In a wealthy SF neighborhood, residents fight low-income housing | Hacker News Reader

In a wealthy SF neighborhood, residents fight low-income housing

sfchronicle.com

33 pointswallflower8 comments

I see the exact same thing going on in the UK. In my district in Norwich the local (parish) council (who is headed by my SO's grandpa in fact) are a bunch of seniors who have grouped together and fought every large-scale housing development plans for decades, ever since I was born.

I've talked to my SO's grandpa about this in fact just last week. He was telling me how after over 40 years in a council, one thing he is sure of is the affluent's hatred, fear and/or disgust for the poor.

It's happend since the dawn of time. The rich want to stay away from the poor. Generally I hate the idea, and all it does is seggregate, breed hate, and create ever higher barriers to social mobility.

Income correlates strongly with crime rates, and the more you've invested in where you live, the stronger you're likely to attempt to protect it.

Tech hiring has had a long time meme that it's better to turn down a good hire than to make a bad hire. It's just the same logic applied to living area.

Why does everyone have to dance around NIMBYism? If you did not want to live near poor people just say so.

Why do people feel the need to make excuses like: "what if the people who move in here are sex offenders?" (a literal concern of a parent quoted in the article). I think it says quite a lot about how these home owners perceive poor people.

Because they want to win, and you don't win by giving moral superiority to your enemies.

Because its not NIMBYism? I live in Chicago and we do this to welfare types and its ultimately unfair to them. There's a few public housing projects in ultra-trendy Wicker Park where these residents are shoved in the middle of a largely residential neighborhood. So it a long walk to get to the bus or the train. Worse, there are no jobs other than McJobs you can get anywhere in these areas. No up and coming business towers hungry for talent. Just retail garbage. The 'real' jobs are mostly downtown and considering we have the CTA you could live almost anywhere in the city to get downtown.

So we take these people and put them in trendy areas for what exactly? Meanwhile those lots could be be making tens, or even hundreds of thousands of dollars in property tax. Worse, a lot of these people show up with their messed up kids, who also have nothing to do, and who significantly raise the crime in the area. I used to live next to a settlement like this. It was just 24/7 partying and fighting while the rest of us had to get up to go to work. My car was broken into as well as our neighbor's, violent crime was significant compared to just a few blocks over, etc.

Its a disservice to everyone involved. The city grabbed this land during a different time when there were different political and economic realities. Shoving all these very poor people into the middle of ritzy areas doesn't work. Liberals are quick to criticize trickle-down economics, but what they're doing here is the exact same thing. There's nothing to trickle-down to these people.

This is the opposite of what you discuss. This is in the central area of the town.

Instead they want it dumped on a highway "near a Holiday Inn", because, among other reasons, there may be sex offenders (because you know, sex offenders should only be housed in communities that can't afford to say no...).

Because coastal liberals are uncomfortable actually admitting when they're being assholes.

Because society has taught people that if they want a higher quality of life they should be ashamed of themselves. So they invent politically correct ways of saying it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com