Basically what previous posters already said. It brings in a bunch of people with no investment in their housing, their community; drops property values, and adds low-performing troublemakers to the nearby schools.
Edit: Spoken as a jaded single owner of property on a block of rentals.
This doesn’t help folks who simply want to live closer to where they work.
A lot of poor and working class people are being pushed out into the suburbs because it is becoming too costly to live in cities. If you work in the city but can’t afford to live there, then you have to spend more time and money commuting–which detracts significantly from the savings you get by living in a far-flung suburb. Compounding this problem is that fact that suburbs usually aren’t equipped to handle people who don’t have cars. No sidewalks, weak or non-existent public transportation, few crosswalks means people who get around by foot or bus are severely disadvantaged.
Let’s say we revitalize a poor neighborhood the way you’re talking about. We put the kibosh on crime, we clean out the crack dens and fix them up, create a thriving business district, and we hire the best educators to fix the schools. What will inevitably happen is that property values go up as the neighborhood becomes more popular, which means rents go up and people can’t afford their property taxes. The poor people gradually get forced out because of the market forces–so where do they go? They move out to the another “bad” neighborhood. And when that one becomes gentrified, they move somewhere else, until they are out in an economically depressed suburb somewhere, either hitch-hiking to get to work or trying to get on disabilty.
I really don’t see how you can stop this treadmill without local governments shielding certain areas from market forces.
It is a difficult issue and a hot topic in my neighborhood right now. My neighborhood was founded by the wealthy business owners in the late 1800’s. As they eventually moved on to other areas, the middle class and eventually lower class moved in to the area. Naturally over time, those in the middle and lower income brackets with the ability to earn more money and move out of the neighborhood to the dream of the suburbs did so. Then the neighborhood was split in half by the interstate system, cutting people in one area of the neighborhood off from other areas. Businesses that once thrived died away. By the 1970’s to 1980’s this neighborhood was “the hood” with all the connotations you’d like to assign to that word. Low income, primarily African American, high crime, high drug use, low home ownership, Section 8 housing begin springing up everywhere, no one would have wanted to live here unless they had no other options. This pattern is not unique to here, almost every decent size city has probably had the same experience during this period of time.
Over the last 10-20 years though the neighborhood has very, very slowly been improving. Glacially slow. Initially led by gay men and artist-types buying an old Victorian home and restoring them. Sometimes for profit, other times out of love of the history, architecture, and low cost to purchase a (formerly) grand Victorian home. Many of those early home owners are still here and are now neighbors and friends. Over time a really great little community came into being - diverse, mixed income, eclectic, and low cost of real estate, etc. attracted more and more like minded people into the area. We’d still get looked down upon by friends and family who just couldn’t understand why we’d “want to live there” but it was (and is) a cool neighborhood to live. As long as you didn’t have kids. Haha There were still a lot of on-going problems of crime, drugs/drug dealing, and vagrancy. In the last 10 years, and particularly the last 5 years, the changes have come much more rapidly. Property values are skyrocketing. What once were very low income apartments (non Section 8) have been bought by new owners, renovations done, and rents modestly raised. Even a small increase of a few hundred dollars dramatically shifted the quality of renters in the buildings. Example - There is an apartment building adjacent to my home. When we purchased this home, it was a real problem. About 18 months ago the building got a new owner, some investment in improvements, and raised the rent from $250.00 to $450 and the change in terms of quality of tenant and neighborhood harmony were massive. Now, we still have far too much Section 8 and community housing for people released from jail, on parole, etc. within the neighborhood itself. We have a lot of sex offenders released from jail living here. :-/ It’s seems it will be difficult if not impossible to ever fully get rid of it as there really is no where else for them to go as we are surrounded by much more wealthy neighborhoods with the clout and influence and tax base to keep them out. But property values continue to rise and more and more “the hood” is now seen more positively and is attracting a new generation of owners. It is now more likely a new home owner is white, upper-middle class, straight, married, and to have kids whereas this was not the norm 5-10 years ago. To be crude, 10 years ago when I moved into the area if you saw a white woman running down the street she was probably trying to get away from someone trying to mug or rape her. Today, she is wearing an Ohio University t-shirt and getting exercise by jogging and may be pushing a kid in a jogging stroller. That’s not to say the neighborhood is now lilly-white, it still a very diverse neighborhood both racially and economically. And there are still problems with crime, panhandling, drugs, etc., and a fairly low tax base due to low income residents and derelict properties/homes. But the scales have tipped and the momentum is heavily moving the other direction. In my opinion these are all good things, even if it does mean some may be negatively impacted or displaced.
So with that as a backdrop, my feelings on affordable housing are mixed. I’ve now invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in homes in this neighborhood. All homes I’ve lived in, not rental properties or flips. I’m now raising a child in this neighborhood with my wife. I’ve had my home burglarized twice while we slept. I’ve had aluminum downspouts and patio furniture stolen for scrap more times than I can count. Packages stolen from the porch. I’ve dealt with illegal dumping in our alleys because people assume it is the ghetto and already full of trash so who will even care? God knows the city won’t do anything about it. Every other day I have to pick liter from my yard and landscaping - fast food bags, malt liquor bottles, empty pack of Newport cigarettes, cigarette butts, etc. All from tenants of the low income apartments that are behind ours. I’ve dealt with a lot of the problems for a long time, some of them I take in stride as just a part of living in an urban neighborhood. Others I’ve fought to bring about change and improve our neighborhood. So over the last few years as I’ve seen apartment buildings get purchased, improved, and rents raised, I’ve been happy about it. Almost in every case the neighborhood improves as a result. A problem building full of problem tenants goes away and we have less noise issues, less trash, less petty vandalism, and less crime. Yes, that also means some lower income people who were good neighbors may have been forced out due to rent increases. That is regrettable but I am concerned about my home, my family, and my neighbors who have invested heavily here too. Now as more developers are proposing new builds on property lots that have sat vacant for decades, the cry for “affordable housing” is being raised over and over as objections to the new development. I’m sympathetic to their arguments but we already exceed the allowable percentage of Section 8. Every week I get notifications in the mail of sexual predators who have moved into the community house down the street. There are still quite a few non-Section 8 apartments at fairly low rents ($450 for single bedroom apartments next door isn’t exactly “rich people” rent, especially compared to my $2400 mortgage payment.) The decades long wait and investments that some people who live here have suffered through is finally paying off in rising home values and improved quality of life for ALL residents and I do not want to see that progress go backwards. A new development is going through the approval process now and the target rents are $1000-1500 per month and includes street-level small business retail. I’m excited about this. It is a great location that will attract a lot of young professionals who desire to live near downtown. Those same young professionals then may ultimately become home owners in the neighborhood and increase the tax base here. (Or they may jump to the suburbs although i suspect that trend is changing) Yet a vocal group is trying to block it due to the impact it might have towards causing rents to rise elsewhere in the neighborhood. I just can’t understand that mentality, the site is currently a vacant, barren, dirt lot that attracts criminal activity, vagrancy, and tons of trash (littering trash, not white trash-trash). It is a massive eye sore in the middle of our small but growing business district. The development will bring added population density which will benefit all of our small businesses in that area. It will bring new residents with upward income growth potential. Yet the “I have to one-up you on the liberal ladder so the only thing that matters is what about the poor people!” crowd is working hard to kill it because it doesn’t include below market-value “affordable housing”. A vacant, dirt lot at the entrance of our small business district that hinders small business growth and looks like shit and is a center for criminal activity is preferable because the development maybe-might cause rents to rise in other areas of the neighborhood making it harder for lower income people to afford the rent.
Believe it or not after, I am sympathetic to the arguments. I don’t want to force someone out of their homes. In a perfect world there would be solutions that could immediately provide economic growth opportunities for these people but that isn’t the real world. The problems of systemic poverty, generational poverty, access to opportunity, poor educational institutions, shitty parenting, etc., will not be solved this year, this decade, and probably not in my lifetime. Incremental policy and societal change and progress will (hopefully) lead to changes that help the large number of people break out of the economic traps that they’re caught in. It won’t be solved overnight and a percentage of the population will always be on the bottom rung. In the meantime though, I just can’t agree with halting all progress and development and improvement to appease the lowest common denominator. I can’t subjugate what I feel is best for me and my family and the other’s in the neighborhood who have also invested heavily here simply because someone with less opportunity and no vested interest still exists and may have to find a new place to live.
…and I’m prepared to be flamed for what are difficult opinions on this subject. 
No, you can’t be. Putting your financial situation over helping others is the opposite of being open-hearted–unless you literally need that money to live. And if the prices are being reduced that much, you’ve got money. So your fictional open hearted person would say “Well, at least I’m not poor” and let them come.
The real reason is that morality often succumbs to selfishness. It’s easy to be moral when things don’t affect you. In this case, to some extent, this makes sense–you have to have enough to survive on before you can help others. But people who need money to survive are not the ones worrying about property values.
I mean, we have liberals making conservative values like “skin in the game,” the same argument used against reducing taxes on the poor. Or stuff where you assume poor people are criminals, saying poor people are “undesirable” or saying something is wrong because it hurts the free market. And we have a conservative who actually brings up the moral issue of using zoning laws to keep out poor people.
This is actually the one issue where I say that the conservative talk about the liberal elites and liberal hypocrisy is right on the money. I don’t agree with puddleglum about the free market inherently fixing shit, but at least he understands the moral issue.
My cousin is homeless. We literally cannot afford to take care of her. But it’s because of this stupid anti-housing shit that she can’t get the help she needs. Because some people with a lot more money are worried their house will lose value because bigots won’t want to live near lower class people.
Hi. I’m the one who used the phrase ‘skin in the game’ in this thread. Did you actually read my post, or were you too busy flailing for an opportunity to finger-wag and lecture people about morals?
Because I used the phrase as part of an argument that more people should be able to buy homes, because it makes society better, and that to that end I’d welcome more affordable housing in my neighbourhood.
Do you have specific examples of this sort of “reverse-white flight” phenomenon? I’ve seen the gentrification process happen in places like New York City and Boston where once blue-collar neighborhoods become inundated with hipsters and investment bankers. But the phenomenon of poor people getting pushed out to far-flung suburbs is less familiar to me.
Also keep in mind that a waitress, plumber or school teacher doesn’t need to work in Midtown Manhattan or San Francisco where the cost of living is very expensive. Those jobs can be found in nearly every suburb in the country.
What gives the wealthy developer the right is the same thing that gives you the right to drive your car, wear your clothes, and eat your food. If I drove your car, wore your clothes, or ate your food you could have me arrested. The reason is that once you buy something you own it and that gives you the right to control it. You can’t put stuff in my yard without my permission but unless I get to drive your car, wear your clothes, and eat your food then I don’t see why you get to decide what I do with my land.
I’m on a portable device, so this is the best I can do for a cite right now:
A prime example is Clayton County, GA. The gentrification of inner-city Atlanta has led to a “ghettofication” of a nearby county.
As far as you last point goes, I’m cannot agree. Sure, at the scale of an individual EMT, teacher, or letter carrier, their skills can transfer elsewhere. But this assumes there is a job for them “elsewhere”. Also, SOMEONE has got to drive the city ambulances, teach the city children, and deliver the city mail. A public servant shouldn’t have to shell out 70% of their income to pay the rent just so their daily commute doesn’t kill them. That has awful implications on individuals, their families, and society in general (personally, I don’t want a sleep-deprived, stressed-out EMT being tasked with giving me CPR.)
I just can’t agree with your last point. I feel you’re dramatically over-stating the impact of having a commute to work. The overwhelming majority of the population in the U.S. has a commute to/from work. The average commute time based upon census data is 25 minutes. Sure NYC or Boston or LA are higher and those people drive up the average. The average commute times are no where near significant enough to cause the “awful implications” you allude to. It certainly won’t “kill them”. If you’d just made the argument that for lower economic classes the additional distance means they have to be able to afford more reliable transportation, or if they’re lucky enough just longer public transportation routes/times and that impacts their pocketbook or time with family then I’d possible agree with you that there is some negative effect. “Awful implications”? “their daily commute kills them”? Nonsense.
You are speaking from experience, right?
I am skeptical of puddlegum’s motives, and you should be too. Notice that he seems to think that owning land means you get to do whatever you want to do with it, damned how it affects anyone else. As someone who cares about the environment, this mentality is crazy to me. There’s a good reason why residential properties are not allowed in areas zoned for industrial, etc. or vice versa. Or why multi-family units are treated differently from single-family. Some reasons are “selfish”, but many aren’t. And even if they are selfish, so what? It is perfectly resonable to want to have some say about local planning simply because you want to minimize the likelihoodo of you being harmed in some way.
They are worried about their property values and also declines in their quality of life. And let’s be honest, BigT. For lots of comfortably heeled people, it doesn’t take much for the latter to happen. For instance, it is rare to find folks BBQing in their front yards in well-to-do neighborhoods. But in poor/working class neighborhoods, this is common. So is congregating on front stoops at all hours of the day, just hanging out. When I get home from work, I don’t necessarily want to hear my neighbors’ conversations and music wafting in through my kitchen window while I’m eating dinner. So I can’t blame someone else for worrying about the exact same thing happening to them.
It’s not just the big things that have people on edge, but the accumulation of little things. Like having city buses rumbling through your streets at all hours. I love public transit and I use it eagerly. But buses are LOUD. If you’ve got a critical mass of bus riders in your neighborhood, expect to have a bus coming through your street, even late at night. Are people giant meanos for wanting to preserve some quiet and not be awaken by screeching brakes at 2:30AM? I don’t think so. I think it is understandable to hold on tight to the features that drew you to a community in the first place.
Both sides of this issue could use some compassion.
Forgive me for not including the disclaimer that I’m not talking about every fuckin’ city or town in the USA. I thought most people could figure out that I was talking specifically about cities that are experiencing sky-rocketing housing costs–cities where affordable housing is an urgent concern.
Also, my bad for engaging in a little hyperbole by using the k-word. But it sure seems to me this poor lady might still be alive if she hadn’t had to have worked four jobs just to pay rent in northern NJ.
My close and food don’t affect other people in a meaningful way. However I cannot drive any car I want however I feel like driving it on public roads.
A developer, by the same token, cannot just buy a piece of land and put up whatever building he feels like. Towns have zoning laws because the people who live in that town who pay taxes to the town have a right to decide what gets built there.
Then again, developers also have the means to find out what they are allowed to build in a town before they make their purchase.
I never heard anyone apposed affordable housing. That just sounds really strange.
Normally lot of times cities and government have very little money to be put into affordable housing. So issue may come up with increase tax money. And people may apposed to say increase taxes.
But affordable housing problem will never be solved if loads of immigration and transplants people are moving to that city every month. City like New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Miami, Toronto, Vancouver,Paris, London have a very high cost of living. Why? Because so many people are moving to those cities every month faster than the city can built homes. And those cities are very spread out and probably can not spread out much more. So the shift is living above store or in an apartment.
Now a small city in say Alabama where hardly no one moves to and you probably could get $50,000 home to $100,000 home.
I wonder how many in the thread snidely commenting on others not wanting to reside near “them” would choose to relocate to a much poorer neighborhood.
Um, no shit they wouldn’t?
Part of what you get when you buy a $X00,000 house is you get neighbors that can afford a $X00,000 house. I certainly don’t think all poor people are criminals or inconsiderate or lazy - but you’ll find a higher percentage of each in a neighborhood of $100,000 houses than you will in a neighborhood of $800,000 houses.
When I lived in cheap-ass apartments when I was broke, my neighbors were constantly stinking up the place with drug use, blaring music until the cops shut them down at 3AM, littering everywhere, and the crime reports showed that every building in the complex got hit in the year I was there. When I moved into mid-range housing, the worst drug use was some cigarettes, there was only late night music a couple times a year, while there was litter it was generally cleaned up in a day or two, and the crime was down to a couple times a year instead of a couple times a month. When I was in some high-end apartments, I had one instance of a loud neighbor (who apologized profusely when I knocked on his door), I never saw litter, we had one crime report, and the only smokers did so in the designated area.
That’s the difference your neighbors make. Again, I do not think all, or even most, poor people are criminals. But there are more robberies, muggings, and murders in poor neighborhoods. I don’t think all, or even most, poor people are lazy. But yards are neat and cared for in expensive neighborhoods and more likely than not weeds in poor neighborhoods. And I’ve never had to call the cops now that I live in a nice neighborhood where the houses cost $400,000 on average. But I did when I rented in some cheap ass places.
I don’t think the people that are opposed to “affordable housing” want more homeless people or that they think poor people are a lesser class of being. But they understandably don’t want convicted felons living nearby, and they want neighbors that care for their property so the neighborhood as a whole looks nice. And they realize that criminals and inconsiderate neighbors can’t afford expensive houses.
It’s not about keeping poor people out. It’s about keeping the jerks that happen to be poor out. The down on their luck but considerate and friendly poor people just get screwed by association. I understand the latter groups’ frustration, but just allowing cheap housing next to the nice place means that the nice place isn’t going to be so nice in a few years.
Nm
If I could wear your clothes instead of mine I could save alot of money, same with food. Me not being able to control your clothes and food definitely impacts me.
I don’t get the analogy. It seems you’re saying there should be no zoning restrictions anywhere for anything. Everyone should just be able to buy land and do whatever the hell they want with it? Luckily that’s not how things work and most people who go around buying land understand that and act accordingly. When you buy land and then want to rezone, however, your neighbors have every right to complain.
I think the question under discussion is if it is appropriate to exclude certain kinds of development from a neighborhood, if that development negatively impacts property values and/or quality of life in the neighborhood.
Do they have the right to complain when a developer wants to build low-income apartments, even if it doesn’t require re-zoning?
Because both businesses, and affordable housing, have the potential to impact property values and negatively impact quality of life in a neighborhood. Not necessarily - but it could happen, and often has.
Regards,
Shodan
The problem is not restrictions in one neighborhood; the problem is when virtually all of the vacant land in a big area such as Long Island is restricted to low density housing (or commercial/industrial).