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Considering that rent in major metropolises such as... Madison, Wisconsin is at the same level as Tokyo (and teachers are definitely being paid less), it's defi
by rtpg 8y ago
Considering that rent in major metropolises such as... Madison, Wisconsin is at the same level as Tokyo (and teachers are definitely being paid less), it's definitely a huge problem.
Almost all major American cities are having the bottom fall out in slow motion, and it ends up having repercussions everywhere. The absurdity of someone having to have 2 jobs to survive being a _real thing people say to people struggling in cities_ is the most American response to a problem.
It's obviously not just "rezone all the things", but the fact that people care so much about real estate, and that there are so many people who have vested interests in making it hard for poor people to be able to live at least somewhat close to their jobs is awful.
I want to believe it's a hard problem (because we haven't fixed it yet). But at this point I have seen soooooo many places outside the US that have almost no problem with this issue that I now have a hard time thinking it's anything other than rich white people wanting what they want.
- freeloop10 8y ago“rich white people"? Why not just "rich people"?
- rtpg 8y agoBecause decades of discriminatory lending practices and policy mean that there's a strong racial component to where people live. There's a trite statement about how desegregation never happened in the North, because black people end up basically stuck in poorer areas of town anyways. The thing about systemic racism is that even if every participant is legitimately trying to give everyone a fair chance, the existing systems (artifacts of redlining, for example) are still biased in a certain direction, and will end up giving discriminatory results. "Black people with upper-middle-class incomes do not generally live in upper-middle-class neighborhoods. Sharkey’s research shows that black families making $100,000 typically live in the kinds of neighborhoods inhabited by white families making $30,000."[0] [0]: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/05/the-racist-housing-policy-that-made-your-neighborhood/371439/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/05/the-rac...
- freeloop10 8y agoThis looks like a legitimate complaint, but the way you worded it leads one to believe it is some innate quality of being white that makes people do selfish things, rather than circumstance; in this case, preventing poor people from finding favorable housing.
- rtpg 8y agoThat's a good point. While there are a lot of cases of people in city council meetings saying overtly racist things as justification for these policies (mostly making equivalent poor, POC, and criminals). But I imagine a lot of people are basically just looking out for their own well being.At most being selfish, not discriminatory There is still the issue that many POC don't even get this opportunity to be selfish, but that discussion doesn't lead to much
- tptacek 8y agoI do not believe that an apples-apples comparison between the Tokyo and Madison real estate markets would justify the equivalence you've drawn.
- rtpg 8y agoYeah this might be exagerated. I'm also being very "armchair social scientist" about all of this, but I have heard this narrative multiple times. It's very likely I'm falling into the trap of the compelling narrative that matches a worldview, but I used to not have this worldview... There are so many stories that ultimately end up with some narrative like "people with $2 million homes don't want to let other people have $200,000 apartments", and reading that over and over makes me pretty jaded about prospects.