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So what do you want? Affordable housing or quality housing. You can't always have both.
This.
You cannot give things to people with renter's mentalities and expect them to adopt owner's mentalities. Just using the word "affordable" is Orwellian imho, because the people living in said housing CANNOT AFFORD IT, they are SUBSIDIZED. Therefore, it is SUBSIDIZED HOUSING, not affordable. I live in affordable housing because I can afford the mortgage payment, taxes and insurance. A millionaire living in 5k sq feet in a gated community lives in affordable housing becuase they can afford the mortgage, taxes, insurance and HOA. A homeless person living in a box in alley lives in affordable housing becuase that's what they can afford on the income of being homeless.
So let us at least use the right terminology for what inclusionary zoning seeks to do - which is build subsidized housing, i.e. low income housing projects, i.e. ghettos, in the middle of middle/upper class neighborhoods, as if this will transform the low income housing resident into some prideful homeowner who had to drop $50-100k just on a down payment to live in that same neighborhood.
Is there a need for more SUBSIDIZED housing? Maybe. Apparently people like freemkt think the world would be a better place with more tenements. I disagree. It is up to the individual to change their own behavior if they find the housing they can actually afford distasteful. It is not the responsibility of their neighbors to provide them with housing above the means they possess of their own volition.
And wherever SUBSIDIZED housing goes, the surrounding area suffers. More crime, lower property values, and middle/upper class flight away from said housing. Detroit is a good example, because it wasn't just white flight, it was "anyone who can afford to get the heck out of Detroit" flight, that included almost every middle/upper class black person hiring the movers too.
This is the harvest one can expect with the seeds of inclusionary zoning, otherwise known as "ghetto by government decree."
Hardly a fair example, however, unless one is convinced that this is the inevitable outcome and/or as long as people believe that this is all "those" people deserve.
Virtually every neighborhood I have ever lived in has had a mix of people at different income levels.
Not an issue for me.
I don't know, it would be wrong to rezone and force existing communities to accommodate Section 8. There are those who use Section 8 for the right reasons, but the county seems to have an unhealthy obsession with it along with inviting illegal immigrants. The middle class is either moving out or going into one of the unaffected zones in the county. The poor remain poor, if not poorer, and the rich are still rich.
The left support Section 8 in other people's backyards.
There's probably already just as much Section 8 housing in the suburbs as there is within major city limits. Ditto rural areas.
Folks...the suburbs have joined the rest of America a long ass time ago. You're no longer special because you live in the burbs. Everything that goes on in the city goes on in the burbs. Some suburbs are often worse than the cities they flank.
In my community, Section 8 hasn't created that kind of ripple. We have a couple of 3-story apartment houses, a few several-square-block duplex communities, and a handful of single family homes. They've blended in unobtrusively so far. Personally I prefer them to the McMansion atrocities.
Full disclosure: back when DH & I owned and managed several rental homes, we declined to take Section 8 applications. That's been a few years and I don't remember our logic. Asked DH about it just now and he said "it was too much paperwork".
Yeah, right....the 'paperwork'. I have a landlord like that right now and I am NOT Section 8 renter, but the one renter who is gets EVERYTHING she needs and wants! There are Federal upkeep rules for Section 8 landlords. The rest of us, fend for ourselves.
Thought: It is a quick way to destroy home values.
How so? Put a bunch of people like me in your neighborhood and nothing happens. Put a bunch of baby mamas with gangbangers in tow and freeloading boyfriends, and then you have a problem.
So the question I ask is, Why is it that the thugs and gangbangers are the ones who get into this housing and not the people like me? If you can solve that, you can have inclusion and affordability without the negatives.
There's probably already just as much Section 8 housing in the suburbs as there is within major city limits. Ditto rural areas.
Folks...the suburbs have joined the rest of America a long ass time ago. You're no longer special because you live in the burbs. Everything that goes on in the city goes on in the burbs. Some suburbs are often worse than the cities they flank.
So please...
Exactly what has become of Charlotte, NC...ie: 'Urban Sprawl' a fancy name for Section 8 in the 'burbs. Hugh McColl's new Urbanization of the inner city (ghetto) became the newly built 'Center City' surrounding his BOA skyscraper, which was built, in part by tax credits and breaks from the City/County Govt. Where did these people go??? To the suburbs in surrounding areas, many of them affluent neighborhoods with shiek names like Churchill Downs or The Savannah, (with foreclosed homes during the Recession opening up many more homes to Section 8). I guess those 'affluent' folks were not as affluent as they thought they were. I wonder if Section 8 pays for those pricey HOA fees?
IF builders GET these tax breaks to build, with the stipulation they allow a certain % of lower income folks once built, they should be made to do that and not try to 'forget' that it WAS part of the deal like they try hard to do. Some of us Seniors have very good memories and don't forget.
In all honesty, I'd much prefer 'illegals' renting across from me than the 'mental case' that has been there for 20 yrs, with her delusions and paranoia. I live in one of the better, well established affluent neighborhoods where homes now go for a minimum of $300K+ to $2M, but has older established apts and duplexes as part of the neighborhood (the city's MDs and Med students once lived here in close proximity to the big medical center). I participate in the Community Watch and MY yard is fully landscaped and kept pristine by ME and not the 'slumlord' we rent from. Yes, I know I am the exception to the 'rules' but to me being a part of a neighborhood comes with the good and the not so hot. A concrete 'gate' does not a community make.
The left support Section 8 in other people's backyards.
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Yeah, right....the 'paperwork'. I have a landlord like that right now and I am NOT Section 8 renter, but the one renter who is gets EVERYTHING she needs and wants! There are Federal upkeep rules for Section 8 landlords. 
The rest of us, fend for ourselves.
I live in one of the better, well established affluent neighborhoods where homes now go for a minimum of $300K+ to $2M, but has older established apts and duplexes as part of the neighborhood (the city's MDs and Med students once lived here in close proximity to the big medical center). I participate in the Community Watch and MY yard is fully landscaped and kept pristine by ME and not the 'slumlord' we rent from. Yes, I know I am the exception to the 'rules' but to me being a part of a neighborhood comes with the good and the not so hot. A concrete 'gate' does not a community make.
