Jim Hlavac
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Domestic Affairs
Public Housing in the United States is a pitiful example of government control resulting
in disaster because of politics and corruption. We are at a point were several millions
of poverty stricken people live in government owned housing. Plenty of people are
fighting over whether the housing should be torn down. And plenty of people are
arguing that the government shouldn't be helping these poor people -- they should get
their own houses.
By simply transferring ownership of this housing to the poor, with appropriate
lessons on home ownership we can both eliminate a major source of contention --
what to do with public housing -- and we can move a vast number of poor people out
of poverty.
So long as housing remains public it will be ill-cared for and it will attract too much
state involvement with the people who live there, and too much oppression of the
rights of people who live there. Already we have guilt by association in housing
projects: if a youngster gets arrested with drugs on the housing project grounds then
the whole family can be evicted.
The argument that the projects were built by tax dollars and thus should not be
given away circumvents the reality -- there is no way to unbuild the projects and return
the money for the bricks and mortar back to the people who paid the taxes. What
usually happens is that the project grounds are sold to some private developer and
the money disappears into the public coffers. And what is left? A huge number of
people who need housing assistance anyway. The newly homeless are going to need
Section 8 or some other housing assistance program, or are going to be pushed into
untenable living arrangements leading to domestic violence in overcrowded
conditions. Or they'll wind up homeless. There is no good in just bluntly dismantling
housing projects.
If the people who paid the taxes in the first place were at the time convinced that
public housing projects were the way to go, and they still desire to solve the problem,
without creating new and different problems, then giving the projects to the poor who
live there is the only way to go.
in disaster because of politics and corruption. We are at a point were several millions
of poverty stricken people live in government owned housing. Plenty of people are
fighting over whether the housing should be torn down. And plenty of people are
arguing that the government shouldn't be helping these poor people -- they should get
their own houses.
By simply transferring ownership of this housing to the poor, with appropriate
lessons on home ownership we can both eliminate a major source of contention --
what to do with public housing -- and we can move a vast number of poor people out
of poverty.
So long as housing remains public it will be ill-cared for and it will attract too much
state involvement with the people who live there, and too much oppression of the
rights of people who live there. Already we have guilt by association in housing
projects: if a youngster gets arrested with drugs on the housing project grounds then
the whole family can be evicted.
The argument that the projects were built by tax dollars and thus should not be
given away circumvents the reality -- there is no way to unbuild the projects and return
the money for the bricks and mortar back to the people who paid the taxes. What
usually happens is that the project grounds are sold to some private developer and
the money disappears into the public coffers. And what is left? A huge number of
people who need housing assistance anyway. The newly homeless are going to need
Section 8 or some other housing assistance program, or are going to be pushed into
untenable living arrangements leading to domestic violence in overcrowded
conditions. Or they'll wind up homeless. There is no good in just bluntly dismantling
housing projects.
If the people who paid the taxes in the first place were at the time convinced that
public housing projects were the way to go, and they still desire to solve the problem,
without creating new and different problems, then giving the projects to the poor who
live there is the only way to go.
| Domestic Affairs |