Mixed-income neighbourhoods

[sabotabby]

There's certainly something to be said for projects like this one, intended to decrease the ghettoization of the poor, rebuild crumbling neighbourhoods, and promote communities.

My problem? Why is it always about building market condos in poor areas? If mixed-income was really meant to benefit poor people, they'd be building social housing in Rosedale and Yorkville. In every case I can think of where mixed-income developments happen in an existing neighbourhood, it's always about the invasion of the rich into prime real estate that someone has inconveniently built a housing project on.

I sense ulterior motives, and a very local sort of imperialism.

Comments

[marlowe1.livejournal.com]

I'm still more inclined to support Section 8 like it's in Minnesota where poor people can live where they want and pay a third of their income for rent and the government takes care of the rest. That way there's not this horrible density of poor people taking out their frustrations on each other.

Of course, this is all colored by the two years when I was a kid where I lived in the housing projects. Hate those places with a burning passion.

[sabotabby]

That makes a lot more sense. There's something to be said for creating communities that can pool their resources, but often housing projects are just a means of keeping poor people out of sight. You know, until their land becomes valuable and their houses are razed and it's all expropriated for condos.

[misslynx.livejournal.com]

Yes - mixed-income communities are a far better idea in theory, but in practice, they often seem to be based on taking away part of the stock of existing affordable housing and converting it into condos. I'd be more supportive if it went both ways - if there were also projects going on that involved converting buildings or neighbourhoods that are now mainly condos or other high-end housing partially into social housing.

[sabotabby]

Exactly. And there's such a glut of condos that there's no reason it can't be done, besides greed and lack of political will.

[frandroid.livejournal.com]

Actually, AFAIK, we haven't reduced the number of available units, we're increasing the local density and that increase goes towards private housing...

[springheel-jack.livejournal.com]

> mixed-income was really meant to benefit poor people, they'd be building social housing in Rosedale and Yorkville



So true.

[sabotabby]

I can just see myself presenting this idea at a city planning meeting.

[springheel-jack.livejournal.com]

"Those people who are displaced go on to devalue other properties, and the cycle is complete." There's a set of doonesburies on this.

[sabotabby]

Links?

[springheel-jack.livejournal.com]

It's nowhere. I'd have to scan it. It's from about 1979.

[pofflewomp.livejournal.com]

Central London is good in this respect. About 50% of housing is old "affordable" housing such as council or housing association housing. Unfortunately successive governments have done their best to get rid of lots with the "right to buy" schemes. Infuriatingly (I get murderous over this particular issue as I was born here and I believe (although apparently my belief is a disgusting symptom of "entitlement") people have a right to be able to live in the communities they were born in), a lot of people get very, very angry when they find to their astonishment that anyone who is not wealthy is allowed to live here at all (ignoring the fact that we were here first: it isn't our fault our neighbourhoods are so wonderful that rich people are desperate to move here!) and demand that we are forced out. I grew up in Westminster, where they sold off affordable housing, including using dodgy means to do so, and are now complaining that as a result of moving people on poorer incomes (which means teachers, most public sector workers, the civil servants who work in Westminster, as well as cleaners, hotel workers, shop workers, etc.) into privately rented housing they are having to pay them housing benefits as average salaries don't cover the astronomical rents.

Where I live (in the very centre) would cost about £300 a week to rent a one bed flat, about £400,000 to buy one, but most people who live here pay around £100 a week rent as they have old tenancies for their affordable housing.

Also, social/"affordable" (it isn't actually "affordable" if you are on minimum wage or close, so not quite the best term) housing is not subsidised, but makes a profit that is supposed to go back to creating more social housing and keeping existing stock in good repair, but there is an issue about this as the profits are often taken back by central government and propaganda means that the vast majority of non social-housing tenants belive very falsely that their taxes pay for our housing and then splutter with rage about it and want to kill us.

Other areas of London are more ghetto-like from what I hear, but I only know the more central ones.

[sabotabby]

There are a few housing projects in downtown/good locations here, and those are the ones targeted to be "mixed-income." Amazingly, there is no attempt to diversify the projects in the less desirable inner suburbs.

It's impossible to buy a place downtown now unless you're rich. Renting is still affordable, but not on a fixed income. Welfare and disability benefits are typically not enough to cover a decent place.

[pofflewomp.livejournal.com]

I think benefits/welfare here is still better than where you are, but our evil government is trying to get them as awful as possible in a short a time as possible! Until recently housing benefits did cover rent for any area, but now they are capping it so people on benefits are forced to live in the cheapest third of housing in whatever area, and they are trying to cap it so that it doesn't cover the high rents in more expensive areas, so places like Hastings, the seaside town I'm off to tomorrow (must zoom and pack!), are now overwhelmed with numbers of people on benefits moving in and have big social deprivation problems.

You couldn't possibly buy a house in London on a teacher's salary, I think. There are probably areas where you can get a flat for £250,000, and a teacher's salary is £26,000. Housing prices are insane! The social housing I live in, like both those my parents live in, are a mix of middle and lower-middle and working class people. Professors (like my stepdad), teachers, artists, film makers, as well as normal people working in local hotels and shops and in public services. It will be so so so appalling if it is all sold off or (as is happening now0 the rents are put up to market prices. Already the rents are being raised so they are unaffordable (one of my terrors about finding a job one day!).

I should get on with that article on the history of local housing idea I had! I did some research and then got stuck.

[franklanguage.livejournal.com]

Sounds to me like SPURA, or Seward Park Urban Renewal Area, an area of vacant lots near where I live that have become increasingly desirable as the area has become more trendy and upscale. For the past several years there has been a tug-of-war going on in which the people of the Lower East side—a traditionally poor and working-class neighborhood—have insisted the project be composed of 100% low-income housing, and the developers want a mix that includes luxury housing.

Being as I am poverty-stricken, I naturally favor the ghetto appraoach, and I have a natural distrust of 80/20 housing, since the 20% they offer to the poor as rentals will return to market-rate housing after 10 years, no exceptions. Besides, there is now nowhere in this fair city you can't find a luxury apartment if you want one. You want a $5000-a-month place in Staten Island? Harlem? Bay Ridge? Fine! It's affordable and low-income housing that's more impossible than ever to find , and people are continuing to be forced to leave the city when they shouldn't have to. They shouldn't even have to leave their neighborhoods.

[sabotabby]

If anyone should have to leave their neighbourhoods, it should be rich people. They can afford cars. Poor people ought to have more flexibility, not less.

[frandroid.livejournal.com]

Make every new condo building have 25% social housing, which the city will commit to purchase... Not just those re-development projects. Or 10%. Whatever.

[sabotabby]

That would be a sensible solution, yes. So it won't happen.

[pofflewomp.livejournal.com]

We also have rules about all new build housing having to have a percentage of "affordable" housing included, but from what I hear developers get round this or make mean rules for the "affordable" tenants, such as not letting their children use the play areas provided for the owner-occupiers!

[sabotabby]

Lovely. Though here, we can't even get a percentage of new build housing set aside for affordable housing. God forbid anyone cut into the developers' profits!