Most of these kids’ moms are single, and the father is out of their lives.
As to why men do that…
The demographic explanation of “youth bulges” as explained by Gunnar Heinsohn explains a lot. In a nutshell, he says most war zones, (and we can say inner city gang turf are war zones, no?) exist because of the combiantion of
a. a power thirsty charismatic, violent and criminal leader
b. a power base of demographically superfluous young men, the result of high birth rates in the preceding 20 years, young men looking for a “raison d’etre” and their parents allowing them to go off to war because they’ve got a couple more sons to spare, or they are too distraught (or unable) to care what their kids are up to.
Heinsons demographic statistics explain, and predict, with chilling accuracy, which countries and era’s are likely to have political instability.
When you collect a large number of assholes together, you tend to wind up with a large pile of shit.
Who the hell do we think we are kidding?
Regards,
Shodan
I used to think it was mostly all about home ownership or owning some sort of dwelling to take pride in. But even in the solidly middle class neighborhood that I live in there are a few homes that are not being taken care of, the grass hardly gets cut, windows are filthy, etc… This has nothing to do with being poor, this is just being lazy and not caring or as my father likes to say “just being a loser”.
There will always be that 10% or so of people who either can’t or won’t strive to improve their lot in life.
I do have sympathy for people who have just run into bad luck but many times it just isn’t the case. Oh well.
This sounds like what happened with where my mother lived in the 80’s. She’d just retired and qualified for what was then senior housing in a high rise. She was happy there when it was mostly seniors. But then the rules were changed to have the housing be for seniors and “the disabled”. The problem was, “disabled” included schizos who’d go off their meds regularly, [del]recovering[/del] backsliding chemically dependent, just-barely independent people of sub-normal IQ, often with associated behavoral problems, etc. So you now had old frail seniors stuck in with people whose disability was a host of dysfunctional behaviors, people at the absolute line between being mainstreamed and institutionalized. After that, my mom couldn’t get out of there fast enough.
Yeah, this about sums it up.
Speaking as someone brought up on a rough council estate in the U.K. I totally agree with you .
Concentrate the ignorant,the stupid and the anti social into one area and you get a shithole, peer pressure on kids and teens often convert those who actually have some sort of chance of bettering themselves into the losers that they are surrounded by.
And for some reason the losers majorly outbreed the socially responsible.
The people saying that it’s putting together people with no prospects are right. Generally now projects are smaller and interspersed amongst the rest of the population. In New York new construction has to have a certain percentage of affordable units. This way the poor come into contact with the not poor more.
Also there is a level of institutional neglect. There was a big scandal recently about the number of elevators that don’t work in projects.
I think he meant that Cabrini Green was a counter example to what he was talking about.
Ya know, I looked at the pics of Cabrini Green. I was rather amazed at the very, very wide walkways in front of the apartments. Really, that looked rather nice. And also the walkways suspended between buildings was a great idea. I’ve seen MUCH smaller apartments/condos with MUCH less outside your door space and MUCH less thought regarding moving around the complex.
There is no doubt it was a bad model for subsidized housing, but I bet maintenance played a part in it also. Population density does not seem that much higher than in high rises/student housing/apartment complexes that aren’t low income.
However, the density of the TYPE of inhabitants most certainly seems to be the problem. Heck, in Tampa, there is a project that isn’t over 2 stories, a bunch of buildings, a ton of green (dirt) space. I wouldn’t drive through it on a bet. Structurally, not much different that joe apartment building.
Here inBoston, public housing was actually quite good, up until the late 1960’s. This was because the tenants were screened, and subject to many regulations: untill 1968, you had to be married to qualify for an apartment. There were also noise regulations, and curfew hours for the kids. The ACLU and other groups pushed for changes to these rules, so that the “projects” became a dumping ground for single mothers, and later (in the 1980’s), they started placing drug addicts and ex-mental patients in them. The results were bad.
These things look great on paper or as part of a model, but the reality is totally different. Drug dealers loved to lurk in the stairwells. The wide sidewalks gave them a great view of approaching police. If the police did turn up, there was a built in escape route via the suspended walkways. :smack:Not quite what the architect had in mind :smack:
I mean no disrespect to the OP but, the title made my eyes roll out of my head and across the floor.
I was a project dweller between 1980-1985. Before that, I was living in an upper middle classed sudivision, and I had never heard of projects. When I moved there it was similar to AuntiePam’s description except we had one-story duplexes.
The occupants were mostly young families (with both parents), and elderly singles and couples. There were a few single parents with kids of all ages. The only violence was domestic, but still rare. The worse thing I saw was a guy shoot himself in the head.
The worst thing about living there was the attitude of outsiders. I got turned down for 4 jobs in one week after the employers found out where I lived.
If you didn’t have a car and needed to go to the hospital, but not bad enough to call an ambulance, you had to call one anyway because taxi’s would not show up.
It’s been replaced by a high-income gated community. Which I personally find much creepier than projects.
Something here doesn’t quite add up. If there was really little violence or crime, why wouldn’t taxis show up?
Because of the reputations of projects in general.
It strikes me as odd that the ACLU, concerned for the most part on protecting our 1st Amendment rights, would have a dog in that fight.
Do you have a cite to support your claim of the ACLU’s involvement?
Thanks.
Amen! Brotha! (Or Sistah!)
I just moved to a very, very rural mountain top, right down the road is an actual gated community. The first time I saw the gate, I about drove off the mountain laughing. Then again, I think it is helpful to keep “those kind” of people contained.
Never lived in a “project” but I have lived in a couple “co-ops” which is non-profit housing that has a subsidy program so most people pay less than market value, but enough to cover maintenance costs as well as to cover the cost of the subsidized units. One of my neighbors was in a subsidized unit.
Arbitratiry picking numbers, let’s pretend that market value for our unit would be $1,100 per month. We paid $875 a month. Our neighbor paid $600 (he qualified for subsidy because his income was limited to to a disability that affected the kind of job he could get).
In the co-op, maintenance was always awesome. Units were inspected every year, and every few years there would be an upgrade of some kind: I lived there about 15 years ago and since then the wall to wall carpeting in every unit has been replaced twice, for example. Or new appliances, or something.
Here in Toronto, they are demolishing and rebuilding Regent Park, Canada’s first and largest social housing project. I think it’s on Wiki, but I don’t know to what detail. Yeah, IMHO, it’s not designed well. The ideas were good in theory, sort of creating individual quads, like mini communities within a community, with the idea that there would be civic pride and foster good neighbor relations. In practice it kind of created closed spaces that marginalized the “communities within a community”. So instead of being part of the larger cityscape of the area, they ended up being more isolated.
Imagine you and a group of your neighbors are all standing in a circle facing each other. Another group of your neighbors are standing in a circle, all facing each other. That’s great, you know your immediate neighbor… but your circle has its back to their circle, and vice versa, so you aren’t interacting with the rest of your neighbors, and you all have your back to the rest of the city too, so you aren’t really feeling all that embraced by all those folks outside your circle. That’s essentially how the design didn’t work.
The Regent Park Revitalization plan is going to try to combine market housing with social housing. And conceptually the design seems to have reversed itself. I haven’t seen many of the plans though.
Sometimes areas get a bad reputation undeservedly, it can kind of spread like an urban legend.
In the one co-op where I lived taxis would come to our complex, but not the neighboring one. There was no difference in crime rate or history. The only difference was that the other complex was more ethnically diverse, so there were rumors of drug dealing (dark skinned people must be up to no good, I guess. :rolleyes: )
How are those stratified apartments doing? I can’t imagine any sort of snob at all tolerating living anywhere where anyone low income lived, unless they were the hired help.
They don’t necessarily know who is the neighbor who is subsidized or not? In big apartment buildings, you don’t necessarily know all your neighbors, nor will you share the elevator with them on a daily basis.