WM: Both deconcentration and homeownership could help. What the landscape looks like in project housing is that no one who is succeeding lives there. Why? Because when one's parents begin to succeed, they automatically have to move out because they no longer meet income guidelines. So, no one with role model potential stays. Being kids, you don't know why these families leave, you just know they leave. Kids also tend to know more families like their own and fewer who are somehow different.From what I've seen, the biggest obstacle facing children in poor familiesin Minneapolis are unstable living situations that cause them to move
frequently and also change schools frequently, often leading to their
falling behind.
However, I doubt that housing stability is achievable for some folks, even if it is underwritten. In some families, times get tough, they quit paying the rent (or mortgage). It's very difficult, when families and clans have high drug and alcohol usage. That becomes what kids know, and for them those behaviors constitute "normalcy." (The first time you step over a 10-yr old junkie to get into a building, something goes out of you as though it's leaking copiously from your very pores.) If what you have is "normal" and TV is just fantasy, then where do you look for something different and possibly achievable.
However, I don't know that neighborhood surroundings matter as much asWM: Kids don't know they're poor if everyone around them has the same situation, more or less. Further, there are differences if they are the children of any family which views its situation as temporary. It's when they can look at grandparents and great grandparents, aunts and uncles and cousins and see that this has gone on for a very long time that they lose hope. What puts the kids in the way of guns and drugs is that sense of hopelessness. My parents had squat, they were not well educated--high school only and, of course, dad was not a big believer in legitimate work. But I'm sure that they were saying to us that we would go to college one day while we were still in our cribs, they were certainly saying it loud and clear by the time I could understand it. Their friends reflected that too. They had friends at the U of Cincinnati who came over to visit. The Ps were also sticklers for school and learning and devised games to further that notion in us. I don't see the parents of kids who are the worst off providing anything like a compare and contrast situation.
stability of the individual child's home. Who is the bigger influence in a
child's life - their parents or their parents' neighbors?
WM: Some folks, exemplefied by the current governor, appear to take the attitude that all their privilege is not privilege, but the fruits of their own hard work. Rural folks appear to know something different. People work hard at farming, for example, and they're still poor. Even though poverty can be blamed on the weather and, say, hog futures, it's still the fact of life so many deal with. In small communities it's harder to separate oneself out by income, since the whole town may be only ten by ten blocks or smaller. Everybody knows some family that's still hunting, fishing, and trapping to bring in enough revenue and food, though they may own the house they live in. The farmers all seem to have a winter job, farm wives are trying to bring in a little extra with a part time job in town. (I always think it's important to read Dickens about this point. He can describe urban poverty better than anyone else.) Even though their representatives may deny it, rural and small town folks know that poverty is not about laziness or some other contrary trait in most cases.The other problem I have is that whether you go with the Graham idea or the Plante idea, both are awfully tough sells from a political standpoint.
As for the Plante idea, while I certainly understand the reasoning behindWM: The same way the better off balk at everything that is perceived to be a threat to their comfort level. Perhaps the only way deconcentration would work is to buy down mortgages for folks. It surely would work better than subsidized apartment complexes in better off neighborhoods, which practically scream poverty.
deconcentrating poverty, I'm still willing to bet that folks in those more
well-off neighborhoods are going to see it simply as being told to take on
poor families and associated problems they'll bring with them from Jordan or
Hawthorne or wherever. And they'll balk, just like they do when the issue is
ever brought up of locating supportive housing outside the huge cluster in
Whittier.
There are areas in NE where just saying "affordable housing" or "increasingWM: You don't have to go to NE for that. I don't want a much higher density where I am. At this point it would require taking houses down to accomodate high density buildings.
housing density" will get you a dirty look from some folks.
WM: Personally, I think a stealth approach has some merit. There was a time in Minneapolis, as in many another city, when Jews helped African Americans buy housing. I no longer remember how they worked it, but they did.So how do you sell folks on these ideas? The numbers alone won't do it. You'll need to come up with an argument that is good enough to overcome the cynical reactions, the emotional responses and the NIMBY syndrome.
WizardMarks, Central ________________________________
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