I don't mean at all to sound snarky, so please don't read it that way; how did it help in Scandanavia? What is the final result? Did the poor borrow from those with money? I would think it would make them feel good about themselves that they feel not so ostracized and put "away" in poor sections, but what does that do for the ones that can afford things? Did they feel threatened or uncomfortable by the poor?
I'm thinking of how people in my middle class section of town would feel about Section 8 folks moving into the neighborhood, possibly bringing their unkempt ways and low-income issues into their fine neighborhood.
My personal opinion is if you build affordable homes that don't look like prisons, give them a nice place they can rent to own for their own, a place to have picnics, bring in employment opportunities, places for their kids to play in safety, they won't feel bad about themselves and have, finally, hope.
i see what you are saying. I mean to say they feel badly because they are poor; they don't have the belief they can make things better because many of htem they have little belief in themselves, they feel like shit, as you say. I think it's cyclical.
When people see that there is more than one way to live it makes you have higher aspirations for yourself; the very nature of projects and council blocks are designed to isolate and keep people in. There are people who are born, raised, go to school, church etc in public housing blocks who literally NEVER go outside their neighborhood; their world is very small and almost everyone lives JUST LIKE YOU so you don't see any different. When you have neighbors who work, neighbors who don't, artists, etc it exposes you to different ways of being in a way that living in areas were everyone is the same don't have.
I remember when they first converted Cabrini Green into mixed-income housing; a lot of socio-economic issues reared up because people really didn't know certain things that was considered common sense to people who have been fortunate enough to have grown up with a higher level of privilege. Not blasting your stereo at 2 in the morning would be considered something that you or I would assume people wouldn't do because people are sleeping and/or have to get up in the morning to go to work, but if you're raised somewhere where people are up at all hours of the night partying, screaming and blasting music because no one is going anywhere the next day how would you know that's NOT a appropriate way to behave?
My mom (who is 70) said that when her dad (an immigrant from Sicily) wanted to move, he looked into the new nice apartments of the Robert Taylor Homes project. They settled on a bungalow on the South Side, but in the beginning, the projects looked like a nice affordable route. I guess because the ghettos began in Italy, he didn't see them as a bad idea? The ones in Chicago were affordable and neat back then. Who knows... It may have a lot to do with the fact that no one told him that was the only place where he was allowed to live, that he was free to live in practically any neighborhood he wanted, if he could afford it.
But, sure, when you are dumped into a place and forced to live there because no one else wants you in their neighborhoods, of course that is going to set your standards and feelings of self-worth mighty low. Just look at how much damage one person's opinion of another can affect them; there are a lot of free-range people out in the world who are damaged and limiting themselves because of the single negative opinion of a parent or a teacher or a spouse - think of that kind of damage on a grander level, and we get the idea of how harmful having low self esteem can be, how difficult rising above what is expected of you can truly be.
That's just it; they weren't ghettos back then, they were affordable housing alternatives for people who were being shut out of other neighborhoods. In the 50s there were a lot of Blacks who went North to seek their fortunes, and some of them didn't have the money to live in areas that were opening up for more upwardly mobile and middle-class Blacks at the time (ie: Austin, Hyde Park, etc) and they were light years away from the cesspools they became. They were safe areas and were very strongly community oriented.
In the 60s a lot of the "super projects" were built, and along with them were more restrictive rules; the most damaging one being that if you got ANY form of employment you had to pay fair market value on your unit. Which would have been fine if CHA had um, actually did things like did repairs in a timely fashion, fix elevators, etc but they DIDN'T, so most people who were able to do better, got the hell out. It would have also been more fairer if it was sliding scale depending on what you made but nope, it was ANY job. The idea behind that was that only people who had a true need for public housing (ie: dirt poor and on some form of public assistance) should have it for the dirt cheap price but what ended up happening was people working minimum wage jobs were being slammed for rent way above what they could afford. So they gradually moved too, until all that was left was people who were too poor to move out, had children (it used to be legal to deny people housing based on the fact that they had children and its one of the reasons why my mom bought the house I grew up in from her uncle) or other issues. :(
The projects that were successful were often ones where the tenants got cared enough about the community they created and had the means to band together, BOUGHT the CHA out and went co-op. When I was a little girl, we used to ride down Lake Street to the Fulton District and I used to wonder about the townhomes near Ashland; they still had that institution look but you would see people outside cutting the grass and generally looked like people gave a damn who lived there. When I grew up I found out that was one of the communities that went co-op and completely wrestled control away from CHA due to massive mismanagement.
The things that CHA would make people go thru would have gotten any other company fined and sued, but since it was poor people this was happening to everyone just looked the other way. To say that they were slumlords of the century would be a compliment to them. :/
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2008-02-11 06:08 pm (UTC)Life in the big city
Date: 2008-02-11 08:48 pm (UTC)I'm thinking of how people in my middle class section of town would feel about Section 8 folks moving into the neighborhood, possibly bringing their unkempt ways and low-income issues into their fine neighborhood.
My personal opinion is if you build affordable homes that don't look like prisons, give them a nice place they can rent to own for their own, a place to have picnics, bring in employment opportunities, places for their kids to play in safety, they won't feel bad about themselves and have, finally, hope.
Re: Life in the big city
Date: 2008-02-11 09:30 pm (UTC)Re: Life in the big city
Date: 2008-02-11 11:09 pm (UTC)I remember when they first converted Cabrini Green into mixed-income housing; a lot of socio-economic issues reared up because people really didn't know certain things that was considered common sense to people who have been fortunate enough to have grown up with a higher level of privilege. Not blasting your stereo at 2 in the morning would be considered something that you or I would assume people wouldn't do because people are sleeping and/or have to get up in the morning to go to work, but if you're raised somewhere where people are up at all hours of the night partying, screaming and blasting music because no one is going anywhere the next day how would you know that's NOT a appropriate way to behave?
Re: Life in the big city
Date: 2008-02-11 11:38 pm (UTC)But, sure, when you are dumped into a place and forced to live there because no one else wants you in their neighborhoods, of course that is going to set your standards and feelings of self-worth mighty low. Just look at how much damage one person's opinion of another can affect them; there are a lot of free-range people out in the world who are damaged and limiting themselves because of the single negative opinion of a parent or a teacher or a spouse - think of that kind of damage on a grander level, and we get the idea of how harmful having low self esteem can be, how difficult rising above what is expected of you can truly be.
Re: Life in the big city
Date: 2008-02-12 12:26 am (UTC)In the 60s a lot of the "super projects" were built, and along with them were more restrictive rules; the most damaging one being that if you got ANY form of employment you had to pay fair market value on your unit. Which would have been fine if CHA had um, actually did things like did repairs in a timely fashion, fix elevators, etc but they DIDN'T, so most people who were able to do better, got the hell out. It would have also been more fairer if it was sliding scale depending on what you made but nope, it was ANY job. The idea behind that was that only people who had a true need for public housing (ie: dirt poor and on some form of public assistance) should have it for the dirt cheap price but what ended up happening was people working minimum wage jobs were being slammed for rent way above what they could afford. So they gradually moved too, until all that was left was people who were too poor to move out, had children (it used to be legal to deny people housing based on the fact that they had children and its one of the reasons why my mom bought the house I grew up in from her uncle) or other issues. :(
The projects that were successful were often ones where the tenants got cared enough about the community they created and had the means to band together, BOUGHT the CHA out and went co-op. When I was a little girl, we used to ride down Lake Street to the Fulton District and I used to wonder about the townhomes near Ashland; they still had that institution look but you would see people outside cutting the grass and generally looked like people gave a damn who lived there. When I grew up I found out that was one of the communities that went co-op and completely wrestled control away from CHA due to massive mismanagement.
The things that CHA would make people go thru would have gotten any other company fined and sued, but since it was poor people this was happening to everyone just looked the other way. To say that they were slumlords of the century would be a compliment to them. :/
no subject
Date: 2008-02-11 07:43 pm (UTC)LOVE
WESTERNIZED
RUSSIAN-KONSTRUKTIVIST ART
no subject
Date: 2008-02-12 12:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-12 12:22 am (UTC)I love how art deco/bauhaus-y they are though.
no subject
Date: 2008-02-12 01:08 am (UTC)