I realize that, as a white man, I am more likely to be killed by my brother in law or girlfriend than I am by a black thug. Nevertheless, most of us appreciate the fact that the "other" is kept out of our safe neighborhoods by snob zoning. The underclass of all races should not be allowed to create more "no-go" zones in previously safe communities. Zoning to prevent rentals/section 8s/low income housing is always a good thing.
The definition of low-cost housing can get silly. They are putting up 30 or so townhouses next to us in NW DC at an average price of about $1.2 million. DC law requires 3 of those units to be "low-cost"- which means they can cost no more than 2/3rds the average. Yeah, $800K is "low-cost."
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/memphis-crime
Lately, though, a new and unexpected pattern has emerged, taking criminologists by surprise. While crime rates in large cities stayed flat, homicide rates in many midsize cities (with populations of between 500,000 and 1 million) began increasing, sometimes by as much as 20percent a year. In 2006, the Police Executive Research Forum, a national police group surveying cities from coast to coast, concluded in a report called “A Gathering Storm” that this might represent “the front end … of an epidemic of violence not seen for years.”