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A comment on Goodbye, New York, California and Illinois – Hello where?. Parent comment

Re:Goodbye, New York, California and Illinois – Hello where? by harimau777 on Friday January 17, 2020 @05:33PM (#22080249)
It's not clear to me from that article: Did the plan that they were opposing provide any assurances that the houses built would be good quality? The people quoted state that their concern is that overcrowded or low quality public housing[1] would be built. If the law addresses their stated concerns and they still oppose it then I think that it's fair to criticize them. However, I don't think it's fair to just assume that they are lying about the reason for their opposition.

[1] I could see criticizing public housing being code for "we don't want anyone who isn't upper middle class"; which of course is unreasonable. However, on the other hand I've lived in places where the public housing took the form of a massive tower block that was like something out of Judge Dredd; so I think its understandable that people would be concerned about it if they aren't given any assurances.

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Re:Goodbye, New York, California and Illinois – Hello where? by davidw on Friday January 17, 2020 @05:46PM (#22080380)
> "we don't want anyone who isn't upper middle class"

This is precisely what it is. They're teachers, for crying out loud.

The US hasn't really done 'giant tower block' public housing for decades. That's just scare tactics.

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Re:Goodbye, New York, California and Illinois – Hello where? by harimau777 on Friday January 17, 2020 @06:00PM (#22080511)
In that case, then I think it would be reasonable to criticize them. Although, it still seems to me that it wouldn't hurt to put something in the law that specifically says that they won't build giant tower blocks.
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Re:Goodbye, New York, California and Illinois – Hello where? by davidw on Friday January 17, 2020 @06:31PM (#22080789)
The more you read about this stuff, you realize that there's some real ugliness there - now and in the past. Maybe not everyone, but it goes well beyond the original intent of zoning to keep housing away from factories and tanneries and such.

https://www.sightline.org/2018/05/25/a-century-of-exclusion-...

Of course, in places like San Francisco and Portland, people are mostly smart enough to not "say the quiet part out loud", so they come up with other excuses.

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Re:Goodbye, New York, California and Illinois – Hello where? by inferiorhuman on Friday January 17, 2020 @09:55PM (#22081910)
Of course, in places like San Francisco and Portland, people are mostly smart enough to not "say the quiet part out loud", so they come up with other excuses.

No we fucking said the quiet part out loud quite proudly in San Francisco. Take a look at the covenants in the Forest Hill neighborhood. It's still fairly bad as those folks recently successfully fought an attempt at building a low income retirement home.

And we certainly weren't that offended by the Chinese Exclusion Act.

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Re:Goodbye, New York, California and Illinois – Hello where? by inferiorhuman on Sunday January 19, 2020 @12:16AM (#22089613)
Long form piece about racist housing policies in San Francisco:

https://www.fastcompany.com/90242388/the-bad-design-that-cre...

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