🚀 go-pugleaf

Eternal Nay-sayer wrote:

<snip>

> However, you usually don't get to choose your neighbors before you
> move. It's all pot luck. If you really, seriously don't like your
> neighbors, just absolutely can't tolerate them, the only thing you can
> really (reasonably) do is move, or encourage them to do so. And once you
> get into pricy real estate, regardless of how obnoxious the neighbors are,
> they usually keep the street-visible parts of their property looking good,
> which means you can probably unload your house for about what you paid for
> it and go elsewhere.

I don't know how pricey is pricey.  If you're talking McMansion I'll have to
pass.  Let me tell you of some of the incidents that happened to me when I was
living in Potomac.  For awhile there the kid across the street and his buddies
sat in his car in front of my house smoking MJ in the evenings.  When they
departed they would leave a pile of beer bottles on my lawn.  Someone stole my
$1200 bike from my carport and abandoned it in the local shopping center.
Someone tried to steal my VW but was too inept to hot-wire the thing and
abandoned it at the bottom of the hill.  It took me awhile to get it running
again.  Then someone dumped his trash in the middle of my driveway, but was too
stupid to remove his mail.  Pricey isn't much protection.

In that neighborhood the most obvious sign of care would have been whether the
lawn was mowed or not.  If the lawn were kept mowed it would have been several
years before the place got really ratty looking.  Even so, "looking good" is not
how I would have described all the houses.  Property values did not seem to
suffer.

> For a contrast, take a drive by a public housing project (sometime when the
> mayor isn't scheduled for a photo op), and look at how well maintained the
> property there is. Remember, this upkeep is a combination of the residents
> and the periodic intervention of a public works crew... Do you really want
> a unit or two of that transported into your neighborhood, where the
> public works crews will visit far less frequently? Even the strong
> supporters of scattered site housing acknowledge that a very careful
> selection process is needed for chosing people to be relocated into
> scattered site housing (especially housing in more affluent areas).

When I was going to Central High (now, I guess, Cardozo) in 1938, there was a
group of large apartments next to it called Clifton Terrace.  They were very
nice.  A couple of my school friends lived there.  There were
receptionist/concierges at a desk in the entrance hall and carpeting on the
floors.  They were well cared for places.  Twenty-five years later, when my
mother moved in for awhile, they were still clean and cared for.  When I wanted
to install a TV antenna for my mother, I had to have a big conference with the
janitorial staff and get their approval.  Fair enough.  That was then.

Then the ownership and everything else changed.  Most of the staff vanished.
The boilers went to hell.  Piss stains appeared on the walls and holes appeared
in the plaster.  The laundry rooms became a free kill zone.  My mother, of
course, was long gone the instant this started.  I retained a mild interest in
the place and one day I woke up to discover that my Clifton Terrace was just
about the most notorious slum in the city.

I've long been puzzled about this.  CT was not public housing then, though it
probably is now, what with Barry's lady and others having had their way with
it.  I've read books about "Defensible Space" and other stuff blaming
slumification on architecture, but that doesn't apply here.  It was the same
buildings all along.   What seems to have happened is that the succeeding owners
just started sucking all the money out of it without ever intending to put any
in.  The character of the tenants was the least of it.

The same principle must apply to scattered site housing.  As I understand this
the idea is to dilute the unfortunate amongst the more prosperous.  I agree with
you in that I don't want Clifton Terrace next or near to me here in the suburbs,
nor scattered site housing as it is likely to be implemented.  It is expecting
perhaps not the impossible, but at least the highly unlikely, that some hard
scrabble type juggling two jobs is going to take very much interest in
maintaining a showplace.  His place will indeed go to hell unless he gets help.


> Looking at the extreme, meticulous caution that DC has historically taken
> when undertaking public projects,

<Sarcasm Alert!!  Beep!   Beep!>

> and the fact that there's nothing that
> can be done if this fascinating little social experiment doesn't work out
> for the best, I'd really rather not have this game of financial Russian
> roulette going on in my neighborhood.

Quite so.  I was about to suggest that the neighbors of proposed scattered site
housing units get an agreement with the sponsoring government about the
maintenance of the property.  Any agreement with the District would be
worthless.  The situation in the suburbs is not so hopeless.

> What right do I have to say this? I own a home here. If the neighborhood
> goes bad, I'm left owning a property I no longer want to occupy and can't
> afford to sell. We're talking about my home here, where I and my family
> live, that may someday probably be the biggest chunk of our estate
> to be left to our kids. If you want to offer me assurances (in some
> legal sense) that the neighborhood isn't going to end up with one totally
> trashed eyesore, I'm willing to listen, but to the best of my knowledge,
> no such promise has ever been offered beyond "Our utterly meaningless
> study predicts that there won't be a problem".

Don't ask for a promise; demand a binding commitment.  If you don't get it,
fight.

> If you want to play this game in your neighborhood, and other neighborhood
> homeowners support you, fine. Build scattered site housing in your
> neighborhood. But leave my neighborhood out of it.

The flip side there is, if they're not in your backyard, they're in my
backyard.  They for sure aren't going away.  We've already seen in Chicago and
elsewhere that large projects don't work.  I don't think scattered site housing
is going to vanish, either, or even that it should.  The trick is for the
neighborhood to set the terms.

In back of my house, behind a palisade fence, there is some sort of County care
facility.  They have taken over a private residence and use it for several
people who use wheel chairs.  Mornings, there arrive a couple of big vans that
haul these folks off to work and bring them back in the evening.  They are good
neighbors and I have no objection.  One thing of interest though.  The County
did not tell us they were doing this and certainly did not ask if it was OK with
us.  I have been told that it is against some sort of regulation to do so.