6 ms·

It's trite to imply everything is some secret racial motive. There's a extremely strong connection between low income and crime. That already is a major deterre

It's trite to imply everything is some secret racial motive. There's a extremely strong connection between low income and crime. That already is a major deterrent to low income housing. But it has effects aside from that. The crime and other consequences tend to make it less safe to simply live in areas, and also simultaneously destroy home values - which destroys the wealth that people in an area have paid for already. Nobody wants this. There are also longterm effects. Low income families tend to be net negative on taxes. This means that a city has less money to fund the basic necessities. Pair a higher strain on those same necessities and a declining tax base and it's not hard to see what happens. And even within the US low income families tend to have a far greater fertility rate than higher income families. Those earning < $10,000 per year currently have about 50% more children than those earning $200k+ per year. [1] This again compounds all the other already existing effects. I think focusing on race prevents people from actually having any sort of conversation since it's just a straw man. How do you deal with the above while also having the desire to enable more people to achieve a better life? It's not an easy question, but one that has to be answered. Good intentions mean nothing if the actions effected do more harm than good. [1] - https://www.statista.com/statistics/241530/birth-rate-by-family-income-in-the-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/241530/birth-rate-by-fam...

cnbx 8y ago
There's also a connection between low income and turning up the stereo to an obnoxious level, which renders your own home useless for intellectual pursuits. I agree that race has nothing to do with this. Being educated or just considerate has.
lifeformed 8y ago
It's not a secret racial motive, it's an overt one: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining I'm not saying race is the only factor - this is a multifaceted problem for sure. But race is definitely one of the facets. If you trace the history of a poor urban area back just a few decades, the relevance of race becomes increasingly apparent. I do agree that it's unproductive to simplify the issue down to just one of the many factors.
- TangoTrotFox 8y ago
  I have a task for you. I'm going to send you data on US real estate areas completely scrubbed of any racial or location indicator. All you'll have is important impartial data like crime rates, income rates, development rates, foreclosure rates, etc. Your job is now to take this information and rank areas in grade A-D in terms of investment security and desirability. Now, unless you intentionally hamstring your measurements, some guy is going to be able to run around declaring you're a "redlining" racist. Race is not a facet here. Most people, and absolutely most companies let alone banks, could not care less about race but they do care deeply about other things. And those other things are not equally distributed. Focusing on race is, at best, going to be divisive and counter productive.
  - detcader 8y ago
    > banks ... could not care less about race I have a task for you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_segregation_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_segregation_in_the_Unit...
  - lifeformed 8y ago
    Race and socioeconomics are inextricably linked in this country. A lot of white families in the past did not want to live next to black people. The banks knew that and factored that into their "desirability" metrics. This, along with countless other challenges, results in perpetuating the feedback loop of poverty and racism: Keeping people disadvantaged confines them to crime and poverty, which results in stereotypes and biases (including unconscious ones) against them, which results in more biased decisions that keep them disadvantaged. Keep running that cycle and you've strengthened the link between race and income and crime. Keep running that cycle more and you end up maintaining the racist results of yesterday without having to be racist oneself. This country was built on racism, which has naturally codified itself into the system. This means that racial biases have become an emergent property of the system when applied to this society. If you give this system to a mindless computer to run and optimize for economic output, you'll end up with very similar results compared to if you gave it to a racist person to run. Our legal and economic neural network was trained on biased data and it's no surprise that it produces biased output. We're trying to solve an optimization problem without having social inequality as one of the dimensions. It's easy to get good results with the function we have if we don't care about that metric. I agree that race is definitely not the only angle from which to approach these problems. But if we ignore it completely, the ugly ghosts of our past will continue to haunt our society.
bryanlarsen 8y ago
Perhaps some families are net negative, but low income areas are more net positive then high income suburbs. https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/1/9/the-real-reason-your-city-has-no-money https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/1/9/the-real-reason...
- TangoTrotFox 8y ago
  That article is extremely lacking precise data and methodology, but seems to be directly misrepresenting 'revenue' by ignoring costs. There's an ironic joke in the poker world. 'I won $100 this weekend. Oh yeah, but how much did you lose!?' Poorer neighborhoods are generally going also have poorer occupants, higher crime, and related issues. This means vastly greater expenditures on welfare, medicare, various social programs, law enforcement, and more. So you may have received $x in property taxes, but how much did you lose? Even just consider the crime side of things. How much does a murder cost? There is an immense amount of legal fees, prison fees, police cost, and other related expenses. I really am reluctant to link to a social sciences study, but maybe we can say it's a way to at least start the conversation. This [1] slate article references those numbers. And they're pretty jaw dropping - ranging from $41,288 for a car break in to $17,252,656 for a murder. We've only considered a small fraction of all costs, yet already those densely packed low income neighborhoods suddenly aren't looking like such a good bet after all. [1] - http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/everyday_economics/2010/10/true_crime_costs.html http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/everyday_economics/2010/1...

cnbx 8y ago

There's also a connection between low income and turning up the stereo to an obnoxious level, which renders your own home useless for intellectual pursuits. I agree that race has nothing to do with this. Being educated or just considerate has.

lifeformed 8y ago

It's not a secret racial motive, it's an overt one: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining I'm not saying race is the only factor - this is a multifaceted problem for sure. But race is definitely one of the facets. If you trace the history of a poor urban area back just a few decades, the relevance of race becomes increasingly apparent. I do agree that it's unproductive to simplify the issue down to just one of the many factors.

TangoTrotFox 8y ago
I have a task for you. I'm going to send you data on US real estate areas completely scrubbed of any racial or location indicator. All you'll have is important impartial data like crime rates, income rates, development rates, foreclosure rates, etc. Your job is now to take this information and rank areas in grade A-D in terms of investment security and desirability. Now, unless you intentionally hamstring your measurements, some guy is going to be able to run around declaring you're a "redlining" racist. Race is not a facet here. Most people, and absolutely most companies let alone banks, could not care less about race but they do care deeply about other things. And those other things are not equally distributed. Focusing on race is, at best, going to be divisive and counter productive.
- detcader 8y ago
  > banks ... could not care less about race I have a task for you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_segregation_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_segregation_in_the_Unit...
- lifeformed 8y ago
  Race and socioeconomics are inextricably linked in this country. A lot of white families in the past did not want to live next to black people. The banks knew that and factored that into their "desirability" metrics. This, along with countless other challenges, results in perpetuating the feedback loop of poverty and racism: Keeping people disadvantaged confines them to crime and poverty, which results in stereotypes and biases (including unconscious ones) against them, which results in more biased decisions that keep them disadvantaged. Keep running that cycle and you've strengthened the link between race and income and crime. Keep running that cycle more and you end up maintaining the racist results of yesterday without having to be racist oneself. This country was built on racism, which has naturally codified itself into the system. This means that racial biases have become an emergent property of the system when applied to this society. If you give this system to a mindless computer to run and optimize for economic output, you'll end up with very similar results compared to if you gave it to a racist person to run. Our legal and economic neural network was trained on biased data and it's no surprise that it produces biased output. We're trying to solve an optimization problem without having social inequality as one of the dimensions. It's easy to get good results with the function we have if we don't care about that metric. I agree that race is definitely not the only angle from which to approach these problems. But if we ignore it completely, the ugly ghosts of our past will continue to haunt our society.

bryanlarsen 8y ago

Perhaps some families are net negative, but low income areas are more net positive then high income suburbs. https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/1/9/the-real-reason-your-city-has-no-money https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/1/9/the-real-reason...

TangoTrotFox 8y ago
That article is extremely lacking precise data and methodology, but seems to be directly misrepresenting 'revenue' by ignoring costs. There's an ironic joke in the poker world. 'I won $100 this weekend. Oh yeah, but how much did you lose!?' Poorer neighborhoods are generally going also have poorer occupants, higher crime, and related issues. This means vastly greater expenditures on welfare, medicare, various social programs, law enforcement, and more. So you may have received $x in property taxes, but how much did you lose? Even just consider the crime side of things. How much does a murder cost? There is an immense amount of legal fees, prison fees, police cost, and other related expenses. I really am reluctant to link to a social sciences study, but maybe we can say it's a way to at least start the conversation. This [1] slate article references those numbers. And they're pretty jaw dropping - ranging from $41,288 for a car break in to $17,252,656 for a murder. We've only considered a small fraction of all costs, yet already those densely packed low income neighborhoods suddenly aren't looking like such a good bet after all. [1] - http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/everyday_economics/2010/10/true_crime_costs.html http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/everyday_economics/2010/1...