Un-affordable Housing
Nobody can read Dave Chapelle’s mind. But when he threatened to kill the affordable housing project in his home town of Yellow Springs, Ohio, a lot of people suddenly became psychic.
We didn’t, so we don’t get into what Dave was thinking — much. But do you ever ask yourself why there’s barely any affordable housing in suburbs? It’s not an accident. As it turns out, people who live in suburbs don’t want to have poor people living with them. Couple that with business scooping up all of the prime real-estate in cities, and there aren’t a lot of options there. Developers are bringing “jobs” to cities, and we never ask how much those jobs will pay. Think about Amazon, and about Tesla. Union-busters, both, and their salaries and the way they treat their lower-paid employees (outside of tech) is pathetically low.
Don’t be deceived. All jobs aren’t equal, and neither is all real estate. What’s happened too often in this nation is that the people without the power (i.e. money) are sidelined by people claiming to bring jobs, but jobs which keep the people poor and dependent. We hear a lot of hand-wringing about people becoming dependent on government handouts (which doesn’t really happen). What does happen? People becoming dependent on low-paying jobs that trap them living paycheck-to-paycheck and unable to break out of the cycle of poverty. Couple that with intentional ‘slum’ projects in honestly just bad geographic locations, in which there’s no possibility to increase personal wealth, and we’ve created a cycle of poverty.
Personal responsibility is huge with us, being former Marines. But there’s a point at which we have to ask whether personal responsibility is enough to raise someone out of poverty when there are simply so many forces pushing them in the other direction? Our assessment?
Beware of corporations and politicians claiming to bring jobs or more development. Jobs and development aren’t good for our society if the jobs don’t pay and the development doesn’t consider all of the needs of our community, and not simply the needs of the people of means.
