4 ms·

I agree with some of the broad ideas here, but I also understand that doing this systematically pushes lower income people into higher "nusiance" areas which of

by dv_dt 6y ago

I agree with some of the broad ideas here, but I also understand that doing this systematically pushes lower income people into higher "nusiance" areas which often end up being higher disease and lower lifespan areas from environmental pollution - which is inherently unfair as well as increasing the costs borne by lower income classes. So we end up with a pretty ugly societal tradeoff if we only look at this as some sort of voluntary choice, when it is not really so.

Ericson2314 6y ago
Yeah we should basically mandate that the cost of housing within areas varies more than between....or just have far more public housing.
- TaylorAlexander 6y ago
  Yep I’ve learned that reduced rate public housing is super common in Europe but in the USA we don’t talk about it much. https://www.huduser.gov/portal/pdredge/pdr_edge_featd_article_011314.html https://www.huduser.gov/portal/pdredge/pdr_edge_featd_articl...
  - Wohlf 6y ago
    Because we tried it and it didn't go well, they were called the projects and it concentrated poverty and crime.
    - gowld 6y ago
      We should have tried the version without crack cocaine and general access handguns and systemic racism in education and employment.
      - emiliobumachar 6y ago
        The USA, among others, tried very hard to get rid of crack cocaine, arguably way too hard to the point of making things way worse in poor neighborhoods.
        Ericson2314 6y ago
        Back to my original point the problem with public housing was that is was concentrated. Americans love their class symbols, and chief among them neighborhood. It's therefore absolutely necessarily that public housing be sprinkled around evenly.
    - dv_dt 6y ago
      If we evaluated software according to this policy, software would have been abandoned as unworkable and we would be using obviously more practical abacuses.
    - mc32 6y ago
      It also doesn’t go so well in the Paris outer arrondissements or council estates in England-Scotland, etc.
      - wahern 6y ago
        Both of which share many crucial characteristics with American housing projects, particularly concentration of poverty. Meanwhile, in the Austrian example given in the link above, Singaporean home subsidization, and other successful cases what you find are schemes that manage to create and maintain an admixture of incomes. There are different ways[1] to accomplish that and they're not all easy, but it does seem like a necessary requirement for success. [1] As in the Austrian example, you can remove income requirements after move-in, so that people aren't forced out as they move up the income ladder. Or rather than subsidize rent you can subsidize ownership. By having an ownership stake people are incentivized to maintain the property, and even if they move they'll be replaced by someone with a similar income (or at least an income above the initial ceiling). Unfortunately, many liberals who promote subsidized housing scoff at permitting people to continue to benefit from that initial subsidization after their income has increased. But that resistance is precisely the kind of policy dynamic that concentrates poverty!
    - TaylorAlexander 6y ago
      Well it’s worth reading the link to see how they avoided that problem in Austria... they had two strategies that seem to have succeeded there: the buildings are on a desirable area of town, and rent does not go up if your income goes up. The second point means that the area ends up being mixed income. You have to have low income to qualify for entry but then once you get on your feet and income rises you get to stay there. So they made affordable public housing that doesn’t become a slum.
dokem 6y ago
I’ll file this under my list of reasons I chose to not lead a low income life.
- hellotomyrars 6y ago
  Seriously? This is either an utter lack of understanding or refusal to care about how people who are born into poverty have dramatically higher obstacles than those born into the middle-class to escape it. Poverty is a vortex. You don't choose what family you're born into. It's not easy living paycheck-to-paycheck if you're even at that level, and rising out of homelessness is a monumental task.
  - gowld 6y ago
    You missed the poorly attempted sarcasm.
ksdale 6y ago
I agree with your assessment of unfairness. I personally see the solution as building way more housing. If you only make it illegal to build housing near pre-existing industry, then what? That's basically a let them eat cake argument (not saying that that's what you're suggesting), because now there aren't cheap options near industry, and unless zoning changes allow for much more housing in the non-industrial areas, then the supply of housing goes down, the price goes up, and poor people just have to deal (all in the name of being saved from industry).
theptip 6y ago
The thing is - money buys health. The poor are always going to have more limited resources, by definition. The interesting question (to me at least) is how, and how much, do we optimize our redistribution to help less well-off folks? I think you need to take a whole-system approach here. A dollar spent improving air quality next to this power plant might be a great investment, or it might be way down the list vs. say funding universal healthcare, which would help with other (potentially more serious) health issues too. QUALYs are a good tool for assessing the impact of a dollar of spend as it pertains to heath outcomes, but they are not the only lens. But until you have unlimited dollars, you need some framework for allocating them (after first deciding how much redistribution should be done in the first place). In general, I think more choices are better than fewer, so having the choice to in a cheaper but more noisy neighborhood is probably better than being priced out entirely and having to move to rural CA where you can afford rent. (At least, revealed preferences show that most residents think that it’s the preferable option).
- whatshisface 6y ago
  Yeah, too often discussions go like this: Problem: the only food poor people can afford is wonderbread. Solution: only accredited investors may now buy wonderbread.
darawk 6y ago
But doing that doesn't fix the problem for them, though. It just forces them to make a different trade-off with their limited resources than they naturally would have.
- BurningFrog 6y ago
  And since you've removed the option they preferred, they now have to go with something even worse.
thewebcount 6y ago
For what it's worth, it's not just lower income people. The very wealthy people living by the Santa Monica airport also complain about the noise despite it having been there for the last ~100 years. (I don't say that to belittle your point which is definitely true - just to say that even people who can afford to live elsewhere still buy into these areas then complain about it.)

by dv_dt 6y ago

Ericson2314 6y ago

Yeah we should basically mandate that the cost of housing within areas varies more than between....or just have far more public housing.

TaylorAlexander 6y ago
Yep I’ve learned that reduced rate public housing is super common in Europe but in the USA we don’t talk about it much. https://www.huduser.gov/portal/pdredge/pdr_edge_featd_article_011314.html https://www.huduser.gov/portal/pdredge/pdr_edge_featd_articl...
- Wohlf 6y ago
  Because we tried it and it didn't go well, they were called the projects and it concentrated poverty and crime.
  - gowld 6y ago
    We should have tried the version without crack cocaine and general access handguns and systemic racism in education and employment.
    - emiliobumachar 6y ago
      The USA, among others, tried very hard to get rid of crack cocaine, arguably way too hard to the point of making things way worse in poor neighborhoods.
      - Ericson2314 6y ago
        Back to my original point the problem with public housing was that is was concentrated. Americans love their class symbols, and chief among them neighborhood. It's therefore absolutely necessarily that public housing be sprinkled around evenly.
  - dv_dt 6y ago
    If we evaluated software according to this policy, software would have been abandoned as unworkable and we would be using obviously more practical abacuses.
  - mc32 6y ago
    It also doesn’t go so well in the Paris outer arrondissements or council estates in England-Scotland, etc.
    - wahern 6y ago
      Both of which share many crucial characteristics with American housing projects, particularly concentration of poverty. Meanwhile, in the Austrian example given in the link above, Singaporean home subsidization, and other successful cases what you find are schemes that manage to create and maintain an admixture of incomes. There are different ways[1] to accomplish that and they're not all easy, but it does seem like a necessary requirement for success. [1] As in the Austrian example, you can remove income requirements after move-in, so that people aren't forced out as they move up the income ladder. Or rather than subsidize rent you can subsidize ownership. By having an ownership stake people are incentivized to maintain the property, and even if they move they'll be replaced by someone with a similar income (or at least an income above the initial ceiling). Unfortunately, many liberals who promote subsidized housing scoff at permitting people to continue to benefit from that initial subsidization after their income has increased. But that resistance is precisely the kind of policy dynamic that concentrates poverty!
  - TaylorAlexander 6y ago
    Well it’s worth reading the link to see how they avoided that problem in Austria... they had two strategies that seem to have succeeded there: the buildings are on a desirable area of town, and rent does not go up if your income goes up. The second point means that the area ends up being mixed income. You have to have low income to qualify for entry but then once you get on your feet and income rises you get to stay there. So they made affordable public housing that doesn’t become a slum.

dokem 6y ago

I’ll file this under my list of reasons I chose to not lead a low income life.

hellotomyrars 6y ago
Seriously? This is either an utter lack of understanding or refusal to care about how people who are born into poverty have dramatically higher obstacles than those born into the middle-class to escape it. Poverty is a vortex. You don't choose what family you're born into. It's not easy living paycheck-to-paycheck if you're even at that level, and rising out of homelessness is a monumental task.
- gowld 6y ago
  You missed the poorly attempted sarcasm.

ksdale 6y ago

I agree with your assessment of unfairness. I personally see the solution as building way more housing. If you only make it illegal to build housing near pre-existing industry, then what? That's basically a let them eat cake argument (not saying that that's what you're suggesting), because now there aren't cheap options near industry, and unless zoning changes allow for much more housing in the non-industrial areas, then the supply of housing goes down, the price goes up, and poor people just have to deal (all in the name of being saved from industry).

theptip 6y ago

The thing is - money buys health. The poor are always going to have more limited resources, by definition. The interesting question (to me at least) is how, and how much, do we optimize our redistribution to help less well-off folks? I think you need to take a whole-system approach here. A dollar spent improving air quality next to this power plant might be a great investment, or it might be way down the list vs. say funding universal healthcare, which would help with other (potentially more serious) health issues too. QUALYs are a good tool for assessing the impact of a dollar of spend as it pertains to heath outcomes, but they are not the only lens. But until you have unlimited dollars, you need some framework for allocating them (after first deciding how much redistribution should be done in the first place). In general, I think more choices are better than fewer, so having the choice to in a cheaper but more noisy neighborhood is probably better than being priced out entirely and having to move to rural CA where you can afford rent. (At least, revealed preferences show that most residents think that it’s the preferable option).

whatshisface 6y ago
Yeah, too often discussions go like this: Problem: the only food poor people can afford is wonderbread. Solution: only accredited investors may now buy wonderbread.

darawk 6y ago

But doing that doesn't fix the problem for them, though. It just forces them to make a different trade-off with their limited resources than they naturally would have.

BurningFrog 6y ago
And since you've removed the option they preferred, they now have to go with something even worse.

thewebcount 6y ago

For what it's worth, it's not just lower income people. The very wealthy people living by the Santa Monica airport also complain about the noise despite it having been there for the last ~100 years. (I don't say that to belittle your point which is definitely true - just to say that even people who can afford to live elsewhere still buy into these areas then complain about it.)