Posted on 01/26/2015 4:32:35 AM PST by Kaslin
This past week, following the nation’s celebration of the birthday of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the U.S. Supreme Court heard an important case related to landmark law enacted during the civil rights era – the Fair Housing Law of 1968.
This case highlights how some policies that followed civil rights era legislation – in this case government low-income housing projects – actually have hurt the very communities they were supposed to help.
The Court heard arguments in the case Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs v The Inclusive Communities Project, a non-profit defining itself as for “thriving racially and economically inclusive communities.”
No one questions the illegality of refusing to sell or rent to someone because of his or her race. But what about policies not intended to be discriminatory, but that may produce results that might be deemed as such?
The Inclusive Communities Project claims that government-subsidized low-income housing, invariably constructed in low-income neighborhoods, is discriminatory because it forces blacks into pre-existing ghettos.
The particular claim here is that the Texas Housing Department should be forced to locate its taxpayer subsidized low-income housing in integrated neighborhoods that would provide minorities access to better schools and opportunity.
The Texas Housing Department and developers, needless to say, oppose this idea because it would raise the costs of constructing low-income housing.
But can it really be considered discrimination to provide low-income individuals cheap, taxpayer subsidized housing in areas that are already low income, racially segregated areas?
Unfortunately, regardless of how the Supreme Court decides in this case, the result will be bad policy because government-subsidized low income housing is a bad idea, no matter where it’s located.
There is no question that the concerns of the Inclusive Communities Project are legitimate. Government low-income housing lodged in poor, troubled communities just makes life that much harder for those that are already challenged.
But bad policies and bad ideas are going to be bad wherever they are carried out.
Even if somehow more taxpayer funds were funneled into these projects to incentivize developers to build more costly low-income housing, it’s still going to be government low-income housing where everyone’s neighbors will be poor.
Furthermore, are we then going to sue those who choose to move because they don’t want to be in a neighborhood with low-income housing and communities?
A noble and compassionate society certainly will want to help those less fortunate. But it should be done in a way that does not undermine individual personal freedom and sense of personal dignity and responsibility.
The way for government to help low income Americans with housing costs is simply to provide a voucher directly to individuals that can be used to defray rent wherever that individual chooses to live. Don’t tell people where to live, which is what government low-income housing does. This creates the troubled ghettos that the Inclusive Communities Project understands is a problem.
Furthermore, let’s stop using the tax code as a tool for social engineering. This is what providing tax-credits to builders to construct certain types of housing amounts to.
Social engineering doesn’t work. The fact that a half-century after passage of the Civil Rights Act low-income, racially segregated neighborhoods still exist across America is testimony to this.
What works? Freedom works.
Let builders decide in a free market where to build. We don’t need to give them a free ticket in the way of tax credits so they build where government social engineers want them to build.
And if we want to help low-income earners with housing costs, give them a voucher to defray rental costs that they can use anywhere the want.
If then these folks are not satisfied with the neighborhood they can afford, education, hard work, traditional values, and personal responsibility has always been the ticket in America to climb the social and economic ladder.
Subsidized housing in “better” neighborhoods just produces more ghettos at higher cost. I have seen how that works in St Petersburg. And there isn’t much gradually to it. One year it is a nice neighborhood. The next year it has gangs and houses falling apart. That was single family houses.I have seen it in Gainesville where a subsidized apartment project very quickly converted an adjacent nice crime free neighborhood to a crime ridden ghetto neighborhood. It starts when the project folks carry their broken couches and refrigerators over to the houses and deposit them on yards. Then come the nightly breakins and the drug deals in the old established neighborhood because the police are on duty in the project and then lots of etc until everyone has left and been replaced by the same people who inhabit the project.
It is too late now. The refuge camps have already been established. There is hope though, there are all kinds of businesses that are looking for huge concentrations of uneducated, unskilled workers.
um... they do that too. It's called a section 8 voucher.
But it doesn't work any better than the projects. Because they are not allowed to use it on “any” property, only on ones that have been certified to be able to accept section 8. And guess where the only “certified” section 8 housing is? pretty much right across the street from the projects!
lol
The whole thing is a scam created by KKK democrats to keep minorities poor, segregated, and most importantly clustered together in districts to ensure they re-elect the KKK democrats and/or their house nigro race baiters (like Shela Jackson Lee)
haha. You’re joking, right??? These vast majority of these people in government housing are not willing to work! due
The problem with low income housing is that it concentrates dysfunctional families in a single area. The children in low income housing see only dysfunctional role models: Welfare moms and their unemployed boy friends, drunks and drug users and dealers, pimps, gang members and other riff raff.
As a child in the 1960’s I saw plenty of dysfunctional families, but they were housed in normal neighborhoods. The kids from dysfunctional families in the 1960’s at least had next door neighbors who were role models for normalcy. Low income housing today ensures the kids residing there will never see what normal families look like.
There isn't much difference between government schools. There aren't really better schools, just better school students.
The truth is it’s human nature to do nothing when all your basic needs are being met.
The KKK Democrats knew this when they build the 20th century plantations called public housing.
I think “affordable” housing projects should be built where every other mansion in rich Democratic enclaves is torn down.
“And if we want to help low-income earners with housing costs, give them a voucher to defray rental costs that they can use anywhere the want.”
Isn’t that what section 8 is? I have friends in CA that paid well for nice houses in nice neighborhoods, only to have some section 8 move in after the housing bust. Their property value went down. Burglary, gang/drug activities came with these poor people that just want to live in a nicer neighborhood.
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