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There is a lot of difference between "low income" housing and public housing, as is stated in the title.
I had a federal job with middle class income in a high cost of living area. There was a new development with some low income units. I would have had to make twice my salary to qualify for a loan for one of the Iow income units. "Low income" can vary a lot by location.
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This.
If you read any of the NYC posts about these buildings, the units that are lower priced than the regular units are very hard to get into. You have to have an almost perfect credit rating, be able to put a high percentage down, and prove your income.
There is a lottery system in place and it takes years to get 'awarded' a unit.
This isn't public housing or section 8. Developers get deep discounts from city and state for offering a certain amount of units at a lower cost.
Your experience was very scary. These were exact experiences I were wondering about. Drugs, theft, flying bullets, bullying, damaged apartments, etc.
I'm glad you all got the heck out of there.
My point exactly! We lived in North Plainfield, IL, one block away from Naperville. A very affluent area about 30 miles West of Chicago. Homes ranged from $300-$700K. When the crash happened in 2010 a lot of homes foreclosed, investors bought them and a lot of Section 8 renters moved in. Theft, robberies and drug problems increased almost instantly. Not to mention a few shootings related to parties going on at these house. People who owned these homes were not happy paying $3k + a month for a mortgage payment and having a Section 8 renter living next door to them! The neighborhood continued to go downhill after that.
We have since moved as we were planning on getting out of Illinois anyway, but this is a perfect example of what happens when a city like Chicago tears down the projects and moves all these people into the suburbs. I'm not saying all of these people are bad, but most have been in the vicious cycle of living in the projects their entire lives as that's all they know and since there's no time limit on it, it turns into generations of people who don't work and don't care to.
I could see the poor people looking at the rich people and saying I will never be able to buy the things they have but I can easily steal those items from them. The parking garage would be like christmas every day.
I have bought and sold condos in a rough part of Houston. The condos had mostly renters in them because the area declined over time. Anyone other than other poor people without other options would be willing to live with these sorts of people. You would be out of your mind to do this by choice.
I would imagine the wealthy people over time would sell and move away or use it as a section 8 rental property. In time it would be 100% low income.
Why is almost everyone on this thread assuming that mixed income housing means that rich/wealthy people are living with poor people?
I'm not an expert on mixed income housing, however, I have lived in towns/cities that had mixed buildings and developments and I'm familiar with several of them both in the US and outside of it. I've never seen any that tried to cater to "rich" or "wealthy" people. The non-subsidized people were working people like young professionals early in their careers, newly divorced people, retirees downsizing, and people with decent but not high paying jobs across the spectrum, etc. There were no "rich people" among them. In these areas, real estate is very expensive and much of the new developments were mixed income to some degree as it was required for approval. Nobody really gave the mixed income aspect much notice.
Anyway, young professionals and others with decent but modest earnings in high cost areas often struggle to afford their first homes so they move to poorer neighborhoods (i.e. gentrification). The idea of modest/middle income working people living alongside poorer people is hardly a new one.
By the way, the lower income people who were subsidized were not "gang bangers", they were mainly single mothers, low income elderly people, and independently living disabled people. These developments were new, somewhat stylish in design and fairly well built but not luxury by any measure.
Why is almost everyone on this thread assuming that mixed income housing means that rich/wealthy people are living with poor people?
I'm not an expert on mixed income housing, however, I have lived in towns/cities that had mixed buildings and developments and I'm familiar with several of them both in the US and outside of it. I've never seen any that tried to cater to "rich" or "wealthy" people. The non-subsidized people were working people like young professionals early in their careers, newly divorced people, retirees downsizing, and people with decent but not high paying jobs across the spectrum, etc. There were no "rich people" among them. In these areas, real estate is very expensive and much of the new developments were mixed income to some degree as it was required for approval. Nobody really gave the mixed income aspect much notice.
Anyway, young professionals and others with decent but modest earnings in high cost areas often struggle to afford their first homes so they move to poorer neighborhoods (i.e. gentrification). The idea of modest/middle income working people living alongside poorer people is hardly a new one.
By the way, the lower income people who were subsidized were not "gang bangers", they were mainly single mothers, low income elderly people, and independently living disabled people. These developments were new, somewhat stylish in design and fairly well built but not luxury by any measure.
To be fair the people living in these places while not rich are not middle-middle-class folks with modest incomes either - they very narrowly cater to the upper-middle/professional class. The core middle class neither qualifies for subsidized units nor can afford market rent (even in a mixed use building) and if single rents a single room in a shared apartment and if not single no longer lives there, having been priced out and forced to move as soon as they had their first kid.
Also the crime associated with people in subsidized housing generally comes not from the original recipients but from their children. A poor single mother might not be a problem herself but her teenage son is disproportionately likely to be. There are also issues with the units/building not being kept up as well. I've lived in mixed market/controlled housing before (not intentionally subsidized, just partially decontrolled old housing stock). The rent-controlled neighbors, who were older singles or couples without kids, were perfectly fine. The maintenance problems that came from them not having money to maintain their unit and the landlord not having any incentive to maintain the rent controlled units or common space were not so fine. These buildings are going to have problems the market rate owners/tenants would not have to deal with elsewhere as they age and are not adequately maintained if the subsidized/market ratio is too high.
We should totally eliminate public housing. Providing public housing isn't something a government should do in the first place. Every government can lower the cost of developing new housing by eliminating useless and unnecessary regulations, codes, and drawbridge zoning.
Just the fact that million dollar condos are in the same development as those on welfare will depress the value.
If you are wealthy, why would you voluntarily choose to subsidize other people moreso than your tax dollars already do?
This is just another example of an attempt to redistribute wealth.
For the exact reason you stated. The price or rent of the high-end condos will be less than they would be in the same condo but without the subsidized units.
This is a much bigger problem several decades on than initially due to the maintenance (or lack thereof) incentive problem and I think that sales prices for market units in new mixed income buildings aren't suppressed enough because people look at how the building is now and don't think enough about how it will be down the line, but that's just my two cents from someone who wouldn't splash out for new construction regardless.
Most (not all) people who have subsidized housing are not trying to better their situations. This is a life they were probably raised up in and has been so for generations. Personally, I feel there should be a limit on how long you can receive subsidized housing. When I was a kid my mother raised me and my brother in an apartment with no help from the government. She was a single mother that did not receive child support and with a high school education. She was a waitress and busted her butt everyday so we could have a roof over our head and food on the table. One day a new lady with 2 kids moved in next to us. My mom found it odd that she was always home so one day she asked her "So where do you work", she said she didn't work. My mom asked her how do you pay for your bills? She said the government pays for them! She said she paid next to nothing for rent and received food stamps. Had been doing it for as long as she can remember. And here was my mom, paying full rent and not taking one cent for a hand out!
There needs to be a time limit set and you should have to prove you are looking for work or taking classes to get a higher skilled job. It ridiculous that people sit on these programs their entire lives and their children learn the same behavior. Don't get me wrong, if you honestly need the assistance I'm glad it's there, but there should be a time limit!
What you are not taking into consideration, there are a lot of people, that do not have the intelligence to work at a job today, that gives them an income large enough to live without some help. People that are very much needed to work in things like restaurants of all types, clean motels, landscape work, and other service jobs. The middle class and high income people, need services that these people provide, and they are working at jobs they are capable of performing. Move all these people out of a city, and the middle class and upper class, will not be able to survive without the services those people provide. This group of people are a vital part of the local employment picture, and they do not have the ability to upgrade their employment, as there are people capable of handling those jobs, and employers cannot afford to move the ones doing the lowest level of work up which would require constant training to fulfill the better jobs. You can't expect a hotel maid, to turn into a computer engineer as an example.
Fact: There are not enough better paid jobs in the whole country, to be able to move all those low income people getting some help into better paid jobs. Look at the threads on City-Data that people with a college education, are having trouble finding jobs. Run an ad for 3 employees in the better job category, and you may get 500 applications.
If you think I am wrong, then tell us where those jobs are going to come from to move all those in the lower employment field to middle class jobs.
And tell us, how are the cities going to survive, without people to work in restaurants especially in fast food restaurants, do the janitorial work, clean motel rooms, and to fill all those other low paid jobs in the service sector. The cities cannot afford to lose all these workers.
I have hired hundreds of people in my corporate days, and in businesses I owned or was managing, and know what is possible and what is not possible. I have had a lot of those low income workers apply for better jobs, and their applications would be rejected just from the form they filled out. It would be obvious that it was a person that could not fulfill the job requirements on the majority of applications.
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