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It is worth noting those large public housing complexes were unpopular with housing professionals, advocates, planners, architects and economists when they were

It is worth noting those large public housing complexes were unpopular with housing professionals, advocates, planners, architects and economists when they were created. They were not built for affordable housing so much as to break up a burgeoning Black political party and to punish neighborhoods and politicians that were bucking the dominant at the time political machine. This in combination with the interstate and UIC campus were used to first break up the existing neighborhoods and then isolate them from the surrounding middle class areas that were more aligned with the dominant political elite. It should be fairly obvious that complexes not designed primarily for housing and populated intentionally by the marginalized would not do a good job. There were public housing complexes in Chicago before the big projects that were mixed income and desirable for middle class families. The Daley biography American Pharoah documents that process.

AStonesThrow 2y ago
Indeed, Equal Housing Opportunity is an extremely bad idea. I live in "Affordable Housing". The only commonality with my neighbors is the amount we pay for rent. I am unlikely to share any cultural touchpoints with my neighbors: we have disparate ethnicities, politics, religion, taste in music, vernaculars, holidays, favorite YouTube channels. My community is managed by a social services organization dedicated to a certain ethno-linguistic group. Their employees are 100% from that group. They indeed do not discriminate among renters. Nevertheless, there is a single gang which has moved in and taken control. This gang is of a different ethnic/cultural group, different from me and different from the management. We all have a relatively peaceful coexistence, and it's rather quiet around here. But we do not share any culture. It used to be that when immigrants reached these United States, they would settle and coalesce around their native lands' culture. There would be an Italian neighborhood, a Slavic neighborhood, a Polish neighborhood. These communities would be (at least initially) poor, filthy, and crime-ridden, especially as seen from outside. But they enjoyed solidarity, they enjoyed unity around a common culture, and often a common religion as well. A church would pop up on the street representing them, and speaking their language, and they'd all attend there. But solidarity in neighborhoods and forming cohesive communities is dangerous for the status quo, especially when foreign allegiances are concerned. America is a disestablishmentarian melting pot where we're supposed to be assimilated. So the best way to do that is to break up these ghetto neighborhoods and splinter all the diaspora so that we're far away from one another, no matter what, and we have no opportunity to form a cohesive community or exercise solidarity, or show up at the polls or protest in one voting bloc. Yes indeed, Equal Housing Opportunity prevents racist White suburbs. It permits Blacks to move in wherever they please. Yet, it is an effective bulwark against the formation of any neighborhood with Black hegemony or majority. Equal Housing also destroys and homogenizes every culture, and weakens everyone uniformly. Congratulations.

AStonesThrow 2y ago

Indeed, Equal Housing Opportunity is an extremely bad idea. I live in "Affordable Housing". The only commonality with my neighbors is the amount we pay for rent. I am unlikely to share any cultural touchpoints with my neighbors: we have disparate ethnicities, politics, religion, taste in music, vernaculars, holidays, favorite YouTube channels. My community is managed by a social services organization dedicated to a certain ethno-linguistic group. Their employees are 100% from that group. They indeed do not discriminate among renters. Nevertheless, there is a single gang which has moved in and taken control. This gang is of a different ethnic/cultural group, different from me and different from the management. We all have a relatively peaceful coexistence, and it's rather quiet around here. But we do not share any culture. It used to be that when immigrants reached these United States, they would settle and coalesce around their native lands' culture. There would be an Italian neighborhood, a Slavic neighborhood, a Polish neighborhood. These communities would be (at least initially) poor, filthy, and crime-ridden, especially as seen from outside. But they enjoyed solidarity, they enjoyed unity around a common culture, and often a common religion as well. A church would pop up on the street representing them, and speaking their language, and they'd all attend there. But solidarity in neighborhoods and forming cohesive communities is dangerous for the status quo, especially when foreign allegiances are concerned. America is a disestablishmentarian melting pot where we're supposed to be assimilated. So the best way to do that is to break up these ghetto neighborhoods and splinter all the diaspora so that we're far away from one another, no matter what, and we have no opportunity to form a cohesive community or exercise solidarity, or show up at the polls or protest in one voting bloc. Yes indeed, Equal Housing Opportunity prevents racist White suburbs. It permits Blacks to move in wherever they please. Yet, it is an effective bulwark against the formation of any neighborhood with Black hegemony or majority. Equal Housing also destroys and homogenizes every culture, and weakens everyone uniformly. Congratulations.