Is it just pure racism? Is it just overall hatred of poor people? Some combo of the two? Something else entirely?
"Property values"
Low property values near low-income housing are a manifestation of society's racism and classism.
I like how Justin on WTYP said it on their five-over-one episode: getting every (white) person into their own single-family home after WWII was the single most effective tool in fostering anti-communism in the US.
This. One of the things that really made me start to think the idea of incremental reform might be a dead end is when I realized just how interlinked all these systems are with housing. You really can't tackle the idea of passing huge low income housing policies without also addressing the fact that for a huge number of families their house is their primary financial asset. You pretty much have to uproot and scrap the entire system.
This is the problem in California. Building affordable housing is such a no-brainer, but folks have so much invested into their overpriced homes they will fight against anything that might lower values one iota.
And in California it's even worse than it might otherwise be because of a 1950s amendment to the state constitution that says that low income housing has to be approved by referendum.
https://web.archive.org/web/20210216180316/https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-affordable-housing-constitution-20190203-story.html
Is it just pure racism? Is it just overall hatred of poor people? Some combo of the two?
Combo of the two. There's plans to build condos near my home and my dad flew off the handle at the news because he thought it was affordable housing when it wasn't. No kidding he literally said along the lines of "I didn't move out of the city to have n-words come live near me". He's a racist piece of shit who's lizard brain is on that white flight.
I certainly don't want to downplay your dad's racism by any means, I just want to add that in my life I've known so many people who get that angry and get so close to saying the n-word but they stop themselves because they know they aren't supposed to say that, even around other white people.
When I check him on saying the n-word he does the bullshit Chris Rock skit of the difference between black people and n-words and swears up and down he's not racist. I want to punch him so badly, he's like a cartoon character.
Reminds me of my grandfather. Never liked him either. Was a huge racist asshole and when he died, no one cared, not even my grandma or my mom.
I have this feeling my dad's going to live to be old unfortunately. He's cheated death numerous times now and shows no signs of stopping. I've already told my mom when he goes I'm not going to his funeral, fuck him.
Don't you wanna drop a big fat deuce on his grave in front of both of the people that liked him enough to show up?
By the way, I heard Chris Rock said he regrets doing that bit, because it was so validating for racists.
I mean he's a piece of shit regardless but yeah that bit gave infinite ammo to racists like my dad. And let's be real, my dad hates black people, period, but he dresses it up in acceptable racism of "oh I just hate hip-hop thugs."
Racism 🤜 🤛 Classism
Plus, they thinking their houses' value will drop cuz poor/brown people nearby
Their property values will drop because real estate is systemically racist.
I get all heated and frothy knowing that the affordable housing will be of shit quality and means tested, ultimately strangling it in its crib and preventing meaningful change from happening in my community. That's just me though
Right, I mean so much housing that's going up now is of terrible build quality, and that's ostensibly for "luxury" housing. Imagine how poorly made affordable housing would be in the US.
It isn't always. But making just about any decent mass housing, especially affordable, relies entirely on state and federal grants and tax incentives to defray the costs and make up for the reduced revenue. Basically developers will want to see a certain amount of money more or less guaranteed before they're on board with something - and typically they can't do any differently even if they wanted to, since despite sustained low interest rates and massive quantitative easing, banks are still really tightfisted about loaning money and large construction projects are very, very expensive.
All that to say, you can sometimes find good, new affordable housing, but it requires very particular incentivised sites (historic, brownfield, et al) as well as direct government support for affordable housing itself. Also you have to avoid any public backlash. So it's possible and it happens, but it requires someone to take on a lot of work and be pretty creative to not necessarily even make as much money as they would with a regular apartment shitbrick.
When social life is organised for the production of commodities people will start identifying with their their commodities. Once they tie their personal value to that of their commodity, such as a house, an assault on the value of their property is seen as equal to an assault on their person.
This. Housing is also the only way an entire generation created enough wealth to live normal lives. Making middle/upper class Americans obsess over housing prices and the same stock market was a brilliant stroke by the owner class.
It ascends to genius when you realise that the GI bill which made home-ownership accessible to so many in the first place deliberately excluded poc.
Housing becomes more than a commodity under capitalism. It's your retreat from the workplace, from exploitation, from capitalism. It's a coping mechanism based on intentional ignorance. Having poor people, living embodyment's of Capitalism's failures, shatters that reality.
I'm from the mountain West, live in a pretty small town that's been growing off the charts, following Jackson and Aspen as the rich and famous move in. Also have experience in tenant work and politics.
As others have said, it's pretty much classism/racism amongst yuppies and retired boomers. That said, the answer isn't go to fully YIMBY "build baby build!". For many reasons, zoning changes for things like affordable housing often increase property values, making things more expensive. Pricing is much more responsive to demand than supply (never mind that econ 101 rules don't apply like that), plus the whole market is designed to prop up property values infinitely. The American Dream enables this by convincing the middle class who can afford houses (or used to) that property values are going to fund their retirement (spoiler: it probably won't).
Until 1) cities can figure out how to stop chasing gentrification to get a wealthier tax base, and 2) regular people can be convinced that high property values are bad in general, we're fucked. We don't have the kind of cheap available land in the West + govt. subsidy that fueled the cheap single-family boom in the 1950's anymore.
It's insane to see how many places in the Mountain West are exploding right now. It seems like locals everywhere are so resentful of the mostly well off people buying up property and changing the character of the neighborhoods. I thought maybe it was unique to where I'm living but after talking to people from a few different states it's definitely more widespread.
Affordable housing increases the supply of housing which is bad for landlords because then tenants can just move somewhere cheaper (especially if its mandated to be cheaper by law like affordable housing). A surprising amount of (primarily white) Americans are small landlords who own a second or possibly third property that they rent out. They make up the vanguard of the "home owning" class, Americans who own a home which is by far their most valuable asset. Most of these people are not landlords and have mortgages, but the fear of their most valuable asset being devalued terrifies them. A lot of this is couched in racism and NIMBYism as well, but make no mistake that the primary opposition to affordable housing comes from landlords and is class based in nature. This is the crux of the problem that the liberal YIMBYs cannot grasp, is that landlords are fundamentally opposed to new development (unless it is desperately needed) in the same way any monopoly would be opposed to new competition. The supply of reasonably priced housing on the market (different from the total supply since housing must appreciate) must be less than the people looking for homes and the landowning class exercises political power and controls the market in accordance with that law.
White suburbanites expect their home's value to increase indefinately. It's an "investment." Even though it doesn't fit out conventional understanding of capital, it functions similarly. They come to believe it's their right to derive money from their ownership of property, and will fight as hard as they can to ensure both the value and their ownership of the property.
Jokes on them I have no idea how to maintain this house and it's losing value daily.
I mean, it's an investment in that it's commodity hoarding, so it's even less productive than capital.
I wouldn't be so quick to describe it like that. They are actually living there. Most only have the one home.
But their getting pissed about potential property value loss is them commodifying their home.
i think is mostly classism, they hate poor people so much they think they are gonna stab them for their money, something similar happen in chile, the gov of santiago wanted affordable housing close to a rich people area and they used the same arguments
these saltine motherfuckers literally started an org to keep the city from building a homeless shelter
for the average person it’s a combo of “why should they get a hand out for what I worked for” and just a disgust of poor people
