Except for the “more expensive” part, you could be describing large swaths of metropolitan Detroit. 
I grew up living near subsidized housing. When I got married we bought a house across the street from subsidized housing. I thought it would be fine. It wasn’t. Every morning I had to pick up their shit from my lawn. Cigarette butts, McDonald’s bags, makeshift bongs, and more. We stuck it out for six years. The final straw was when someone smashed a boombox on the road and nobody cleaned it up. People walked by, just accepting that this was how they lived. I don’t live like that and I don’t want to live with people who do.
I worked in subsidized housing for twenty-six years. Nobody gets into your business like the government when it comes to any type of subsidized housing. Every little thing that goes wrong ends up with the tenants calling the government to complain.
Most of the tenants thought “the rules don’t apply to ME.” I want my boyfriend to live there, though he’s not on the lease? Of course. I want to move a dog in, though the leased clearly states “No pets.” Why not. The inspectors are coming out and I feel like smoking a joint when they are here. Sure. And, as I was told many a time “You’re going most of the rent. Why should I have to pay my share?”
I think the primary opposition to “affordable” (read: low-income) housing is that it’s almost always imposed from without on an area that’s perceived to be good the way it is, and people are aware of the downsides that people like Gus Gusterson,** Annie-Xmas**, **Dangerosa **and others mention.
It’s no different at its core than the government wanting to put anything unpleasant next to homes. People don’t want to deal with that shit, especially when it will lower their property values, affect their children’s educations negatively, and raise crime. And that’s not even mentioning the general class-based perception of the lower-income people as being trashy and undesirable.
I kind of think that if these efforts are to be successful, they need to either come with some kind of compensation to the existing residents (“Sorry for plunking down 2000 ghetto dwellers in your neighborhood- here’s a solid tax break”) or with very strong restrictions on the incoming residents to avoid trashiness, crime and the like.
There is no such thing as inherently affordable housing. There is just housing, supply and demand is what makes it affordable. Zoning laws and other building restrictions are what make housing so expensive.
I can totally see the point of people not wanting their neighborhood to change, to keep housing values high, and keeping undesirables away from our kids. However, using the government to pass laws for our benefit that hurt poor people is wrong. If someone wants to buy a piece of land and build apartments or mansions is should be nobodies business but the person whose land it is. It is just as wrong for someone to use the government to stop someone from building something nearby as it would be to do it themselves.
This inability to build enough houses hurts our economy by transferring money away from productive uses to lobbying governments. It makes it harder for people to move places where jobs are, people have to have longer commutes which means more stress and less family time, long commutes mean more environmental damage and higher carbon emissions.
NIMBYism is understandable but pernicious, it needs to be condemned.
“Affordable Housing” typically happens because of grants, tax breaks, or other incentives to the builder. It’s typically not the case that a builder decides to build low-cost housing in an otherwise high-cost area. Some government entity is incentivizing and compensating the builder. That’s why people can protest. They can influence whether or not the government entity can give the benefits for building in a specific area.
Speak for yourself, bucko.
My friend lives in a subdivision, a few years ago a subsidized house was built across the street from him. Now there are people coming and going all hours of the night, that’s their right but definitely not something the neighborhood was used to. But the weird thing is the refrigerator in the subsidized house keeps getting stolen. Damnest thing, but the housing authority replaced it each time. The housing authority even bolted the refrigerator to the floor to no avail.
I agree… but that’s not what’s happening here. What’s happening is that the government, in the guise of providing affordable* housing, is subsidizing or mandating, or otherwise causing a sort of flow against the economic current to put the housing where they want it.
If land owners in higher-income areas were free to do what they wanted, they’d more than likely NOT put low-income housing in. They’d probably put in higher-income housing, or retail or something that would generate more money.
But the government skews things by offering artificial subsidies and zoning that make low income housing an attractive thing to build, convert and/or maintain, in spite of economic forces that would dictate otherwise.
THAT is what people get torqued about- it’s a totally artificial situation that the government is deliberately fostering, and that while it may have debatable positive effects on some low-income people, it has definite negative effects on the people who already live there.
I mean, how would you feel if someone wanted to put a sewage treatment plant or landfill right in the midst of your neighborhood? You’d probably fight like tooth and nail, even though it’s something that ostensibly benefits everyone. But it lowers YOUR quality of life, and you were there first, right?
I’m not scared of everything. Puppies are fine. Kittens, however, are the devils plaything - cute, but sharp claws…of course white people in their right mind are afraid of kittens.
What usually happens is that there are 500 people who need housing, so the government allows a developer to build and sell 100 at market prices if they agree to build 10 to sell at submarket prices. This keeps the housing prices up and makes the government appear to be doing something about the problem. The government drives up the cost of housing and then tosses the poor a couple of crumbs. Government regulations add up to 40% to the cost of housing in this country. If every new home cost 40% less then alot more housing would suddenly become affordable.
People have the right to petition the government to allow them to set up shop and make $$.
People also have the right to petition the government to keep certain businesses from setting up shop, to protect their quality of life.
I might not raise holy hell at the city coucil meeting about a plan to build an apartment building on my street. But a landfill? A strip mall? A liquor store? A prison? You bet I’m going to fight–which is my right as a tax-paying citizen.
Which for all intents and purposes is saying the same thing. I think it’s understood that “affordable housing” means “lower than market equilibrium price”.
No. Zoning laws and other building restrictions are what prevents me from building a sewer plant next to a private home or constructing buildings that are not structurally sound.
In reality, a lot of factors determine whether housing in a region is “affordable”. Geography, the general economy,
If I have to live next door to it, it’s my business. I have to look at it. It’s going to affect my property values. I have to deal with the change in traffic patterns and the additional strain on local infrastructure.
So why in your mind do me and my neighbors have less or even equivalent “rights” to some wealthy developer who probably doesn’t even live in the town and has no vested interest in the community besides making a quick buck?
I’m against rent control (as a landlord), but the reason many cities feel compelled to institute some form of rent control or affordable housing because the market has priced out too many low income people. Developers often can not build more homes for geographical reasons or will not because it’s not economically viable to build anything but luxury condos. And I assume you don’t want private developers to use government eminent domain to just tear down older homes so they can build new ones.
Take Manhattan for example. High housing prices have little to nothing to do with rent control. It has to do with the desirability of the location, the high salaries of people who work there and the fact is physically located on an island. For a developer, it is only cost effective to buy a lot and demolish what’s there if they can replace it with a luxury high rise. The market is not going to incentivize developers to knock down a block of 6 story walk-ups and replace them with 30 floors of low-income housing in a city where a 400 sq ft apartment can rent for $4000 a month or sell for well over a million dollars.
Then can we PIAIPY (Put It All in Puddleglum’s Yard)? Always easy to say “yes” when it’s not your yard.
Are we talking about affordable housing, or social housing? Or are they the same thing in the US?
Around here, they’re different things. Affordable housing is a scheme to let lower-income employed people, who can’t buy a home any other way, buy a home at way below market value. I think they discontinued the scheme, but they should bring it back, and I would be all in favour of more affordable housing in my neighbourhood.
Social housing is housing that the government allocates to very-low-income people for a nominal rent. And yeah, I’ll admit it, I wouldn’t be happy about loads of it in our neighbourhood.
I don’t give a fuck about property values, because we have no intention of moving, so it makes no difference to us whether our house is worth 20 grand or 700 grand. Actually, lower house prices would be nice, since they would lower our property tax.
But what social housing gives you is neighbours who have no skin in the game. It’s generally accepted that owners, on average, make better neighbours than renters precisely because renters are less heavily invested in both the house and the neighbourhood. And government-funded renters are even less invested than private ones. Private renters, even if they’re horrible slobs by nature, have an incentive to keep the house in decent nick because otherwise they’ll lose their deposit. But if you’re in social housing, there’s no deposit to lose; if you fuck up the house, the Council will fix it. Private renters, even if they’re total assholes by nature, have an incentive to behave decently because otherwise the landlord might throw them out; but if you’re in social housing and you’re a total asshole, you can make the whole neighbourhood’s life sheer hell and the Council won’t want to move you because it’s hassle - and even if they do finally have to move you, they have to find you somewhere else to live. You have practically nothing to lose.
I want neighbours who have skin in the game.
(This is actually one reason why I’m so in favour of affordable housing. The main reason is the principle of the thing - people in low-paid jobs should be able to own their homes, dammit - but partly it’s self-interest. More people able to own their own houses = more people with more skin in the game = more solid communities = a better city all round.
And people who buy affordable housing have more skin in the game than anyone, because they can’t sell for twenty years without a government clawback kicking in. They’re welcome next door to me any time.)
Good points. My first tenants treated the house like hell and quit paying rent. They also quit paying the water bill. When the meter was turned off, he turned it back on. I discovered that and began paying the bill before the water meter was removed, and I would have had to pay a great deal of money to have it replaced.
In retrospect, they would have moved out, surely, without water, and I would have been able to rent it to someone else and come out ahead.
They are different things. What you call social housing, we call Section 8 housing. Affordable housing sounds like its the same thing - People shouldn’t pay more than 30% of their incomes towards rent or mortgage.
Section 8 is basically government-subsidized housing in private apartments, etc… In other words, the government gives rent assistance to renters in certain designated private housing areas (typically apartments) that have to conform to certain rules. In theory, the idea is what **puddleglum **describes- a lot of normal renters, and a very small percentage of Section 8 subsidized renters.
In practice, being part of the Section 8 program typically means that the apartment complex is low-income to begin with, or will soon become low income, and have all the problems associated with low income housing- crime, rampant dogs, etc…
Affordable housing in theory, is something different- probably more along the lines of what HUD/Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac do, which is basically to provide various forms of mortgage assistance to new home buyers.
Most of the real anger about “affordable” housing isn’t HUD/FNMA/FHLMC related, but rather centered around Section 8 housing, as like others have said, those tenants don’t have skin in the game like a homeowner does.
Tell that to my black neighbors who also dont want to deal with crappy neighborhoods.
I think another solution would just be to improve the “bad” neighborhoods. For example bump up the police presence to eliminate the crime. Have city inspectors come in and get rid of the falling down houses and derelict cars. License away the liquor stores. Get neighborhood groups going to encourage people to take pride in their neighborhood and get rid of the problems.
that’s a lot harder and more expensive than you seem to think it is. especially when a lot of blighted cities aren’t in the best financial shape to begin with (e.g. Detroit.)