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From your comment, it is clear you can see the risk. Creating entire ghetto cities full of poor people who have no way of lifting their community out of poverty
by sgc 9y ago
From your comment, it is clear you can see the risk. Creating entire ghetto cities full of poor people who have no way of lifting their community out of poverty? Maybe we could find some menial work for them and pay them a pitance. It would be a great source of human assets for the wealthy. And absolutely self-perpetuating through the generations. Also forced displacement is considered a crime against humanity. Which is what that amounts to (Aristotle's famous problem of whether the man who tosses his belongings off a sinking ship is making a free choice).
So until there are systems in place that are stronger and longer lasting than the economic, educational, and cultural problems which that would create, I think it remains an immoral choice.
True equal access to top tier education (and not watered down education for all), a true living wage and/or guaranteed income, and some way to break through the cultural issues, including prevalent violence and drug use* that such a solution would perpetuate need to come first to all cities. Only then would that become a practical solution. So yes, in theory. But it is at best decades away as a solution, and realistically probably closer to a century away.
* since among the poor, there would be a higher concentration of drug addicts than elsewhere, and they would then have a greater influence on others.
- IkmoIkmo 9y agoAgreed. I probably miscommunicated a little bit, it's not so much that I don't see the reasons for the subsidies. I do, they're terribly important to keep our cities sane, diverse, equitable and full of opportunities for social mobility, and I agree with much of what you've said. (dating a sociologist for half a decade helped me understand :p) But rather, that it's hard to find the balance. Particularly because you've got genuine concerns from the hundred thousand poor people who weren't able to get in on those sweet but few 100 subsidised units in the mission who have their minds blown that their municipality spent $600k a unit for them with public money that should go to their quality of life, too. What do you say to them...
- sgc 9y agoI probably miscommunicated as well. I could see you got it, and my main (attempted) contribution was to point out the things required prior to increased housing (when there are large numbers of empty units) which would make the problem easier to deal with.