Army Navy Scranton
so much attention is paid in every city to the housing needs of low income households. rightly so. why, however, do housing needs trump concerns about what kinds of neighborhoods we either end up precipitating or failing to improve, in service of reducing housing cost burden?
we seem content to hallow these decrepit strips in their hollow conditions, as if doing so is some kind of a downpayment on the greater good of affordability. perhaps affordability is the greater good.
but might it be that the culprit is education and income inequality within contemporary capitalism, mixed with garden variety reagan-pink-gingrich-macomb county michigan-southern strategy-atlanta racism c.2007?
could it be that what we really have on our hands is good old fashioned segregation, just without the firehoses and bull connor, a result of which is concentrations of what anyone with choices chooses to be away from…a consequence being that, in the astute words of a colleague of mine: affordability is obtained through crappiness?
Liquors Lottery
by keeping it crappy we keep it affordable. by praying at the altar of affordability, which is the church of the greater good, according to many, we deign to keep neighborhoods crappy?
it sure feels that way.
god forbid (there’s that subterranean man again) we attempt to use housing dollars in ways that would close housing cost burdens AND improve neighborhoods!
Howard
in working in connecticut recently we have come upon the datasets of national low income housing advocates, who right to point out how nearly impossible it is for a family earning $20/hr (much less $8) to secure housing in fairfield county. fine.
but the response seems never to include careful consideration of repairing the blight without higher concern for the consequences of betterment…”what if it gets better?” as if getting better is only a good so long as everyone benefits.
would that public policy ever enjoy the luxury of passing the “good for everybody” test with limited resources.
what would you do? would you keep things crappy? and maintain affordability? alternatively would you make things better and watch prices rise, and affordability decrease? do you believe in the utopian achievement of both?
Down town Scranton
Originally posted on January 2, 2007
