3 ms·

Of course one of the reasons social housing won't get built is the faircloth limit from 20 years ago.

tptacek 3mo ago
That's like 4-5 principal components back from the first principal component, which is that the places that need housing market vitality the most could not reasonably afford to acquire the housing to support it. The best school systems in Chicagoland are in the inner-ring suburbs, locked up for SFZ residents. Even if their municipal governments wanted to go all-out to fix that, they couldn't conceivably acquire the land and arrange the development. Worth adding that "public housing" isn't the only or even the most common form of subsidized housing. There's no Faircloth limit at all to public-private subsidized housing with AMI-calibrated eligibility and rent, and that's a much more common form of subsidized housing than a "housing project". But it can't get built in meaningful numbers either, because it's simply too expensive.
- JuniperMesos 3mo ago
  > The best school systems in Chicagoland are in the inner-ring suburbs, locked up for SFZ residents. Even if their municipal governments wanted to go all-out to fix that, they couldn't conceivably acquire the land and arrange the development. Also, if municipal governments "fixed that" by making it possible for more housing to be built and more people to move into neighborhoods served by those currently-good school districts, the odds are good that the influx of new students would make the school district worse. And the people currently living in single-family zoned residences know this - one motivation for NIMBYism is that it helps maintain the high quality of the local school district where your kids currently attend school. I'm personally in favor of abolishing public school districts, precisely so that the location of a house is no longer a major deciding factor in where any children in that household attend school. This reduces the incentive for people who live in a house in a good public school district to resist building any more houses in that school district, lest the inhabitants of that house make the school district less good.
  - TimorousBestie 3mo ago
    > I'm personally in favor of abolishing public school districts, precisely so that the location of a house is no longer a major deciding factor in where any children in that household attend school. Setting aside the inevitable transportation issues this is an excellent policy that I would love to see implemented, but I think too many suburbs built their identity around “having the (property tax base necessary to create the) good school district.”
    - hibikir 3mo ago
      Oh, it's a far worse problem than having the property tax base to create the district, but avoiding the students that would need extra support, and might disrupt the classroom because they aren't getting it. Those students are incredibly expensive to handle mainly via the school district alone. The amount of money to provide sufficient support without parental involvement is beyond what even the wealthiest districts can afford. The shortcut to avoid said students isn't to have immense funding then, but to make sure parents that aren't rather wealthy don't even get into live in the district a all. That's the real dirty problem of the suburb + school district marriage: You turn parents just thinking of the school district of their children into raging NIMBYs that end up wanting just rich people that speak perfect english nearby.
    - retired 3mo ago
      I’m from a country with such a system. You end up with your children all going to different schools, attending parent teacher meetings all over the country and spending lots of time dropping of the children at multiple schools.
      - TimorousBestie 3mo ago
        Seems pretty straightforward to implement a rule saying siblings go to the same district by default. I’m sure there are a bunch of edge cases, but the assignment process doesn’t have to be totally random.
  - lazyasciiart 3mo ago

That's like 4-5 principal components back from the first principal component, which is that the places that need housing market vitality the most could not reasonably afford to acquire the housing to support it. The best school systems in Chicagoland are in the inner-ring suburbs, locked up for SFZ residents. Even if their municipal governments wanted to go all-out to fix that, they couldn't conceivably acquire the land and arrange the development. Worth adding that "public housing" isn't the only or even the most common form of subsidized housing. There's no Faircloth limit at all to public-private subsidized housing with AMI-calibrated eligibility and rent, and that's a much more common form of subsidized housing than a "housing project". But it can't get built in meaningful numbers either, because it's simply too expensive.

JuniperMesos 3mo ago
> The best school systems in Chicagoland are in the inner-ring suburbs, locked up for SFZ residents. Even if their municipal governments wanted to go all-out to fix that, they couldn't conceivably acquire the land and arrange the development. Also, if municipal governments "fixed that" by making it possible for more housing to be built and more people to move into neighborhoods served by those currently-good school districts, the odds are good that the influx of new students would make the school district worse. And the people currently living in single-family zoned residences know this - one motivation for NIMBYism is that it helps maintain the high quality of the local school district where your kids currently attend school. I'm personally in favor of abolishing public school districts, precisely so that the location of a house is no longer a major deciding factor in where any children in that household attend school. This reduces the incentive for people who live in a house in a good public school district to resist building any more houses in that school district, lest the inhabitants of that house make the school district less good.
- TimorousBestie 3mo ago
  > I'm personally in favor of abolishing public school districts, precisely so that the location of a house is no longer a major deciding factor in where any children in that household attend school. Setting aside the inevitable transportation issues this is an excellent policy that I would love to see implemented, but I think too many suburbs built their identity around “having the (property tax base necessary to create the) good school district.”
  - hibikir 3mo ago
    Oh, it's a far worse problem than having the property tax base to create the district, but avoiding the students that would need extra support, and might disrupt the classroom because they aren't getting it. Those students are incredibly expensive to handle mainly via the school district alone. The amount of money to provide sufficient support without parental involvement is beyond what even the wealthiest districts can afford. The shortcut to avoid said students isn't to have immense funding then, but to make sure parents that aren't rather wealthy don't even get into live in the district a all. That's the real dirty problem of the suburb + school district marriage: You turn parents just thinking of the school district of their children into raging NIMBYs that end up wanting just rich people that speak perfect english nearby.
  - retired 3mo ago
    I’m from a country with such a system. You end up with your children all going to different schools, attending parent teacher meetings all over the country and spending lots of time dropping of the children at multiple schools.
    - TimorousBestie 3mo ago
      Seems pretty straightforward to implement a rule saying siblings go to the same district by default. I’m sure there are a bunch of edge cases, but the assignment process doesn’t have to be totally random.
- lazyasciiart 3mo ago