Posted on 04/07/2016 2:35:42 AM PDT by Altura Ct.
Baltimore-area neighborhoods are locked in a heated battle over a new push to bring residents from poor parts of the city into the more affluent suburbs.
The controversy surrounds government-subsidized Section 8 housing.
With crime in the inner city soaring and many of Baltimore’s neighborhoods plagued by gang violence, there was a push to integrate those communities into neighborhoods in the surrounding county. The NAACP and others sued Baltimore County over alleged housing segregation – and the county has now settled, agreeing to spend $30 million over the next 10 years to build 1,000 homes in affluent neighborhoods.
On top of that, the Baltimore County executive is planning to put forward legislation outlawing the practice of landlords denying – or as some see it, discriminating against – Section 8 tenants.
“I think it's important that we make sure that opportunities are available to everyone within the region," County Executive Kevin Kamenetz said.
It’s unclear whether such a proposal would even pass.
But the plans have faced stiff resistance from some residents and lawmakers.
“I think it's nonsense,” said Pat McDonough, a Republican Maryland delegate. “The overall policy which is coming out of the White House -- it is coming out of President Obama's philosophy of social engineering on steroids -- we're going to make everybody better if we move everyone to Kingsville. … It’s a failure and is destined to fail.”
The argument from the NAACP and its allies, though, is that typical Section 8 subsidized housing programs bunch poor people together, and that this only fuels more crime and other problems.
Under the new plan, residents from low-income neighborhoods would be placed all around Baltimore County, essentially integrating the poor among wealthier families.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
The goal is more to find sugar daddies to pay the bills for the gibsmedats; their reservations are bankrupt. They also benefit by breaking up blocs of taxpayer voters, but the real goal is money for “services”...
Spreading the sh##
See # 21; they can’t even afford cops anymore. The debt burden of their retirees are crushing them, and they have no tax base anymore.
Thanks; here in northeastern NJ they will just be pushing those blacks into neighborhoods that have become very Hispanic with a smattering of Asians. Whites in general have been abandoning the area for years, and younger childless whites will not stand idly by and be taxed for other peoples’ children in schools. This isn’t a theory or opinion; it is already unfolding here. Employers are leaving because they are being taxed for them now, and potential workers are following them out.
This is perfectly true. Dispersal is part of the solution. The question is how to do it. It gets tricky because most jurisdictions don't let a free market operate in housing. We have zoning and occupancy rules that have the effect, and often the purpose, of excluding low income housing and therefore poor people from many suburban neighborhoods. Suburbanites come to think of this as the natural way of the world. It's not.
In a free market, poor people (some of them, at least; the ones who want to escape the hellholes) would double and triple up to live in better areas closer to jobs and better schools. A free market would encourage group homes and informal rentals of basements and spare bedrooms. (Strengthening landlord rights would help here.) A free market would let your neighbor turn his house into a duplex and allow developers to build small apartment buildings on suburban cul de sacs. And a free market would NOT have federal, state, and local housing assistance programs that systematically concentrated poor people into big projects in project-heavy parts of town, chosen because they offered the path of least political resistance.
Instead of forcing suburbs to accept Section 8 housing or mandated numbers of low income apartments, let's turn Section 8 and other housing support programs into vouchers, tell poor people to find their own apartments, and get rid of the occupancy rules that prevent three low income families from renting a suburban tract house next door to you.
Dispersal is part of the solution. We have to stop using core cities as dumping grounds.
The old argument that if you mix dog crap with ice cream, you improve both.
At least the F*RT in church is funny.
I went the other way. I moved into an area where houses were left to rot, boarded up, and under foreclosure and back taxes in the city. After four years, our inner city neighborhood is discussing closing our streets from those main intersecting and gating the community. Mostly mixed black and white now, and houses sold ten years ago for $180K were had for $60K. Now that it’s all fixed up, they are back in the $160K range.
I have a friend who owns several modest rental units. Some years ago she decided out of kindness to rent to some Section 8 tenants. The tenants trashed two of her units and were nearly impossible to evict. The tenants caused many headaches and cost her a lot of money.
She learned her lesson: No good deed goes unpunished.
I agree with you on that. We are still living with the results of the central planning mistakes of the 1960's and '70's, characterized by the big urban housing projects that concentrated the problem cases and contributed heavily to the development of a self-reinforcing culture of poverty. Bit by bit, we are tearing these down, proving that even social services bureaucrats can sometimes learn. The problem is, if you tear down a big project, the people have to go somewhere. The suburbs can't just say, "eek," pull up their skirts, and systematically zone poor people out.
Let a free market operate. Exclusionary zoning is not a free market. And if one interferes with the operation of a free market in housing, there arises an obligation to accept some responsibility for sharing the burden. I live, for example, in an historic district in a rapidly gentrifying part of town. At this point, we still live in close proximity to remaining pockets of low income housing, so we cannot (yet) be accused of pulling up the drawbridges. But as the area continues to gentrify, I accept that we will acquire an obligation to provide some percentage of assisted housing. Everyone needs to take a share.
“I wonder if the limousine libs in NW DC would go for this there.”.........
Good place for a “test community”. My guess it would NEVER happen and if it did there would be a MASS exodus of the current residents.
Roland Park projects... ?
There is no difference between this than rubbing wet leprosy on your body for the result is the same...you get leprosy.
The same rot applies to moving animals from one cesspool into a clean area. They simply bring their animalistic, barbaric moraless ways with them and destroy the value of the properties hard working, law abiding citizens worked all of their life to afford.
The perfect description of disintegrating slums into good neighborhood is liberalism and Political Correctness run amuck.
B’more county ping, hon.
Yes. Strengthening landlords' rights is important. The difficulty you describe is not the natural way of the world. It is an artifact of bad policy, in this case a systematic favoring by limousine liberals of dysfunction behavior, which they tolerate and defend as long as it can be confined to other people's neighorhoods.
The large scale housing projects that are the capitals of Underclass America are artifacts of bad policy. The concentration of Section 8 housing is bad policy. The transportation and land development policies that subsidized suburban sprawl and left poor people isolated were bad policies. The modern underclass is the product of bad policy on a dozen fronts. These policies need to be uprooted, starting with welfare, policing, and schools, but smarter housing policy plays an important role as well.
I also foresee the test scores in those neighborhoods dropping dramatically and crime skyrocketing.
Yep.
In my experience, a crowd always devolves to the lowest common denominator.
So instead of making a bad kid better by putting them in with a bunch of good kids. The good kids get worse. Every parent instinctively knows this, thus why they always watch the kids their kid is hanging out with.
Now, in this Obamanation, where equality of outcome is required, all can be plagued by gang violence.
“We’re gonna import thieves, muggers, rapists, gangbangers, and murderers - and YOU’RE gonna pay for it.”
That’s the idea.
I’ve already made my contribution to Section 8. I once had an empty condo that I rented out to a seemingly nice Section 8 couple. They simply never paid rent, and, this being the Chicago area, you essentially had to prove to a judge that more than one person has actually seen your tenants murder someone in order to get them tossed out. Thankfully, they left peacefully and without ripping up the place (much).
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