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I’m going to sound like an asshole, but part of the reason to pay 750k+ for a basic home is so that your family lives in a neighborhood with families of a simil

• deleted 7y ago
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• john_brown_body 7y ago
  Who knows or cares? Overcoming the opposition of wealthy, cloistered local elites is an important political problem, but the specific nature of their opposition isn't relevant to the policy issue or the public interest.
  • thaumasiotes 7y ago
    You don't often see the argument that understanding the nature of opposition to something isn't relevant to overcoming that opposition.
    • john_brown_body 7y ago
      It's relevant to the political problem of defeating their opposition, sure, but not relevant to the merits of the policy. It's also fairly obvious - rich people think they're better humans than poor people and don't want to live near them. Not worthy of much hand-wringing or fretting in my opinion.
      • thaumasiotes 7y ago
        > It's relevant to the political problem of defeating their opposition, sure, but not relevant to the merits of the policy. This seems... unlikely.
  • consultant-hole 7y ago
    So, fuck the upper middle class, just because?
    • frgtpsswrdlame 7y ago
      It's not really 'fuck'ing the upper middle class to tell them they can't entirely segregate themselves from the poor.
  • eanzenberg 7y ago
    Who cares? Hmm. These policies lead to increased segregation time and time again. Look up white flight.
    • deogeo 7y ago
      If it is indeed the neighborhood itself that affects the opportunity, and not the people living there, then white flight shouldn't be a problem. I.e. even after the white people get replaced, it would still be a good neighborhood.
      • wutbrodo 7y ago
        There's a term used by "race realists" to describe the liberal consensus towards integration: "magic dirt". It's a mocking way of phrasing the belief that an immigrant who moves from a dysfunctional to a successful society will likely become successful, or that the same is true for a child from a dysfunctional neighborhood going to a good quality school. Naturally, I don't agree with the "race realist" view on this, and think the term is a bit of a strawman. Humans are intensely social, people's actions are deeply shaped by their social environments, and the liberal view being mocked isn't that your location transforms you but that your social milieu does. But your comment seems to actually be this strawman come to life, which I find fascinating. To be clear, do you really think it's likely that good neighborhoods are shaped _primarily_ by factors independent of who lives in them? I know this is possible in the abstract, eg a downtown neighborhood is closer to jobs, a neighborhood with a freeway running through it is rarely cohesive, etc. But this seems dwarfed by the mountains and mountains of data points of neighborhoods transforming dramatically due to shifts in resident demographics, and pretty much every housing-related phenomenon is in line with this: white flight, gentrification, the recent impoverishing of the suburbs etc.
        • deogeo 7y ago
          > To be clear, do you really think it's likely that good neighborhoods are shaped _primarily_ by factors independent of who lives in them? I do not - I was pointing out the contradiction. Although to be fair, the way schools are funded in the US complicates this. If a neighborhood becomes low-income, then the schools will get less funding as well, as I understand it, because schools are funded from neighborhood-level property taxes.
  • humanrebar 7y ago
    How does this not end up in a housing inflation spiral that matches the college loan bubble? Seems like the really wealthy will still end up with enclaves one way or another.
• sysbin 7y ago
  You don't really seem like an asshole to me for writing that because I live in a college area and the noise is ridiculous. It would be nice if affordable homes were built in such a way that every neighbourhood was priced for your income level with single vs family factored into it.
• saghm 7y ago
  > part of the reason to pay 750k+ for a basic home is so that your family lives in a neighborhood with families of a similar socioeconomic background I think the value of the location of a house for me would be tied to the relative safety, convenience, and nearby opportunities compared to other neighborhoods. None of those things require that people less affluent than me don't live in the same neighborhood. That being said, it might be tough for some of them to afford it, but that's what the housing vouchers are designed to help with in the first place.
  • alistairSH 7y ago
    You left off public school rankings. Which are tied to the areas income (well educated parents have the time, income, and genetics to produce high achieving kids). Which drives up home prices. And the cycle reinforces itself to some extent. Too many Section 8 residents will hurt school scores, which hurts home values, which hurts school scores, ... I have no idea how many it would take to impact values in such a way. But, the school board meetings I’ve attended show that if nothing else, wealthy parents are fiercely protective of their school districts.
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    • monetus 7y ago
      Do you really think higher income individuals have better genes? Overall? ...Or better in a narrow, rat-race sense? Genetic expression changes based on life experience doesn't it? I really don't think section 8 recipients are genetically inferior. Surely that isn't what you are saying, right? I'm not a biologist, but I would wager worse outcomes are mostly a result of continuous stress.
      • wpietri 7y ago
        Yeah, the notion that rich people are intrinsically better is one that rich people have believed for centuries at least. Test scores have a lot to do with parental income, but as you say, that's strongly correlated with money and the things money buys.
• jancsika 7y ago
  Not only that. The only reason the selected families moved to the better neighborhood is because a team of experts were paid to intervene on their behalf. Unless such families make the effort to change their circumstance and save enough to move to the preferable area, programs like this one rob them of their free will. I don't understand why advocates of progressive programs like this seem to always miss this crucial point. Real, lasting change only comes when people make conscious decisions to improve their lives with no external input whatsoever handed to them. Anything else is anti-competitive and subject to regulatory capture.
  • hellisothers 7y ago
    How is regulatory capture related to this?
    • jancsika 7y ago
      Think of it as part of a "blues riff" where I noodled around at the end in a peculiar way as a signal that I'm not really a blues player. :)
  • rory096 7y ago
    >The only reason the selected families moved to the better neighborhood is because a team of experts were paid to intervene on their behalf. >Unless such families make the effort to change their circumstance and save enough to move to the preferable area, programs like this one rob them of their free will. This is a bizarre claim. Participants were given advice, not forcibly relocated: >They would also be given information on which neighborhoods promise the most opportunity for their kids, based on the research data. They’d also be assigned “navigators” whose job it was to walk them through the apartment application process, and receive additional financial assistance with down payments if necessary.
  • em-bee 7y ago
    > Real, lasting change only comes when people make conscious decisions to improve their lives with no external input whatsoever handed to them that doesn't sound right. most people want to improve their life. it's not about making the decision, but about knowing what steps to take to achieve it. and why wouldn't someone take help for that? you seem to think that making a conscious decision is all it takes. far from it. in particular, when the steps to achieve it involve time and effort that you don't seem to have time for. i made a conscious decision to increase my income years ago. it wasn't effective until i found partners who helped me get clients (iaw i found a sales person who would work by sharing profit instead of taking a salary), so that i could focus delivering the service.
• mabbo 7y ago
  > what is the benefit of integrating housing to the people paying a premium for the privilege of living in an exclusive neighborhood There isn't. You didn't buy the house from the government and they don't owe you any right to not meet any poor people. Segregating out the poor from access to quality education just reinforces generational class stagnation- no one can be anything better than their parents were. This is a bad thing for everyone in the long run. > I’m going to sound like an asshole, but... Life-tip: if you need to start a sentence with that, chance are it's because what you sound like is reflecting reality.
  • daenz 7y ago
    >You didn't buy the house from the government and they don't owe you any right to not meet any poor people. Ignoring the snark, arguments like these stop making sense when the government is actively tipping the scales by manipulating the housing market in that area. You can make arguments for the morality of it, but arguments along the lines of the government not owing one group something are pretty weak when you're literally supporting the government owing another group something. The government can owe whoever and whatever we want them to owe.
  • wincy 7y ago
    No one can be anything better than their parents were? My father and mother were drugged out losers and I’m not that at all. This comment is condescending and paternalistic. It’s something that would only be said by an out of touch elite who needs to “save the poor”. I used to live in a highly integrated neighborhood. The neighbors across the street were section 8. I had no problem with that. What I did have a problem with is when my daughter was playing in the front yard and their son ran outside screaming shooting his rifle as a car peeled out down the street. This was of course on mother’s day while my mother-in-law was on the phone. We moved to the most expensive neighborhood we could afford after that. And you know what? The worse thing I’ve had to deal with was some neighbors having a slightly heated conversation at 11pm on their front porch. If that hadn’t been an option, if everywhere had this “affordable housing”, we’d have just moved three hours away and bought 100 acres and lived in a trailer instead. I’m not going to risk my daughters safety to fulfill some equity agenda.
• BurningFrog 7y ago
  There isn't one for you and the people in your neighborhood, and you have a lot of power, which is why things will probably stay as they are, at least in California, which is the place I know. I think the main driver is maybe less living in this area, and more that your kids can go to a great school. I think if the US ever figures out a way to make the schools for poor people decent or even good, much of the reason for segregation would disappear.
• wpietri 7y ago
  If your only question about helping non-affluent people is "what's in it for me?" then yes, I think you're right about how that sounds. It's not about you. But broadly, the long-term benefits of social programs are to create a richer, more stable society. If one's goal is strictly positional, then other people being less poor is negative, because the whole point is having someone to look down upon. However, you can take some comfort from the "more stable" part, as it means your kids are less likely to get guillotined at some point.
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• throwaway_98554 7y ago
  The only remaining legal way to separate is via money. In other words: fuck the poor, they are not allowed to decide with whom they associate. Instead of trying to fix the problem by allowing non-monetary ways to segregate, which would be available to everyone, people are busy trying to universalize the problem. To answer your question: you're not an asshole, but you're the only one without a broken leg... and we'll break it to make things fair to everyone.
  • realbarack 7y ago
    "[The poor] are not allowed to decide with whom they associate." That's exactly what this study ISN'T saying. The entire point of this research is to determine if the reason very poor people stay in very poor neighborhoods is personal preference or other factors. This study found that many poor people would in fact prefer to move from very poor neighborhoods.
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• KaiserPro 7y ago
  hello there, UK here. Because unfamiliarity breeds contempt. One of the successes of london is that unlike paris they didn't eject all the poor people to the outskirts in the 1930-70s. this means that even opposite the houses of parliament, there is social housing. Yes there are sink estates, but they are not whole boroughs (well, kinda, there are stressed areas.) yes, we still have problems. The police still stop black people because they are "suspicious" (alas we've recently gone backwards) But they are not stopped because they are in the "wrong area" the whole "Trayvon Martin" effect just doesn't really apply. TL;DR: Segregation increases problems, regardless of it being by choice, or by an act of government (ala rhodesia/south africa) unless you socialise with the "other" you are going to continually live in fear/contempt