Keep the Ghettos?

During the last administration a fair housing rule was put into place requiring cities to build subsidized housing in new areas.

In other words, if you had in fact created a Ghetto you were supposed to build in other area to better integrate communities.

This was opposed naturally enough by those communities who argued, among other things, that it would hurt property values to have low income housing built in their middle income neighborhoods.

Admittedly it is a tough question and you have to decide what is the public interest?

Building more and more housing in neighborhoods that are generally poor continues a cycle of bad schools, drugs, gangs, crime and public assistance.

Building in better neighborhoods has historically had varying degrees of success.  Long term though public housing has not generally been a great success in improving quality of life.

One of the reasons for that is where it is successful in helping a family improve their income level, they move out, either because they can afford to or because they are no longer eligible.

So the long term residents become those who have the worst problems with a significant turnover.

Now to the extent people did improve their situation and move on, it is a success, having provided a family with a somewhat secure environment they could afford.

The impact on the neighbor hood is however almost always a negative one.

So objection to such housing isn't simply a racist one, although there is always some of that, it is recognition that such housing tends to deteriorate over time.

It is a legitimately difficult situation and maybe something else is needed.

Rolling back the rule may actually allow more housing to be built since many projects ran into significant opposition.  Maybe.