If you want affordable housing, you have to fight for it
I just posted my notes on the BACA meeting on the main InShaw site and well the forces against affordable housing and group housing for the mentally ill are loud. Strangely, people who are for affordable housing and the people who detest affordable housing don't show up at the same meetings. One brave woman (not me) spoke up for the cause of diversity.On one neighborhood listserv there is much chatter about a planned affordable housing project that is to go up just on the other side of North Cap. Personally, my interest in it is minimal because a- it's on the other side of North Cap and b- it is spearheaded and hopefully will be managed by the Holy Roman Catholic Church. I believe the Catholic Church also runs Immaculate Conception a low income apartment over near the Convention Center. Yet there are fears that it will be like some of the worst examples of affordable housing and will actually stunt the growth and development many want.
So my friends who are champions for affordable housing you are going to have to make a case to your neighbors to allow and support affordable housing. You will have to make a case that your neighbors will not suffer because of affordable housing. Your neighbors have suffered through bad section 8'ers and seedy boarding houses so no amount of guilt tripping will get them to support affordable housing. The argument that the city needs affordable housing just rings hollow. You need to appeal to their better angels but hold accountable those who manage so the neighbors to these projects will not be martyrs.
posted by Mari @ 9.11.05
3 Comments:
"Your neighbors have suffered through bad section 8'ers and seedy boarding houses so no amount of guilt tripping will get them to support affordable housing. The argument that the city needs affordable housing just rings hollow."
I think you've captured something very important in these two sentences. When people in improving neighborhoods are asked to support affordable housing, they are essentially being asked to disregard their own overwhelmingly negative past experience with such projects based on an unsupported hope that somehow the next one won't have the same problems. Appealing to the better angels of our nature is one thing, but it's asking a lot of those people who have endured troubled neighborhoods for so long to welcome/support the very kind of housing that has contributed significantly to their neighborhoods being troubled in the first place.
part of the problem is the perception of 'affordable housing' as it is known. There have been many poorly planned and executed programs, and people rightly don't want more of that. You need to present a different model that avoids the problems of the past.
But can an argument be made for affordable housing, but just not in Shaw? There are already several affordable / low rent apartment buildings in Shaw, so should another part of town carry the 'burden' of additional affordable housing? But then again, this is where there is new development, and a chance to make up for the loss of affordable housing Citywide.
Cause and effect often get mixed up in the debate on affordable housing. The reasons that many people need Section 8 housing (substance abuse problems, prison record, out-of-wedlock parenthood, no education, poor work habits) are the same ones that make them anti-social neighbors. If these folks had good work habits and ambition they probably wouldn't be in Section 8 for very long. So the whole process selects for the worst possible tenents. I realize there are exceptions, but social policy (and neighborhood decisions) need to be based on the *rule*, not the *exceptions*.
Instead, affordable-housing advocates are always bringing up housing for teachers, policement, firemen, etc, even though individuals in these professions earn far too much to be eligible for most subsidized housing. Sure - who wouldn't want to live next door to a teacher? But that's not who will be moving into the affordable housing around the city.
- JM
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