4 ms·

> the desire of landowners to keep poor people off their block Well, can we come up with a more constructive and friendly way of doing this? It's not unreasona

> the desire of landowners to keep poor people off their block Well, can we come up with a more constructive and friendly way of doing this? It's not unreasonable for normal middle-class folks to not want to have to live in a problematic, crime-ridden, situation with high personal-security risks and property crime. That's why we pay for police, after all.

truth__indulger 6y ago
Wow, White Supremacist much? Defending one's home or property or feeling entitled to "Safety" from "Crime" is White Privilege.
- metiscus 6y ago
  This comment seems like Poe's law at work.
- gedy 6y ago
  It this sarcasm? Wanting safety from crime is now same level as KKK or Nazis?
bluGill 6y ago
There are a lot of poor people who are not criminals who don't like being lumped in with the criminals. Welcome them, and show by example how to live a better crime free life. Show that education is what made you able to afford fun things. Show that you aren't actually smarter, but a few life choices that they can point their kids to (as an adult it is often too late) can bring their kids to your level.
- ccsnags 6y ago
  I’m Appalachian. We have ridiculously low violent crime rates for the levels of poverty we have. I believe that this is a function of population density rather than any intrinsic trait of us hilljacks. I went to PDX often before the lockdown and I was struck by the lack of housing. I met with mostly contractors and construction people and they either lived in campers or an hour north in Washington. These people were middle class and couldn’t afford that city. I can only imagine how awful it would be to have low income in a place like that. There is no shortage of land though. It is not Manhattan.
  - panopticon 6y ago
    Interestingly, violent crime rates in Appalachia have been increasing over the last 30 years while urban violent crime rates have been declining over the same period (minus the upward trend of the last 3-4 years). But Appalachia bucks a lot of statistical trends, so make of that what you will.
Karunamon 6y ago
A pretty good correlation exists between poverty and crime. You see the same kind of reactions in even small cities when there's a plan to build a homeless shelter or halfway house or any other such institutions, nobody wants it in their back yard, nobody wants the negative externalities. You can call it cold, and it is, but it's also entirely rational.
- chasd00 6y ago
  same holds for sending your kids to a bad school. I had a conversation with someone about how i should send my kids to the neighborhood under performing school rather than private school because I was perpetuating the downfall. I said to him that he was perfectly free to sacrifice his kids on that altar but I reserve the right not to sacrifice mine. if you want to move to a poor neighborhood with high crime in order to help save it then more power to you. However, I don't fault anyone wanting to avoid it either.
egypturnash 6y ago
Why, yes; we could bring back a societal safety net and raise the minimum wage, so that it's actually possible for one income to pay rent, utilities, and still have some money left over for saving against a disaster and having some fun. We could take things like "healthcare" or "education" out of the hands of profit-seeking entities and run them with the philosophy that "a healthy population" is a much better profit than "a bigger number in a bank account". We could even take the money we put into an increasingly militarized, dangerous, and expensive police force and put it into the things that reduce crime by making it a lot harder for someone to fall to the point where the consequences of crime are less than the consequences of being absolutely broke. We could raise taxes on the tiny fraction of people and corporations who hold the vast majority of the money in the West, and especially the US, and send it back out into the system at the bottom with a basic income scheme, with the actual numbers on these tightly coupled with an assortment of cost-of-living indicators. If companies want to leave places that start taxing them, let them - they'll have to leave all their physical equipment behind, and we can institute a system of grants to help workers form a union and start using that stuff to fulfill people's needs for whatever they were making, with the profits being shared among the workers. "But that sounds like socialism! Or even communism!", some will protest. Why, yes, yes it does. The people and corporations who want to accumulate huge amounts of money and power have been telling us that everything that sounds nice is "socialism" for my entire lifetime, and to be quite honest I have been at the point where they are making "socialism" sound pretty good compared to the capitalist hellscape they've turned the world into. There are, of course, many ways this can go wrong. Utopia's not easy. But the present system sure isn't working either.
- didibus 6y ago
  I'm probably biased being Canadian, but I feel a lot of Americans talk about social democracy like it's this ideological utopian grandiose dream that's never been tried or achieved. But in reality, there's plenty of countries who've done it for a long time and had great success with it: Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Netherlands, Finland, Iceland, Belgium, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, India, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, and Hong Kong for example.
  - 6y ago
didibus 6y ago
> Well, can we come up with a more constructive and friendly way of doing this That's what the article is doing. Lots of people commit crime because they are homeless, or in financial struggle. If you allowed for zoning that would bring down the cost of rent, and therefore the cost of living, more people could get themselves off the street, and more people would have more money (from spending less of it on rent). That in turn should lower crime. I think this is a very different approach from subsidised housing and other such strategies by the way. Because those just concentrate poverty in one area, without actually lowering cost of living. Instead it can make things worse, by keeping people who can't afford the area living in it.
- core-questions 6y ago
  > If you allowed for zoning that would bring down the cost of rent, and therefore the cost of living, more people could get themselves off the street Lowering the cost of living is probably a good idea, you're not wrong, but there are some people for whom it will never matter how much the rent is, because they're not with-it enough to organize themselves to be able to pay it or to be a reasonable tenant. Mental health programs are the only hope I have for dealing with that, but they're too underfunded and frankly too voluntary presently to make the real difference we seek.

truth__indulger 6y ago

Wow, White Supremacist much? Defending one's home or property or feeling entitled to "Safety" from "Crime" is White Privilege.

metiscus 6y ago
This comment seems like Poe's law at work.
gedy 6y ago
It this sarcasm? Wanting safety from crime is now same level as KKK or Nazis?

bluGill 6y ago

There are a lot of poor people who are not criminals who don't like being lumped in with the criminals. Welcome them, and show by example how to live a better crime free life. Show that education is what made you able to afford fun things. Show that you aren't actually smarter, but a few life choices that they can point their kids to (as an adult it is often too late) can bring their kids to your level.

ccsnags 6y ago
I’m Appalachian. We have ridiculously low violent crime rates for the levels of poverty we have. I believe that this is a function of population density rather than any intrinsic trait of us hilljacks. I went to PDX often before the lockdown and I was struck by the lack of housing. I met with mostly contractors and construction people and they either lived in campers or an hour north in Washington. These people were middle class and couldn’t afford that city. I can only imagine how awful it would be to have low income in a place like that. There is no shortage of land though. It is not Manhattan.
- panopticon 6y ago
  Interestingly, violent crime rates in Appalachia have been increasing over the last 30 years while urban violent crime rates have been declining over the same period (minus the upward trend of the last 3-4 years). But Appalachia bucks a lot of statistical trends, so make of that what you will.

Karunamon 6y ago

A pretty good correlation exists between poverty and crime. You see the same kind of reactions in even small cities when there's a plan to build a homeless shelter or halfway house or any other such institutions, nobody wants it in their back yard, nobody wants the negative externalities. You can call it cold, and it is, but it's also entirely rational.

chasd00 6y ago
same holds for sending your kids to a bad school. I had a conversation with someone about how i should send my kids to the neighborhood under performing school rather than private school because I was perpetuating the downfall. I said to him that he was perfectly free to sacrifice his kids on that altar but I reserve the right not to sacrifice mine. if you want to move to a poor neighborhood with high crime in order to help save it then more power to you. However, I don't fault anyone wanting to avoid it either.

egypturnash 6y ago

Why, yes; we could bring back a societal safety net and raise the minimum wage, so that it's actually possible for one income to pay rent, utilities, and still have some money left over for saving against a disaster and having some fun. We could take things like "healthcare" or "education" out of the hands of profit-seeking entities and run them with the philosophy that "a healthy population" is a much better profit than "a bigger number in a bank account". We could even take the money we put into an increasingly militarized, dangerous, and expensive police force and put it into the things that reduce crime by making it a lot harder for someone to fall to the point where the consequences of crime are less than the consequences of being absolutely broke. We could raise taxes on the tiny fraction of people and corporations who hold the vast majority of the money in the West, and especially the US, and send it back out into the system at the bottom with a basic income scheme, with the actual numbers on these tightly coupled with an assortment of cost-of-living indicators. If companies want to leave places that start taxing them, let them - they'll have to leave all their physical equipment behind, and we can institute a system of grants to help workers form a union and start using that stuff to fulfill people's needs for whatever they were making, with the profits being shared among the workers. "But that sounds like socialism! Or even communism!", some will protest. Why, yes, yes it does. The people and corporations who want to accumulate huge amounts of money and power have been telling us that everything that sounds nice is "socialism" for my entire lifetime, and to be quite honest I have been at the point where they are making "socialism" sound pretty good compared to the capitalist hellscape they've turned the world into. There are, of course, many ways this can go wrong. Utopia's not easy. But the present system sure isn't working either.

didibus 6y ago
I'm probably biased being Canadian, but I feel a lot of Americans talk about social democracy like it's this ideological utopian grandiose dream that's never been tried or achieved. But in reality, there's plenty of countries who've done it for a long time and had great success with it: Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Netherlands, Finland, Iceland, Belgium, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, India, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, and Hong Kong for example.
- 6y ago

didibus 6y ago

> Well, can we come up with a more constructive and friendly way of doing this That's what the article is doing. Lots of people commit crime because they are homeless, or in financial struggle. If you allowed for zoning that would bring down the cost of rent, and therefore the cost of living, more people could get themselves off the street, and more people would have more money (from spending less of it on rent). That in turn should lower crime. I think this is a very different approach from subsidised housing and other such strategies by the way. Because those just concentrate poverty in one area, without actually lowering cost of living. Instead it can make things worse, by keeping people who can't afford the area living in it.

core-questions 6y ago
> If you allowed for zoning that would bring down the cost of rent, and therefore the cost of living, more people could get themselves off the street Lowering the cost of living is probably a good idea, you're not wrong, but there are some people for whom it will never matter how much the rent is, because they're not with-it enough to organize themselves to be able to pay it or to be a reasonable tenant. Mental health programs are the only hope I have for dealing with that, but they're too underfunded and frankly too voluntary presently to make the real difference we seek.