A lot of what I've seen is people worried about "low quality tenants" (read: people who don't look just like me)

That feels like a pretty cheap and dishonest dismissal to me, since in my extremely-homogenous neighborhood, all the "low quality tenants" do look just like me.

I mainly don’t want increased property crime and drugs… and the main offenders look mostly like me… more strung out tho

The two tenants within a few houses of us in either direction would fit my definition (and likely that of many other folks) of "low quality tenant": don't bother picking up the beer can out of their yard, don't mow (at all), loud-ass exhaust on their shitty cars, etc. More of an eyesore than a contribution to the local community, and causing me to realize why HOAs come about.

But, yeah, it's all because they have brown skin. Oh, wait, the tenants in question are whiter than I am.

As a renter I've found the neighbors dump the beer cans, their shitty trailers, and whatever other bad habits they have in my yard because they know the landlord is off in another state and everybody who lives here for 2 years and then moves on has no rapport with the authorities so it can only hurt us if we try and do something about it. The landlord is an old man who basically does 0 maintenance to the house, so the house is slowly turning into a pile of garbage that an unmown lawn actually look more fitting with.

If you want to know why we don't bother, it's because the owners of the surrounding houses use our place as dumping grounds and the owners have been there for decades and know all the housing inspectors and police. It seems pointless to even bother when the landlord wants the house to fall into disrepair and the neighbors will use their connections to authorities to dump on our grounds again as soon as we clean it up. On one occasion I was sent a notice that I would be imprisoned because of trash my neighbor put somewhere not even on our property and before I even moved in. I dutifully cleaned it up because it was clear I was going to be framed, but as that took the entire weekend I had little energy leftover afterwards to do yard work around my own place after being exhausted dealing with the neighbor owners.

Meanwhile the neighbors' house indeed did look spotless because they dumped all their trash on the renters' yards.

Where is this? This seems like a completely different problem than the typical US city where people are grumpy about renters ruining the neighborhood.

"Eyesores" need a place to live too. And I said "look like me" for a reason: class is a bigger part of this than anything else.

The examples I list look just like me: white, male, and a little on the scraggly side. And at least one household member in each example works at Microsoft. So I am a loss at what you're driving at in reference to class.

We know how people treat rental cars. I don't know why it's a big shock that people will treat rental properties in the same manner, and why other folks would rather not live next to that. Blame race and class if you like, but to not allow at least a little more nuance to the discussion is silly.

> HOAs

If people are going to do restrictions about who lives where, HOA's are probably better than zoning. They're more localized, and the costs of administering them are born by those who perceive them to be beneficial.

I'd never live in one, but to each their own. I'd rather have someone choose one of those in a free market than get involved to zone the entire city one way.

I think that's less of a concern right near me. This is basically farm land or woods being turned into medium and low density developments. I think that comes into play with cheaper or higher density housing (either the legitimate low quality or the racist low quality version).