🚀 go-pugleaf

Eternal Nay-sayer  <no@spam.for.me> wrote:
>In dc.biking Miguel Cruz <spam@admin.u.nu> wrote:
>> It might be expensive in the short term, but how about keeping the same
>> amount of public housing, but scattering it in single units throughout
>> the city?  In the Netherlands they've been trying to locate public
>> housing in the wealthiest areas, on the theory that this will bring
>> people together in the schools and the neighborhoods and lead to less of
>> a dueling-fortresses mentality.
>
> Geez, and here I was thinking that getting out of a lousy public high
> school, then working my way through engineering school, then paying off
> a huge amount of student loans, and finally becoming comfortably middle
> class, I finally had the right to leave the slums. So now I can pay my
> tax dollars to have the slums brought to me. 

It's not the presence of poor people that makes a place a slum. The slum
environment is created by a whole cocktail of factors, in which poverty is
common but neither necessary nor sufficient.

> Perhaps I'm missing something really deep and really profound, but I
> can't see a single reason why I, as a taxpayer, should NOT be screaming
> bloody murder if they try to vaporize property values in my neighborhood
> (including, I might add, the house I'm going to be making mortgage
> payments on for a long, long time yet).

I don't believe that the presence of one poor family two blocks from you is
going to impact your property values. In fact, I'm quite sure that for one
reason or another there probably already is at least one poor family living
somewhere near you and you probably never noticed a thing.

> You could make the same arguement about prisons. Lots of unhappy people
> concentrated into miserable settings, not doing anyone a whole lot of
> good. Personally, I'm not going to make an arguement for releasing these
> people into society, because frankly, society is better off for having
> these people (both the poor and the prisoners) pidgeon-holed into their
> own special little enclaves.

Charming.

miguel
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