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Comment by pitaj | Hacker News Reader

Don't forget public housing programs that concentrate poverty and crime ("The Projects").

It's as if assistance programs were designed to maintain a permanent underclass of dependents.

To be fair, many states stopped building this kind of housing in the 90's. For a few decades now, any affordable housing built in NY or CA or dozens of other states is almost always mixed-income.

It doesn't help. The 80/20 rule for affordable housing in NY(or is it NYC) has screwed up the market... Middle class gets to pay for it, while some places are now getting "poor entrances".

That's one stupendously negative way to look at it. Obviously it varies project to project. In California, where I've worked up close with many old and new projects, the new ones are almost always far better off than the old-school projects in terms of safety, cleanliness, community activity, etc. And they provide a lot of market-rate and middle-income housing in addition to low-income and senior housing.

The point he's making is that even though it's better it's still not great for the people paying the premium.

It all stems from why should I subsidize my neighbors rent?

The problem isn't that I wish to not subsidize it, but it's a matter that I'm subsidizing it to a much greater relative extent than a rich person living in his own brownstone he paid $10mil for.

On the other hand, nobody wants public housing projects being set up in their nice neighborhoods...often for good reason. The once-safe neighborhood where I grew up once had a grocery store - the lot was bought out by neighborhood housing, a low-income development was planned, locals complained, locals were called racists and NIMBYs, development was built anyway - and now there's no grocery store, no parking, shootings and burglaries are regular occurrences, and kids don't play outside.

The problem isn't solved by spreading poverty and dysfunction around rather than concentrating it - it just makes it everyone's (read: your) problem.

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