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> Carmel did not invest in poverty. Carmel pushed it out of town. Now it is extremely wealthy per-capita. What exactly does that mean, I'm reading it quite neg

> Carmel did not invest in poverty. Carmel pushed it out of town. Now it is extremely wealthy per-capita. What exactly does that mean, I'm reading it quite negatively, but the rest of this is positive, so I might be missing your true meaning.

richrichie 2y ago
I am assuming that means no drug shelters, free services for homeless etc.
tecoholic 2y ago
Yeah. Me too. Does it mean, they just gentrified the entire town and only rich people live there? Or is it more like they created enough opportunities and incentives that poorly paid jobs became better paid jobs? I can see how the latter is “not invest in poverty”. But I have doubts that the trickle down effect can be that effective. Maybe it works well in a small population?
- Camus134 2y ago
  I live near there. Carmel is now a very nice place to live, easily the nicest place to live in the State. It has very impressive walkable areas, tons of new restaurants and shops, the best schools in the state. It has become easily the most desirable place to live in the region, and good jobs have followed that.
  - giraffe_lady 2y ago
    Who does the bad jobs? How much do they get paid and where do they live?
    - indymike 2y ago
      There are a few lower cost apartment complexes, but for the most part they commute from adjacent communities because wages in low-income jobs are usually pay 15-25% better in Carmel.
resource_waste 2y ago
Less/No attempts to get local/state/federal money for low-income housing developments.
indymike 2y ago
> What exactly does that mean Carmel did not invest in anything that anchors poverty into the community. They were very careful not to overbuild section 8 housing, they aggressively police blight (i.e. people not taking care of their property), and also required homes to be made with more expensive finishes (i.e. brick instead of plastic siding), so cheap housing was simply not possible to build. The negative side: police tail old poorly maintained cars, are very quick to move homeless out, and generally make being poor in Carmel a bad experience. The local joke is "you got pulled over for being poor in Carmel".
- bumby 2y ago
  I read that as “they made the tough problems somebody else’s problem to solve.” What I’m really looking for is governance that helps solve these types of problems, not pushing them away with the engineering equivalent of redefining the system boundaries.
  - indymike 2y ago
    > they made the tough problems somebody else’s problem to solve This is true. A lot of the problems that go with poverty simply moved somewhere else. > engineering equivalent of redefining the system boundaries I think Brainerd's we don't invest in poverty is an interesting stance because on the surface it seems to be just pushing the problem away... but if you look a little deeper, investments in large amounts of section 8 housing attract even more poverty, lower tax rates, thus creating blight, which lowers tax rates more, which requires more subsidized housing and so on. There is a death spiral for cities, and I suspect that over-investing in poverty is one of the forces that causes it.
    - bumby 2y ago
      Is it creating more poverty or “attracting” poverty from somewhere else? If it’s the latter, it’s not increasing the global level of poverty, just the local level. I would expect a well governed municipality to have the ability to absorb, and ideally mitigate, an increase in low-income populace. To me, raising the lower-limit of quality of life is one of the measures of a good government. I’m just not sure artificially raising it by expelling poor people, or making their life miserable so they expel themselves, is actually doing that on a larger scale. Rather it’s a bit of poverty shell game. Granted, there is a tipping point by which any system will become unstable if it absorbs too much, but again, I think a measure of good governance is the height of that threshold. The discussion about Carmel seems to indicate their threshold is low.

richrichie 2y ago

I am assuming that means no drug shelters, free services for homeless etc.

tecoholic 2y ago

Yeah. Me too. Does it mean, they just gentrified the entire town and only rich people live there? Or is it more like they created enough opportunities and incentives that poorly paid jobs became better paid jobs? I can see how the latter is “not invest in poverty”. But I have doubts that the trickle down effect can be that effective. Maybe it works well in a small population?

Camus134 2y ago
I live near there. Carmel is now a very nice place to live, easily the nicest place to live in the State. It has very impressive walkable areas, tons of new restaurants and shops, the best schools in the state. It has become easily the most desirable place to live in the region, and good jobs have followed that.
- giraffe_lady 2y ago
  Who does the bad jobs? How much do they get paid and where do they live?
  - indymike 2y ago
    There are a few lower cost apartment complexes, but for the most part they commute from adjacent communities because wages in low-income jobs are usually pay 15-25% better in Carmel.

resource_waste 2y ago

Less/No attempts to get local/state/federal money for low-income housing developments.

indymike 2y ago

> What exactly does that mean Carmel did not invest in anything that anchors poverty into the community. They were very careful not to overbuild section 8 housing, they aggressively police blight (i.e. people not taking care of their property), and also required homes to be made with more expensive finishes (i.e. brick instead of plastic siding), so cheap housing was simply not possible to build. The negative side: police tail old poorly maintained cars, are very quick to move homeless out, and generally make being poor in Carmel a bad experience. The local joke is "you got pulled over for being poor in Carmel".

bumby 2y ago
I read that as “they made the tough problems somebody else’s problem to solve.” What I’m really looking for is governance that helps solve these types of problems, not pushing them away with the engineering equivalent of redefining the system boundaries.
- indymike 2y ago
  > they made the tough problems somebody else’s problem to solve This is true. A lot of the problems that go with poverty simply moved somewhere else. > engineering equivalent of redefining the system boundaries I think Brainerd's we don't invest in poverty is an interesting stance because on the surface it seems to be just pushing the problem away... but if you look a little deeper, investments in large amounts of section 8 housing attract even more poverty, lower tax rates, thus creating blight, which lowers tax rates more, which requires more subsidized housing and so on. There is a death spiral for cities, and I suspect that over-investing in poverty is one of the forces that causes it.
  - bumby 2y ago
    Is it creating more poverty or “attracting” poverty from somewhere else? If it’s the latter, it’s not increasing the global level of poverty, just the local level. I would expect a well governed municipality to have the ability to absorb, and ideally mitigate, an increase in low-income populace. To me, raising the lower-limit of quality of life is one of the measures of a good government. I’m just not sure artificially raising it by expelling poor people, or making their life miserable so they expel themselves, is actually doing that on a larger scale. Rather it’s a bit of poverty shell game. Granted, there is a tipping point by which any system will become unstable if it absorbs too much, but again, I think a measure of good governance is the height of that threshold. The discussion about Carmel seems to indicate their threshold is low.