3 ms·

What is this country's allergy with public housing? Not pursuing that feels like jumping in water with our hands tied behind our backs

mothballed 6mo ago
They were historically used, at least most notoriously, for selling crack and sniper fortresses for organized gangs. Your average American envisions something like Cabrini Green when you say public housing.
- throwaway27448 6mo ago
  [flagged]
  - therobots927 6mo ago
    It’s mostly driven by racism.
  - antonvs 6mo ago
    > Wow are americans actually stupid enough to eat this bait? Yes. That “bait” has been raised to the level of propaganda that people, of some age groups at least (e.g. boomers) have been exposed to their whole lives. It doesn’t help that the US is quite geographically isolated, so most people never get much first-hand experience of anything else.
    - throwaway27448 6mo ago
      I agree. But we also can't force people to expose themselves to the rest of the world. I fear it will take hardship to give people incentive to look elsewhere
byigit 6mo ago
Black communities were bulldozed to make way for highways for being "slums" and forced into isolated "public" housing. This only concentrated the issued of crime and poverty and moved it out of sight of richer whiter communities. This was labeled as "Urban Renewal" and passed under the Housing Act of 1949.
epistasis 6mo ago
It's not just public housing it's all housing. Even some public housing advocates argue against housing reforms that would make it possible to build public housing! I've been supporting an advocacy group looking to build social housing and at least half the pushback is from anti-housing "tenant advocates" that work for non-profits funded by extremely foundations with boards that are all very wealthy with multiple homes, and don't see the need for more housing. The "tenant advocates" seem to view housing similarly and only support public housing to the extent that it doesn't actually get built.
- throwaway27448 6mo ago
  Well obviously fuck those guys, but we need to build housing people are going to actually live in
  - epistasis 6mo ago
    Pretty much all housing is housing that people are going to live in... Unless you are only talking about housing for a certain type of people, and that you'll only approve housing for that type of people, otherwise no housing? That's a very common position that I disagree with strongly. Soak the rich, let them pay for the high cost of new housing, and it benefits everyone. For public housing, it should be for all incomes so that those with high incomes subsidize those with lower incomes, so that the public housing has support throughout all levels of society when it comes to vote for maintenance every year, so that when there's a budget cut it's all of society fighting to ensure that the public housing is maintained. We need to break out of the idea that only some people deserve to get housing, and that we should build just for that narrow band of people. New housing is expensive, we need a lot of it, and those with money are the ones who should pay for it.
    - throwaway27448 6mo ago
      Yes, we all have a right to a decent place to live! But unless we can accept public ownership of land (and therefore housing), there's not much to iterate on and we're left with today's reality where we happily let millions live on the street for no fucking reason
tptacek 6mo ago
The obvious reason is that to a first approximation nobody is building public housing, and so appeals to public housing, especially from owner-residents, read to housing activists as a dodge, a way to perform advocacy for housing without actually providing housing. A subtler reason is that public housing is drastically more expensive to build than private housing. There's multifarious reasons for this, and the underlying problem is absolutely worth solving (it's one of the three big prescriptions in Abundance), but it's a bigger problem than housing. Right now, people are focused on whatever's going to bring the most units online fastest.
- throwaway27448 6mo ago
  Is this actually true? Singapore seems to have built, well, their entire country around public housing. I can understand this being more expensive, but drastically so seems hard to believe. Bringing more units online won't matter much if people can't afford them. Zoning (which is what I take abundance to refer to) can only do so much—we will need to attack housing as a commodity (or an asset, depending on who you listen to) in order to make a dent on the housing issues outside the upper middle class.
  - tptacek 6mo ago
    It's a US-specific observation.
prawn 6mo ago
Is there a current best practice for public housing? I remember a project here in South Australia that integrated some apartments for low-income or homelessness-risk tenants, amongst other tenancies. Idea being that it made for a melting pot rather than risk of only slum or only premium housing. But I don't think it was done at any real scale.
- throwaway27448 6mo ago
  No. Housing is a volatile topic. My vociferous rage comes from an american perspective. But mixed-class housing is generally positive
chrneu 6mo ago
[dead]

mothballed 6mo ago

They were historically used, at least most notoriously, for selling crack and sniper fortresses for organized gangs. Your average American envisions something like Cabrini Green when you say public housing.

throwaway27448 6mo ago
[flagged]
- therobots927 6mo ago
  It’s mostly driven by racism.
- antonvs 6mo ago
  > Wow are americans actually stupid enough to eat this bait? Yes. That “bait” has been raised to the level of propaganda that people, of some age groups at least (e.g. boomers) have been exposed to their whole lives. It doesn’t help that the US is quite geographically isolated, so most people never get much first-hand experience of anything else.
  - throwaway27448 6mo ago
    I agree. But we also can't force people to expose themselves to the rest of the world. I fear it will take hardship to give people incentive to look elsewhere

byigit 6mo ago

Black communities were bulldozed to make way for highways for being "slums" and forced into isolated "public" housing. This only concentrated the issued of crime and poverty and moved it out of sight of richer whiter communities. This was labeled as "Urban Renewal" and passed under the Housing Act of 1949.

epistasis 6mo ago

It's not just public housing it's all housing. Even some public housing advocates argue against housing reforms that would make it possible to build public housing! I've been supporting an advocacy group looking to build social housing and at least half the pushback is from anti-housing "tenant advocates" that work for non-profits funded by extremely foundations with boards that are all very wealthy with multiple homes, and don't see the need for more housing. The "tenant advocates" seem to view housing similarly and only support public housing to the extent that it doesn't actually get built.

throwaway27448 6mo ago
Well obviously fuck those guys, but we need to build housing people are going to actually live in
- epistasis 6mo ago
  Pretty much all housing is housing that people are going to live in... Unless you are only talking about housing for a certain type of people, and that you'll only approve housing for that type of people, otherwise no housing? That's a very common position that I disagree with strongly. Soak the rich, let them pay for the high cost of new housing, and it benefits everyone. For public housing, it should be for all incomes so that those with high incomes subsidize those with lower incomes, so that the public housing has support throughout all levels of society when it comes to vote for maintenance every year, so that when there's a budget cut it's all of society fighting to ensure that the public housing is maintained. We need to break out of the idea that only some people deserve to get housing, and that we should build just for that narrow band of people. New housing is expensive, we need a lot of it, and those with money are the ones who should pay for it.
  - throwaway27448 6mo ago
    Yes, we all have a right to a decent place to live! But unless we can accept public ownership of land (and therefore housing), there's not much to iterate on and we're left with today's reality where we happily let millions live on the street for no fucking reason

tptacek 6mo ago

The obvious reason is that to a first approximation nobody is building public housing, and so appeals to public housing, especially from owner-residents, read to housing activists as a dodge, a way to perform advocacy for housing without actually providing housing. A subtler reason is that public housing is drastically more expensive to build than private housing. There's multifarious reasons for this, and the underlying problem is absolutely worth solving (it's one of the three big prescriptions in Abundance), but it's a bigger problem than housing. Right now, people are focused on whatever's going to bring the most units online fastest.

throwaway27448 6mo ago
Is this actually true? Singapore seems to have built, well, their entire country around public housing. I can understand this being more expensive, but drastically so seems hard to believe. Bringing more units online won't matter much if people can't afford them. Zoning (which is what I take abundance to refer to) can only do so much—we will need to attack housing as a commodity (or an asset, depending on who you listen to) in order to make a dent on the housing issues outside the upper middle class.
- tptacek 6mo ago
  It's a US-specific observation.

prawn 6mo ago

Is there a current best practice for public housing? I remember a project here in South Australia that integrated some apartments for low-income or homelessness-risk tenants, amongst other tenancies. Idea being that it made for a melting pot rather than risk of only slum or only premium housing. But I don't think it was done at any real scale.

throwaway27448 6mo ago
No. Housing is a volatile topic. My vociferous rage comes from an american perspective. But mixed-class housing is generally positive

chrneu 6mo ago

[dead]