Posted on 11/03/2005 2:47:11 PM PST by caryatid
mixed use ? Sleeping quarters and retail drug emporium
No way it will be mixed income. Why would anyone who could afford more want to live in one of those places?
I agree on vouchers. A related issue is that neighborhoods need a reasonable mix of income levels. This a more of an art than a science and I don't mean to suggest we need X of this, Y of that, and Z of something else on every block. But in a lot of places, Washington, D.C. for one, the poor get isolated because large swaths of the region are priced out of reach. You end up with the very poor dumped into de facto reservations with no jobs and very often with no very good way to get to a job across town if you don't have a car. So they sit, and trouble breeds.
Low income housing and social services providers need to be dispersed and decentralized. Every neighborhood should bear a part of the load. That includes the leafy suburbs.
There is no way someone with a choice would live there ... so, what may happen is that they will require Section 8 low income people to live there ... sort of here's where we can let you live ... take it or leave it.
Otherwise, they may choose to plop scattered site housing into stable neighborhoods ... and, there goes the neighborhood. It has happened repeatedly. The drugs and blight come into a neighborhood and then anyone who can gets out.
EATH TO LIBERALS: MIDDLE CLASS WAGE EARNERS WILL NOT LIVE WITH LOW CLASS WELFARE BUMS AND CRIMINALS. END TRANSMISSION.""
That is the heart of the matter, IMO.
I worked too hard throughout my life to have a house/apartment that felt safe from the roving thugs, etc, which are a part of the "low income" areas.
If I have to keep moving and leaving the miscreants behind, so be it, but Mr Smith, Mr Wesson and Mr Remington move with me.
There is a bigger lie at the base of all of this, IMO.
Let's say a developer is going to build 30 houses. The local permits he gets require him to make 20% of those houses available for "low income" buyers.
Here's the math:
The correct price for each of these 30 houses based on price per sq foot in the given area, and the materials and labor used should be $350,000 each, for a total of $10,500,000.
The 6 "low income" houses are going to be sold at a price of $200,000 each, based on God knows what kind of computation the local authorities press upon the developer/builder in order for him to get to build ANYTHING AT ALL.
Since the total value at retail of all 30 houses is $10,500,000. and the builder is going to get paid only $1,200,000 for the "low income 6 houses, that JACKS UP the price on the remaining 24 houses to $387,500 in order to get to the full original value, which the developer is entitled to get. This is a SURCHARGE to the buyers who have worked hard to get into a nicer house of $37,500. This is a SURCHARGE of 9.6774%. This leads to higher property taxes for a buyer in states like California, where taxes are based on the purchase price. It is NOT CLEARLY stated how the property taxes are assessed on the low income home sold in a state where the ASSESSOR sets the property taxes.
The higher percentage of houses within the development targeted as being "low income", the more the other houses have to SUBSIDIZE those buyers.
This is a poor premise from the git-go. The lower income person will not make needed repairs and maintain their houses in the same manner as the person who paid MORE than full price for it. They just do not do so. SPARE ME YOUR GNASHING OF TEETH!!!
The "low income houses" are also sprinkled within the whole complex of the build, so you get to pay the higher rate, and cannot avoid the mentality of the low income buyer who got his chance to buy way below the correct price.
The higher taxes paid by the higher priced homes do not get those homeowners any more fire coverage, nor police coverage, nor street repairs, etc. NOT A NICKELS WORTH.
Instead, they get stuck with low income mentalities and a growing cancer on the neighborhood.
I have absolutely NO idea how long these "favored" buyers at the lower price are to stay in their homes, because I don't know that that can be legislated.
I also don't know if an investor with a qualifying income can buy the house and then put Section 8 renters into it.
If you don't know about Section 8 renters, educate yourselves. They can be a landlords worst nightmare.
Hence, they become the whole neighborhoods worst nightmare.
This whole system is just enforced integrated bussing, only with your house, IMO.
Okay, rides, consider my teeth un-gnashed.
You have raised some very good points that had not occurred to me.
"The object should be recorded home ownership, even if the gov't gives them away."
I used to help rebuild homes for the homeless in Nashville and I have to tell you that people who come out of housing projects don't know how to live in something they have to keep up. I've seen nice (small) homes go to sh*t in no time.
-----I agree. A BIG mistake.
That happened in the town we used to live in. All the welfare was in one section of town and the liberal, bleeding heart, Democratic mayor decided that it was not fair that they whould all have to live in that poor, run down section so he somehow managed to rewuire landlords to accept them in the better sections of town and it dragged the whole city down with it. Now there are scattered pockets of slumlord property all over the town amd housing values have dropped everywhere because of it. We're certainly glad to be out. We landed in a really, really nice little town and are very happy here. I don't miss the welfare crowd one bit, although I do have to admit, they sure kept life interesting with the constant visits from the police.
rewuire=require
Proof reading is my friend, proof reading is my friend,.....
Metmom, many of us left places that had changed unalterably for the worse ... and have found happy, productive lives in new places. We, too, are glad to be out.
At least we can always post a "do over"!
People will build their own houses if you let them have a piece of land, but zoning, code, various factors, keep them from doing things the legal way. So they go extralegal. That is the essence of third world--extralegal.
"People will build their own houses if you let them have a piece of land, but zoning, code, various factors, keep them from doing things the legal way. So they go extralegal. That is the essence of third world--extralegal."
I remember back in Nashville, Tn. in the early sixties the government bought up the shacks of the poor people surrounding the capitol and bulldozed them. They were moved into public housing and things went to hell from there. They were shacks but they were HOME to these people and gave them a sense of responsibility however small it was.
Even in Port au Prince, where 80% of the economy is extralegal, the people are getting by for the most part with no help from the legal system or Gummint. It is sort of capitalism, yet missing the main benefit of capitalism. The wealth of the poor, totaled, is 100x the amount of all foreign aid they ever got. A crazy situation, and one that breeds crime, terrorism, revolution, and other things we could do without.
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