fundamental flaws. it can't assist everyone because you can't move a whole neighborhood into another neighborhood. The issue isn't that an individual kid is being failed in a school. It's that a whole school of kids are being failed. You have to assist all of them, not the lucky ones who get a voucher. But the more fundamental issue is the idea that there are bad hoods and good hoods. These "bad" neighborhoods are complex. They are filled with great people who got short sticks. what if they got longer sticks?
10
@KG
Even if fully funded and implemented, it still leave hollowed out communities, with those not qualifying for subsidies being left behind.
The program is intended to enrich powerful real estate interests.
13
Houses in my old neighborhood were made Section 8. All it meant was the rest of us moved on & the neighborhood deteriorated to what those folks had been escaping. The real answer is to make their original neighborhoods better so they do not have to move. And dare I mention education & health care & good jobs would solve these housing issues?
48
@Realist When you make the neighborhood better they call it Gentrification which the Times somewhat looks down upon. It seems that Gentrification changes the "culture" of the neighborhood. It appears OK for the editorial board to change the "Culture" of upper income neighborhoods, but if you do it to lower income areas it somehow is racist.
3
But why, in a country as obscenely wealthy as this one, are there so many poverty-stricken neighborhoods?
17
The reason we are obscenely wealthy is because the rich exploit the middle class, working class, and the poor. If you're not getting richer, you are getting poorer. That is the social engineering which has been going on for decades.
2
More dependency is not a solution.
Perhaps the solution is better personal responsibility to ensure the chances of being poor are minimized.
As in, don’t abuse drugs and alcohol, get a high school diploma or higher, learn a trade, get married before you have children, commit no crimes, etc.
Those who follow the time-proven advice above do dramatically better than those who do not.
23
And also, your stereotyping instantly came through in equating those who are less off as drug addicts, high school dropouts and criminals. Wow.
2
I hope these theories are right, but I have seen too many beautiful theories killed by ugly facts to get my hopes up too high.
It sounds so obvious. "Congress should move poor families to healthy neighborhoods." Why didn't I think of that?
But neighborhoods are not just physical structures -- homes, schools and hospitals and so on. Neighborhoods are people. So when poor families move to "healthy" neighborhoods, effectively poor neighborhoods are moving to healthy neighborhoods. Success depends on the poor families assimilating to the "healthy" neighborhoods' values. For that to happen, presumably the number of poor must families must be limited, or the newcomers will simply recreate the the dysfunctional neighborhoods they came from, resulting in "white flight" and the decline of healthy neighborhoods.
So even if the results hold up, there are likely to be limits to scaling up the experiments. We may run out of healthy neighborhoods to effect this transformation.
Another problem is that policy makers and opinion leaders won't level with us and admit that, if the experiments work, it will be in large part because of the middle class values that the children of poor families have learned. Expect there to be complaints about the lack of diversity in the "healthy" neighborhood, lack of teachers who "look like" the children of the poor families, and so on. So expect the cycle of racial name-calling to begin all over again.
29
I bet if poor people were better paid, they could find their own way up and out.
Family income is the most reliable indicator of student success.
17
I want to live in Scarsdale although I cannot afford it. Who is going to pay for me to move there ? I am not poor.
29
It shouldn't be one way. Also give incentives to better off folks to move into poor neighborhoods.
When moving the poor, rents must be heavily subsidized, or apartment complexes must be built in well off neighborhoods. Those advocating for this ignore potential loss of property values of neighborhoods and tend to disparage folks who are concerned.
If enough people having solid incomes could be enticed to poor residential areas via tax breaks, things as grocery stores with fruits and vegetables could take root.
Well meaning Government mandated housing programs have a abysmal history.
Let's try a light government touch at ground level .
Let the citizenry to deal with the nuts and bolts.
7
@Lane - This is already happening in many cities around the country, except it's called gentrification, and it doesn't seem to be welcome. Go figure.
17
Yes, and Congress should start with the Upper East Side, the area close to Fifth Avenue. Poor families could be settled, for example, into some of the rooms in the majestic townhouses of former Mayor Mike Bloomberg and other titans of finance, industry, technology, media and entertaintment.
20
California approved $2bn in funding for low-income housing two years ago. That money sits, unspent, because neighborhoods that are doing well are unwilling to allow the construction of units that will house upwards of 100,000 of their fellow citizens in their midst.
There is no question that funding is needed to move hundreds of thousands of homeless families, single mothers, veterans, and young people whose salaries don't support current housing prices. But without, at the very same time, putting together a campaign to convince the middle class to cooperate and allow back those who fell out due to the Great Recession and its aftermath, that money will sit unspent, as well.
The media, including this nation's prominent economists, did a very poor job of continually informing the public of what became of the 6.5 million Americans who lost their jobs to the Great Recession. They did a very poor job of describing their outcomes as the nation began and then continued to add jobs. Sure, millions of jobs have been added back, but that is hardly the end of the story. We see stories about how vulnerable the middle class is to a $400 emergency, but not why. Inequality is rising even more now, under Trump. We need solutions, but they need to be presented together with much better explanations of what needs to be done. Otherwise, NIMBYism will win, again.
---
Notes on Paul Krugman's 'Capitalism, Socialism, and Unfreedom'
https://wp.me/p2KJ3H-345
10
To illustrate, here is an LA Times op-ed by my county's executive in defense of NIMBYism:
"Orange County isn’t an exclusive club where only the wealthy can live. We’re 3 million people who have problems just like everyone else in California: We work hard to pay for housing, we’re overtaxed and we’re trying to eke out a safe existence in a county where many cities are facing an increase in property crime.
We put a premium on our quality of life. Law and order are our priorities. We are not complacent about our problems. Maybe that’s why people want to live here, including a large homeless population.
As a supervisor for the county’s 3rd District, I see Orange County’s struggles and its achievements clearly, so I was particularly offended when Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti weighed in on our homeless relocation efforts. “I think that Orange County is a few years behind what we’ve gone through [in L.A.],” he said. “It’s not that we don’t have any NIMBYism, but we have much less.” He also said that Orange County cities would eventually “realize” that they have a homeless problem.
Orange County is neither heartless nor unaware of its homelessness problem. Over the last six months, we cleared the encampments along the Santa Ana River of nearly 700 homeless people, helping them into temporary housing, getting them mental health support and job training."
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-spitzer-homelessnes-oc-201805...
Some got help. Many didn't.
5
Some other takeaways --
The study notes that among the children who were younger when they moved, individuals in Section 8 made $607 less on average than those in the experimental group. This is accounted for entirely by a difference in marriage rates, and does not show an increase in household income.
Differences in the fertility rate between Section 8, experimental, and control group women are not statistically significant, but their are more likely to have a father listed on their child's SSN application.
Children in the experimental group were only 2.5 percentage points (pp) more likely to attend college during the ages 18-20, compared to a mean attendance rate of 16.5% in the control group, though they attended "better" colleges.
Both section 8 and the experimental treatment increase the likelihood of an individual filing tax returns relative to the control (4.8 and 5.57 pp respectively). I imagine that some of this is due to a reduced incarceration rate (most people in prison for a year do not make enough income to file taxes) and that this alone would justify the cost of the program.
It's worth noting that the mean income of the control group was $11,270 and that of the experimental was approximately $14,800. While this corresponds to a $302,000 increase in lifetime earnings, it still indicates that children born poor will remain poor. Less poor, but still poor (median US income for individuals is ~31k). Even with such a program there's a lot still to be done.
6
@Informer: Poor is anything below $50,000 per year for every earner in the household. Of course, then they can probably find safe, secure and even attractive housing without needing a voucher. We and the government are grossly underestimating the so-called "Living Wage."
6
I have never seen a reasonable outcome from this kind of social engineering. If you want to help the poor improve their lot, I can think of nothing better than for those well off to mentor the young, middle school though high school. My family was middle class but totally clueless about business, investments. etc. I learned those lessons the hard way.
Can you imagine a successful entrepreneur sharing her or his stories of their trials and tribulations and mentoring them. Likewise, professionals in STEM sharing their experiences. Let these kids make connections and gain mentors.
12
@rickw22The two recommendations are not mutually exclusive. Why not move the children and their parents to a better neighborhood and provide the mentoring? In fact there might even be a neighbor who would be interested as happened in my childhood when my parents moved from rural Tennessee to Memphis and the single woman neighbor and her mother were very helpful to my sister and me in adjusting to the more stringent demands of the city schools. I also know that the schools were better in our neighborhood than in the neighborhood of my cousins whose parents had found an apartment in a poor neighborhood. All the outcomes of the study quoted are true in my case. My sister and I have had excellent careers and a long life compared to the more unfortunate outcomes of my cousins.
3
The social engineering in this country is for the rich to take over everything and exploit the rest of us. I see it happening here, as it happened in San Francisco. There would be fewer poor people if the rich hadn't destroyed and looted the country and the economy.
1
I’d rather they try this affirmative social engineering as opposed to the prior version of red lining minorities into poor neighborhoods, denying them loans to move into better neighborhoods, and subsidizing the movement of white families into the suburbs. You guys were all for that type of social engineering when it left people of color in neighborhoods that were being divested, jobs disappeared, schools were defunded, and people were relegated to live in these types of neighborhoods.
Wouldn't it be a more practical investment to put more money into making some of those impoverished neighborhoods better? This is not to be naive or snobbish, but there are several concerns about shuffling people around.
First, how many people really want to leave their homes? Needing safety and opportunity are universal, but people also often want to stay where they have roots and connections.
Second, how many people can reasonably be relocated, and what will happen to those pockets from which people are moved?
Third, how will the relocated ultimately fare in new areas? This isn't just about potential neighborhood resistance. Will these individuals have the skills needed for jobs in a wealthier place? How will they, in the long term, manage the corresponding costs of living?
Making life better for more people should be the goal, but it seems that money towards bettering bleak areas would do more than transferring some people.
28
Moving poor families to "healthy" neighborhoods will simply render the latter unhealthy, by whatever metric you use for health. Have we learned nothing, nothing at all, from the last sixty years?
60
I’ve seen it. Some kids have made the jump to our neighborhood and immediately start fighting and graffiti and other behaviors that aren’t the social norm in the higher priced areas. My kid was beat up by one of these transplants. They had to ban that kid from the bus. Fighting is very unusual in our neighborhood.
49
I'm sorry, but my economist's head is spinning. Where does the extra housing in better neighborhoods come from, and what happens to the people already in it? This can only cause an inflationary spiral, and make housing in lower middle class neighborhoods more expensive.
The harder but better solution is to improve poor neighborhoods. The problem is that governments spend more on the rich. The richer you are, the more likely you are to have access to better services, or to have that pothole fixed.
47
No one can oppose moving families from crime-ridden and impoverished neighborhoods. But we must also get back to basics teaching self-reliance and healthy habits. So many families depend on what we would call junk and fast food, sometimes the same. Little activity. No, the time before the TV or computer does not count. Work out or rust out. We have deemphasized physical activity, kids now spending more time on their phones than walking and playing neighborhood sports.
In the past, we emphasized public service and a time for young people to give back, Military service, the Peace Corps for two years after high school. There is a need to have children become healthy adults, with some appreciation for self-discipline. The old saying is "There is no free lunch." Advancement and achievement in life depend on adopting some values. We used to look to the family, church, community, and schools to teach and now we will have to look to others in society to assist. Many a young person in the military learns to regulate his own life.
13
@DOUGLAS LLOYD MD MPH I agree, but this did not happen by itself. Republicans have been chipping away at safety nets for decades now. Their policy have contributed to a lack of jobs by moving manufacturing overseas. Reducing safety nets, the student loan crisis, removing regulations...on and on. Don't blame the poor!
10
If my gallbladder is functioning poorly, and the surgeon simply relocates it to a healthier part of my body will my problem be cured? Do they harbor resentment as there neighborhoods grow poorer and random luck has shown them that the American dream and compassion is dependent not on effort or a genuine desire to make life better for all, but by random luck? Depending on what zip code you live in, you will be eligible for lifesaving healthcare in a state that expanded Medicaid. Now, we are encouraging access to improved education that is contingent on geography and fate. While the motive is honorable, in a co try with the world's largest GDP we can well afford to make the sacrifices and find the solutions that allow all of our citizens to live free of hunger, disease, and extreme poverty.
11
If you want less of something you tax it, if you want more of something you subsidize it. Would agree with the premise of these vouchers, but would limit them to two parent families raising children, with preference given to those who are directly serving the community in which they live, as firefighters, police, teachers, nurses, etc. These valuable blue collar professions should be subsidized through these vouchers, because as the above saying goes, we want more of them. Results have shown that the Govt. can't replace a parent in the home, nor make up for deficits which will occur as a result. Govt. shouldn't even try, and let folks know that upfront. Fo all of those intact families that are trying hard, with small children, serving their communities, those are the ones who should get the helping hand via the vouchers. I think the voters would agree with that.
15
Two of our most recent presidents were raised by single mothers. Mothers who worked hard to raise their children well.
I too was raised by a single mom, now raise my kids in an intact two-parent family, and have founded and presided over multiple successful small businesses, employing dozens at a time.
I wasn't raised in an impoverished neighborhood (nor were those presidents I mentioned). And yes, (I'll say what you won't) our worst neighborhoods, and the culture within them, have a huge problem with missing dads, but that you would seek a blanket rule denying any of us with single parents a path out of the worst neighborhoods, shows a callousness on your part.
8
My daughter is a single mother. She did not plan it this way. She and her daughter should not be stigmatized and punished. Mothers and children are the most vulnerable in our society.
2
@No big deal
Sure, the voters will agree with your judgements on who deserves help and who doesn't.... not this voter.
1
Isnt this what gentrification is already doing naturally? Why not just give housing vouchers to poor people so they can stay and experience all the benefits of gentrification? These include more opportunities, less crime, better education, and less pollution. Plus is happening already all on it's own.
31
To be honest, gentrification is ruining my town, like it ruined San Francisco. The whites come in and overdevelop minority neighborhoods. The white neighborhoods still look ok, but ours are overcrowded, overpriced shitholes now. Just dying to get out, but these yuppies want my house for free. Maybe that's what will happen when they destroy my neighborhood. Between the taxes and the homeless and poor people begging and literally chasing me down the street for handouts, I'm constantly paying, paying, paying for "gentrification."
1
Great to see the rare cooperation between bitter rivals. Good idea provided thorough background check is made. Existing neighbours may not like the intruders to start with. It’s difficult for the new entrants also in the very beginning as the neighbourhood is sure to be unwelcome. It will take sometime before everything is sorted out.
I hope these families and more so in the case of children will do better in their lives as mentioned in this editorial.
1
Interesting how the the NYT endorses moving the poor into stable, healthy neighborhoods but criticizes gentrification of poorer neighborhoods. With gentrification, we see neighborhoods uplifted. Amenities increase. Suddenly there is a decent coffee shop, etc.
I understand there is a chorus shouting that this comes at the price of poorer people being forced out. I don't buy it. Having lived in a relatively poor neighborhood for the past 13 years, Sugar Hill, Harlem, now seeing some trickle of gentrification, I have heard of no one being forced out. Meanwhile, our local community board 9 approves building projects for subsidized housing that only increase the poverty rate for our area.
By the way, our public schools are way below average.
Why would the NYT push for the poor to be moved into wealthier neighborhoods while condemning wealthier people moving into poor neighborhoods?
88
@Leon
It is unusual to hear gentrification has not pushed the poor out, such has certainly not been the case in San Francisco and the Bay Area. As the well paid move in and want better housing conditions there is every reason for landlords to jack rents force tenants out and profit -- perhaps NYC has offsetting rent controls?
The proposed program is a plus if it happens. Localized resistance may be high.
2
@Leon
Because gentrification is colonization.
Every time my local area has a development, the big question is always will the taxes on the development cover the anticipated number of new children put in the school system....working with our local PTA, there is a sincere and laudable effort to "scholarship" the poor kids for activities and such, but there is probably a tipping point. My town is odd in Westchester that we have an equal amount in each quintile of income...unlike many communities that are either 150k household income or 25k household income and all the features of each....
6
@Casey:"is probably a tipping point"
Yeah, tipping point. That happened in my old neighborhood in Detroit. The liberals, in distant safe locations. screamed: "Look, white flight!".
Is the term "tipping point" part of a dog whistle tune?
2
It's an imperfect attempt at a solution to a complex problem. It's probably worth the chance, but let's be honest, it's not fair to the people whose neighborhoods will be selected to house the relocated people.
Let's put aside for a moment that the people who have established the "healthy" neighborhoods apparently don't a voice in the matter. For argument's sake, let's assume that their needs, concerns and priorities will be dealt with in a constructive manner should the experiment not work out well. I assume that the program will have some funding or contingency resources to address that possible outcome.
So let's cross our fingers and hope for the best.
Being poor does not mean a person is not potentially a good contributor to society. Sometimes just the chance at a better opportunity can make all the difference. Let's hope so.
But let's also keep in mind that it's not only those poor people who are being located. Their acquaintances, their relatives, their extended families will also be in tow. Let's assume that all of them will be courteous and will do their best to make the experiment work out well for the relocated people and for the host neighborhood.
There is no perfect solution to the problem of being poor and living in an "unhealthy" neighborhood. Let's hope that it works for all the parties involved.
That's a lot of hope. It will all boil down to how the people involved behave with respect and deference to each other.
7
@TDurk
You're right, that is a lot of hope.
It seems to be combined, in your case, with a healthy dose of doubt.
It might be worth emphasizing that the respect and the deference need emphatically to flow both ways.
And it wouldn't hurt if residents of the neighborhoods selected could find a way to be genuinely welcoming. As one does with new neighbors.
One's concerns about real estate ought not to overshadow the need for a little genuine kindness and understanding.
3
Besides being blatantly anti-city, I feel like this policy defines healthy neighborhood as something out of the 1950s— with detached homes, homogeneous population and car-dependent. Why can we truly invest in our central cities?
12
@Maura?:" Why can we truly invest in our central cities?"
Public housing projects are passe'. Sights are set on other targets now.
"Young people whose families used vouchers in a federally designed experiment in the 1990s to move from deeply impoverished neighborhoods to communities with more opportunities grew up to be better educated and have higher incomes, according to a 2015 study by three Harvard economists." (hint: google Raj Chetty)
Ok, 15 year+ study done, results highly positive, why are we doing another modest pilot program?
7
While this sounds good in theory, why is the Editorial Board not considering the views of people who live in those "healthy" neighborhoods? Did the Editorial Board ask those residents whether they want poor people moving into their neighborhoods before making such recommendations?
I live in one of those healthy neighborhoods with safe streets, good schools, and great services. I paid a premium to buy a home in this area, and one of my criteria was that I wanted to live with people in the same socio-economic status as me. If I wanted to have poor people living around me, I could have bought a house at 1/4 the price I paid. I do not want poor people living near me for a multitude of reasons - will they maintain their property like I do? Will they have the same social etiquette my current neighbors do? Will we have random people coming into the neighborhood? These are all valid questions, and should be addressed before any such policies are implemented.
126
@PK
Sorry PK, but the views of the people who made the "healthy" neighborhoods are irrelevant to the opinions of the people who favor such actions.
To simply raise your points illustrates a callous, some would call it racist, indifference to the righteous needs of the poor. How dare you. Clearly such people who resent their lives being infringed upon care only about financial property values and not at all about the health, safety and quality of life they've established in their "healthy" neighborhoods.
When these social engineering schemes are hatched, the only viewpoints that matter are the proponents of the scheme.
You should know that by now.
And the proponents who scoff at the legitimate concerns of the "healthy" people should know that their contempt for the "healthy" people will only poison the well.
@PK
Do you ever travel outside of your healthy neighborhood? How far away do people live in poverty? No matter where you live people in poverty are the ones that handle and serve your food, keep your hospitals and workplaces clean and care for your children. Do you feel any responsibility to make the world better for all of it's citizens, especially your neighbors? Fortunately, those living in poverty are still a minority in our nation. Integrating them into mainstream society is not only the right thing to do, it is a proven method to give them better lives which in turn makes everyone's lives safer and more secure.
2
@PK
The poor are damned as described (and perceived). Why should anything be done, such as truly upgrading the public school system at its lower end to help poor children develop? In part because the social setting heavily determines attitudes, thus a mixed class room can have a beneficial effect on the poor child and an enlightening effect on its classmates of "acceptance," not a bad outcome for either category.
There are a lot of factors that may not make this a good idea. People tend to rely on a network of family and friends for child care and other types of support. Those people won’t be around in a new neighborhood. Cultural factors are also a consideration. People who are from a poor, chaotic background will bring those problems with them to a new neighborhood. Neighbors from a different background will not miraculously cure any ills they might have. They also might not welcome their new neighbors or kids in their children’s classrooms. Perhaps it would be a better idea to make neighborhood schools and housing of higher quality and provide more options for people where they already choose to reside.
46
You’re making too much sense.
2
Hmmmm. Well, hugely positive that anyone in Congress can agree to anything. And consensus that poor people should be helped---well that may be the best thing that's happened in a long time.
But...really? This proposal has naivete stamped all over it.
"Sprinkling" poor people throughout neighborhoods as others point out isn't really going to work and might not be favorably received by the poor people being sprinkled.
Also, it doesn't address any of the root causes of poverty. Being surrounded by nice houses doesn't really compensate for all the poor decisions that poor children are the victims of like being raised by a single mother who...is 16 years old. Paying a salary to young people for not getting pregnant would be a far more effective measure. We should pick say 25 years old at the bar and say for every year you do not have a child, you will receive any annual payment for the government. At the age of 25, it sunsets. Presumably most people are mature enough to understand at 25 what's involved in bringing a child into this world. They could use these payments for college tuition, professional development or whatever. Much cheaper for society than the long term cost of teenage pregnancy. Would also provide teach teenagers with powerful incentives to make rational decisions, ---think of it like one big marshmallow test.
33
@Ines
This is a good ideas. Positive incentives work. Unfortunately we live in a country where a small number have great influence in restricting access to family planning services. Making these services available should be part of any such incentive system.
1
Let's start in NY State. 196 miles, from the home of the NY Times, as the crow flies.
As Edsall noted, in his Op-Ed, on April 19th, 2018
"in the struggling Syracuse metropolitan area families moving in between 2005 and 2016 had median household incomes of $35,219 — $7,229 less than the median income of the families moving out of the region, $42,448."
They poor move in, because housing is cheap. Anyone who can barley afford it leaves fleeing
It would be a good start for tickets out of poverty, ever increasing
11
I’ve seen children thrive through housing voucher programs into wealthier neighborhoods and I’ve seen neighborhoods take a downward trend through flight and poor home maintenance due to these programs - it’s complex.
44
Indeed complex and your simple points distill it well.
I wonder how many on the editorial board live in neighborhoods where these programs would place families (given that Manhattan's priciest neighborhoods would not be where families with vouchers could be placed).
3
Clearly justice requires that the wealthy be forbidden from moving out of their happy circumstances until such time as economic parity is achieved.
Is this editorial the Times attempt to bolster Republican chances in the upcoming elections? Or is the editorial board actually so very clueless?
2
Many poor people, although they know their current neighborhood is not that great, think that they will feel unwelcome and unwanted in middle-class areas. They don't feel they will be accepted as equals, but instead will go back and forth between rude rejection and unctuous patronization.
They are probably not entirely wrong.
19
This has been tried around the country several times and in most cases does not work out well. It doesn't seem to matter if the moving family is white, black, brown or whatever, there is a huge culture shock and clash of cultures. This is particularly true for the children. Kids can, unfortunately, be very cruel.
This is similar to problems facing homeless advocates. In many cases they have placed someone directly off the streets into apartments with disastrous results.
Think of this, any of us who were moved into an entirely different culture would have a hard time. If the culture is too different then success is very, very difficult and failure traumatizing for the family and especially the children. This is not something that can be done just willy nilly.
28
@Bruce1253
Social services must be a part of any relocation program. Choosing motivated families and helping them cope with the new surroundings would help the concept to succeed. It is done for refugees from foreign countries with proven positive results.
1
No one is forcing people to move. They just are helping out people who already want to move -- perhaps for areas with better job opportunities, maybe better schools and more safety. Sure, the longer term solution is to improve the poor neighborhoods, but that takes a long time and we have never really figured out how to do it -- so for children growing up right now, this is a good solution.
8
A wonderful idea, and I hope it happens, for it would show a bi-partisan effort in congress, but as long as the financial divide between the wealthy and the poor continues to widen in this country, with the middle class shrinking into the working class, and wages stagnating, cost of living climbing, and health care cost out of control (and remember that just because one has health care insurance doesn't mean one gets to use it in our lovely system), this won't happen. It reminds me of President Johnson's view of the Great Society, and it should have happened, but it didn't. This won't either because most wealthy people, including those who are in congress, really don't care for the working classes. They see them as necessary, but they have little empathy for them. They are usable groups to be played with at election time.
4
This seems to be the housing version of school busing. The intention is noble and the pilot is promising but the outcome in the larger trial may not be as hoped.
75
@Toni
The concept behind busing was laudable, but as a practical matter created hardship on children. Unfortunately, re-segregation in schools and communities has occurred in many places.
This program of relocating individual families would not seem to create any hardship and, it is hoped, the broadening of cultural contact would be beneficial to all involved.
1
@Toni: thanks, I was just about to write that.
And we all know how bussing worked out -- it gutted most of the cities it was tried in, and middle class families fled for the suburbs.
People work very hard to to buy homes and move into "nice" neighborhoods with good schools. If the people next door got a "free pass" to live in the same exact neighborhood -- without working hard -- and do not share your middle class values -- that person who DID work hard and paid all their own bills and bought their own house....will be furiously angry.
Maybe angry enough to vote for the other party.
2
I live in a middle-class neighborhood in Dallas. For years, there was a Section 8 apartment complex a few blocks down the road. The owners maintained it well and provided amenities like free Wi-Fi, a center where children could get tutoring and snacks after school, and a small dog park. All of the residents I met were wonderful. They took part in neighborhood activities, brought their kids trick-or-treating at Halloween, and hosted an annual communal holiday meal. We all benefited from that complex.
Sadly, the owners sold the complex to another company a couple of years ago. The new owner terminated everyone's lease, demolished the apartments and replaced them with condos that it rents to students and young professionals for three times what the former residents paid. I hope all the former renters landed on their feet in another nice neighborhood where their families are welcome and they can thrive. They deserve it.
68
I recall a similar program where high performing students were paired with lower performing students with the goal of lifting-up of the lower performing students.
Why does no one ever ask what is in the interest of the higher performing students?
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@SteveRR
If no one asks, perhaps that is because the answer is obvious, and does not further the agenda of those who propose such programs. Presumably, the bipartisan who agreed on this wonderful program are going to make very sure that the poor families which are moved to neighborhoods with better housing, better schools, better jobs and better transportation, are moved anywhere but the neighborhoods in which they and their children live.
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@SteveRR:"Why does no one ever ask what is in the interest of the higher performing students?"
There have been claims that such integration is actually in the interest of the higher performing students.
Otherwise someone would have to answer your question.
@SteveRR, many studies have shown that inclusive classrooms help underperforming students and at the same do not have a negative impact on higher performing students. So it’s a win-win, pretty much.
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Rental subsidies alleviate two burdens. Housing becomes affordable and families have more choices in terms of communities. From the beginning, rental subsidies supported only a small share of the eligible families. SNAP (formerly food stamps) program and EITC are based on need. When the local rent subsidy program is properly administered, the rental unit is checked out to ensure that it meets basic needs. Providing sufficient funds to meet the need and proper management of the local programs will help these families.
The Editorial states, "Congress should move poor families to healthy neighborhoods.". If you agree with this, allow me to ask, would you like Congress to decide where you should live? If the lack of affordable housing results in poor neighborhood choices, simply ensuring rental subsidies for all eligible families will resolve the bulk of the problem.
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It's wonderful that Republicans are signing on to this effort. I cannot imagine what it must be like for parents who want better for their children to be stuck in depressed (economically and psychologically) neighborhoods. For all of us, moving is a big expense but it must be prohibitive for the poor. Please keep these hopeful bipartisan efforts in the news whenever and wherever they occur! We need some good news.
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@abigail49 I bet you - and all of us - can imagine it. I bet we can imagine that a "neighborhood" is made up of the imperfect people and places that become part of hearts and identities. Where we come from means something very deep and dear to us as humans, even when that place is difficult. I bet we can all imagine that removing obstacles to health and well-being, devoting resources to these neighborhoods, listening to and investing in wise and capable people from these neighborhoods who have solutions a-plenty, could create a situation where neighborhoods like these transform themselves into places where people are proud, healthy, and safe. Instead, these law-makers are imagining these neighborhoods like toxic waste sites full of doomed people, of whom they are only willing to save a few. I don't want to let my imagination be polluted by their image, do you?
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@Michelle All you say is true and improving neighborhoods would be preferable. But kids grow up fast. Progress on all the issues you mention will be slow. Like trying to improve neighborhood schools. Many middle-class parents choose where to live based on how good the neighborhood school is. Or, if they find that the school their child is attending is subpar, they will do whatever it takes to get the child in a better school. They don't wait for that school to improve. Like I say, kids grow up fast.
I seem to remember an article in the past year or two about a similar program. That program was described as having some success stories. Does anyone else recall this, and know if it was a federal or a local program, and if it is still going on?
Yes it’s called “moving to opportunity” and it has been experimented with for years.
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My concern is that it is too often a hugely expensive effort that takes money away from the revitalization of poorer neighborhoods. A good example was the proposal for a public housing project on Fountainview in Houston. This housing would have cost more than $200,000 a unit. Meanwhile a few miles away there are hundreds of older apartments suffering from horrific deferred maintenance, that could be bought and rehabbed for 1/4 the price. (They could have provided safe, affordable housing for four times as many people while also helping to stabilize a neighborhood).
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Don’t get me wrong. It is a good idea to ‘move people to opportunity’. But it is also a good idea to move opportunity to people and help improve those “bad” neighborhoods. Really both should occur. I’m just saying it doesn’t seem that they are.
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@ZAW If you're not already, you should get involved with Habitat for Humanity or a similar organization. Wherever Habitat builds or rehabs homes, the results can be remarkable. People in nearby homes often start fixing up their own dwellings, cleaning up streets and lots, and doing what they can to make the area welcoming to new residents. Habitat can't solve every issue facing poorer areas, but the houses and the sense of community it builds provide a good foundation for stronger neighborhoods.
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@TexasTabby Habitat also does something very important, that is ignored by other propositions.
They spend time teaching the members of the families they help how to live in their new homes in such a way as to fit in with the community. Many of these people have no idea how to keep up a house, clean up after themselves, not throw trash all over their yard, pick up the dog poop, etc.
A speculator bought several homes in my neighborhood a few years ago and rented them to section 8. It was a disaster for those of us who were working long hours and overtime to afford our homes. Cars were up on blocks in the driveways, yards never watered became unsightly dirt patches with trash strewn everywhere, aggressive dogs unleashed and threatening. Most of us sold our homes at less than good prices and got out. Renters of that calibre don't care and don't belong in working class neighborhoods.
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@grmadragon It is the responsibility of the city government to go after slum landlords who allow their tenants to trash up properties. Instead of fleeing, you and your neighbors should have protested to your city government.
Once again, the geniuses speak. Forgetting that it's probably better to fix the root cause of a problem before trying to social engineer a solution for the symptom.
Like @Navigator said: "What could [possibly] go wrong?"
I wonder how many of the geniuses coming up with this social engineering project have ever lived in different neighborhoods, in different cities, in different countries, on different continents?
It's amazing what you learn when moving about the world. But a few things always stands true no matter where one might live: A university education is no guarantee of intelligence; reactionary approaches to symptoms and not the causes have but fleeting success; politicians will do anything for a buck; no one but software developers fully understand regression (cause and effect) -- simple solutions to complex problems usually backfire.
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Instead of vouchers, restructure taxes so that public schools and teachers get plenty of money to educate all of us. Rebuild our economy so that there's decent housing within reach of anyone working at Walmart. Poor neighborhoods are a symptom; cure the problem : gross income inequality.
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@Gigi, good luck with that, when even so-called "progressive" politicians like Bernie Sanders insist on putting the military Keynesianism of Lockheed's budget-busting F-35 fighter jet ahead of the health and home values of his most vulnerable Vermont constituents, be they immigrant refugees; the working poor; elderly; veterans, etc.
@Gigi "gross income inequality" is indeed the problem. Recent articles in the NYT have pointed out that unless you earn enough to save and INVEST you will not thrive. One multiplier for those who invest is capital gains tax rates which Warren Buffet points to when he says he pays a lower rate than his secretary. Why should the earnings of a dollar bill in the stock market be favored with a lower tax rate than the earnings of a secretary or a teacher or a bus driver? Because those stock market profits can be invested in the campaigns of congressmen who will keep those rates unequal and keep the wealthy getting even wealthier ... and themselves re-elected.
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2,000 vouchers? Harlem has a population of 375,000 people. You could use up 2,000 vouchers in East Harlem alone, then what's the solution for the rest of the nation? This is yet another proposal steeped in the idea that if the poor would just be more like the wealthy, if they'd just assimilate all would be well. It's a fantasy with no facts behind it. Cultural Anthropology and Human Psychology as well as Micro and Macro - Economics are the ingredients for this pie, I don't see them here because no thought has gone into this - just wishing. This is so simplistic it's not even slogan thinking the usual balm for troubled greed among the upper classes. Society as a whole must be changed. What you are given at birth and through your developing years must not depend on your parents incoe alone. This is trying to pass off a lottery as a policy - it isn't even a nice try. Two words: Scandinavian Model, no not the pretty kind.
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@Arthur, Your examples are of two central city neighborhoods in Manhattan. These are pretty rare exceptions to the rule that poor people often have to live far away from areas with a good number of jobs (especially well paid ones), and, not coincidentally, have seen big increases in median income over the last decade or so. Where I am, in Saint Louis, with no subway to speak of and inadequate busses, moving from a poor, low-opportunity neighborhood with few jobs to a wealthier one is the difference between a 10 and 90 minute one-way commute, or, effectively, a job and no job at all. Not to mention that school opportunities vary greatly by zip code. I'm glad you support giving equal opportunities to children, and so do I. But you'd have to pretty myopic not to realize that this proposal does exactly that.
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Perhaps the poor should be like the wealthy in someways, like not having as many children. Anecdotally, it seems like wealthy families are very small and poor families tend to be larger.
Children are a blessing but having children when you are financially unable to take care of them limits your prospects of getting a better job and removes a lot of an already small disposable income; income you could use to help better your current situation, like starting a small business.
No one chooses to be born into poverty or to be poor but we would be naïve to assume that life choices don’t impact someone’s ability to rise out of poverty. The only way we can address these very complex and difficult problems is to first acknowledge that most cases of poverty is caused by both circumstance and personal choices.
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@Arthur This is a continuation of a demonstration project undertaken in the 90's, that did show positive effects.
From the article:
"Young people whose families used vouchers in a federally designed experiment in the 1990s to move from deeply impoverished neighborhoods to communities with more opportunities grew up to be better educated and have higher incomes, according to a 2015 study by three Harvard economists. Relocation drove up the adult earnings of these children in all five cities involved in the study — a finding that held true for whites, blacks and Latinos, as well as for boys and girls. The longer children lived in better neighborhoods, the greater their eventual gains. The Harvard study showed that taxpayers as a whole benefit when poor families with children migrate to such communities, with tax revenues that flow from rising incomes possibly offsetting the cost of vouchers."
Actually, my sincere hope is that Ocasio-Cortez will be astoundingly effective – more so than anyone has even thought to anticipate – in moving healthy neighborhoods to poor families...
And Atul Gawande, in bringing the best concepts and practices of workplace-based health care insurance back into the public sector – once he and his sponsors figure out what they are...
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I am quite certain that gentrification of poor neighborhoods will continue.
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School busing schemes from years ago attempting to improve educational opportunities for poor kids had the same well-meaning intent. Of course, school busing turned out to be one of the worst social engineering failures in American history. History is about to repeat itself. Just wait and see.
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@mpound: Progressive and liberal folks would rather scream "Racists!" at other folks who want to avoid the destructive scheme like bussing.
It seems the exception is the NYC public school system. In that case bussing isn't even considered so residents can point to the racists in flyover country without a second thought. I think the word is hypocrite.
And NYT censors that's neither a personal attack or off topic.
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What is more concerning is the effect that moving these poor kids to "better" neighborhoods have on those neighborhoods and its kids. Was it neutral, beneficial for the kids in some pop psych way, or were the kids harmed by being yoked to slower, tougher and less motivated kids that the government imported?
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@Erwin Haas, why do you assume that these children from poorer neighborhoods are “slower, tougher, and less motivated?” Ouch.
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@erwin haas
Another offensive opinion about poor people. Their children must be slow and less motivated than mine because I have money enough to buy a house in an middle/upper class neighborhood.
Congratulations.
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Make to possible for those in the program to own the houses they will live in, not just rent. This is true of public housing in general, work it out so that those in these big projects can own their apartments.
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@mijosc: And they will be responsible for repairs? Please.
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@mijosc
One very small issue, owning property is a constant money pit, roofs leak, walls require painting, windows need caulk, unending problems. Individuals living on vouchers have no monies left to fix the domicile. The house becomes a rubble, leading to another poor neighborhood, an unending cycle.
Home ownership also require well-paying jobs and education, including avoiding bad choices.
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Should you really spend millions relocating a few families to wealthier neighborhoods, or is that money far more efficiently spent directly helping poor areas? How do you choose who gets the limited number of vouchers? Aren't you simply accelerating the damage to poor areas by pulling out more of the remaining residents who possess the most potential and drive? Isn't that money better invested in schools and daycare that serves the poorest areas? This is a classic chicken and egg dilemma.
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@AndyW
You have a valid question but cast doubt on the issue by stating that the costs to help a few would be in the millions. Millions of dollars could help a very large number of people.
If we're to address the problem of poverty in the world's wealthiest country, programs like this must be tried and their relative effectiveness measured. Those who oppose even the existing social programs will point to the deficit while voting to add tens of billions to the defense budget.
The US already has 10 of the world's eighteen aircraft carriers and yet we're building more. What's wrong with this picture? Today's wars are not fought with big ships.
When will we understand that doing everything we can to move people out of poverty benefits all of us, economically and socially, while another aircraft carrier benefits only those companies who will build it?
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Actually wars today are fought with big ships. Aircraft carriers that carry up to 72 attack and reconnaissance aircraft supporting operations in Iraq and Syria. Destroyers and attack submarines with tomahawk cruise missiles. All essential strategic platforms for modern warfare.
@JMK - Support, yes, but the combat is local and on the ground, and drones can now perform the surveillance and guided missile attack functions. The missile attack on Libya was performed by B-2s from Missouri. No other country in the world can match our capabilities. Please tell me, who are we competing with and when will we have enough aircraft carriers?
When it comes to providing shelter for the homeless, or better communities for those trapped in poverty, what matters most is the size of the housing, the sheer number of people moved.
Can we learn from massive projects like the famous Pruitt-Igoe of St. Louis which began to decline even before they were completed? What does not work is moving a large amount of people into a settled community, or housing homeless people in large numbers. The homeless do not like massive shelters. I believe in these ideas, but action needs to be done on a small scale. Not hundreds of people at once, but small developments spread over a large area, a few families in any one community—integrated in small numbers, scattered through communities, not a massive number of people concentrated in one place. We need to get smart about what works and what does not. We need to ask both the people to be housed and/or moved, and the communities being asked to accept them what will work for them. We need to consider all groups.
Small and dispersed.
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@Naples I believe this is what this program targets. People are given rent subsidies to move to an area with low poverty into already existing rental units.
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Congress and the federal government are so efficient, wise and caring that a program like this would be a snap. What could go wrong?
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Well, there's white guys and Donald Trump for a start. Apparently they've got some prob with rationality.
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Absolutely. The only folks out there smarter than congress in all ways of social engineering are the NYT editorial board.
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This is just one idea and a good one at that. Take a step back and try to imagine a planet where every country's inhabitants, the rich, the powerful, the great brains, with awesome charity and integrity, young and old alike all pitching in to make this planet a universal symbol of what human beings could do when they put the mind to it.
Why the effort alone, without considering the degree of success, would lift people's lives upward and clear of the abyss of poverty. And you know what, all the people doing the lifting would sense a degree of happiness they had not experienced before - equal to the happiness of those lifted out of poverty.
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Washington, D.C. buses thousands of schoolchildren from poor neighborhoods to schools in upscale neighborhoods. This program could be criticized as requiring expensive expansion and upgrading of schools in upscale neighborhoods instead of investing in poor areas. Yet the children and their parents are palpably benefiting. Walking by the local schoolyard every day, I see children from the entire League of Nations playing together. Everyone is having a great time! It gives me hope that some things are going very well in America.
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@Kenneth J. Dillon: Taking your analogy further, if it's the league of nations great.
But if it looks more like reps from northern Europe and Africa things may not turn out so joyous.
Your analogy, not mine.
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@Honeybee
Theoretically, it is possible that all the kids being bused across town to a public school are from affluent families. Realistically, it seems much less likely in the circumstances of Washington, D.C.
@Jp
Rest assured, their parents come from the four ends of the Earth! As I said, the entire League of Nations. This is D.C. in 2018.
In my humble opinion, there should be a way to keep people where they may want to be ... and make that location healthy. But I am very glad to see the topic take priority by having this article published. May both ideas find a way ...
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My question on the research so far: Were any of the other variables which could be confounding controlled for? For example, perhaps the people in earlier research were "special" in some way--such as particularly motivated.
I'm not saying that the research was compromised, but I have to wonder since there are no details described.
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@Ginger There is a hyperlink in the article to the study, which was a randomized, controlled trial of 4600 families, followed over several years. The economists looked at the effect of both age of the child at the move and the length of "exposure" to the new environment. They found that "moving a child out of public housing to a low-poverty area when young (at age 8 on average) using a subsidized voucher like the MTO experimental voucher will increase the
child's total lifetime earnings by about $302,000." Moreover, they estimate that taxes paid on this increased income would more than offset the cost of their vouchers. Social science research does not get much better methodologically.
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Much as I agree that this approach is effective and desperately needed, Would this approach put even more upward price pressure on housing in better neighborhoods?
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@Winifred Williams
According to the brochure accompanying the article the property owners have to volunteer for the program and say they will accept the vouchers.