Shimmy wrote:Somebody tell me, where the hell are we suppose to put the poor in the city?

Why do "we" have to "put" them anywhere?



No one "put" me in my current condo. I chose it because it was 1) Where I wanted to live and 2) I could afford it. I suggest "the poor" do the same.

The Central Scrutinizer wrote:

Shimmy wrote:Somebody tell me, where the hell are we suppose to put the poor in the city?

Why do "we" have to "put" them anywhere?



No one "put" me in my current condo. I chose it because it was 1) Where I wanted to live and 2) I could afford it. I suggest "the poor" do the same.

I couldn't agree more!

JCity wrote:"low income housing"

When it is built elsewhere,

Why is it "built" anywhere at all? St. Louis: The first city to opt out of public housing. Has a nice ring to it.

That's my point. Why build it at all. We should just build "housing". If the poor can afford to live there, they will. If they can't, they won't.

Shimmy wrote:Well first off, I was under the impression that low income housing and subsidized housing were two different things. But, I'll state the case for both. Without out it, the so called "trash" in Lucus Park(still can't believe other human beings are referred to as such, no matter the situation) would be multiplied by at least 10.



Plus, I don't understand the notion that just because you're poor you don't work(not that either of you have stated that) when in fact many families that are on the verge of poverty have single moms working two, three, sometimes even four jobs just to provide food on the table and that low income roof over their family head.



To push poor people out of the city and into the county, Metro East, or wherever does not solve the problem and just puts it on other people and other governments. Even if the people that fled the city caused its problems, that is still no excuse to ignore the responsibility that the city has for ALL of its citizens. Even if it makes it a little less convenient for those higher on the income totem poll.

The notion that the poor would not have homes if the government did not provide them is false. I do not know the exact history, but it seems that the government only started providing housing for the poor when it got into the business of demolishing their neighborhoods like the ones that stood on the Pruitt Igoe site and Mill Creek Valley.



Getting rid of public housing will certainly cause some short term problems for its residents. But thinking long term, it will be much better for those residents. They will learn to be responsible for themselves and maybe make others think twice before making foolish decisions like having numerous children out of wedlock, etc.



Those who truly need help are always welcome in churches, homeless shelters and other charities. This sort of charity is real charity opposed to bureaucrats handing out other people's money.

How is living in public housing not being responsible for yourself? You're generalizing an entire economic class. As I said before, many families have single moms working multiple jobs trying to provide for their children(whether it be one, two or numerous), I fail to see how that is not being responsible.

Because they are forcing others to pay for their living. It is fine if support of these people is given willingly, such as it is at churches, homeless shelters and various other charities. This allows people to withdraw their financial support if the person is undeserving. When this support crosses over from being charity given willingly by others to an entitlement that people demand as a right, it creates incentives for bad behavior.



It is one thing to be a single mother by some horrible accident such as the father's untimely death or the father turning out to be an abusive alcoholic, etc, but it is downright irresponsible to be a single mother by choice (both financially and for denying the child a father).

And I'm not only talking about public housing, but low income housing ingeneral, including single family homes. I just don't think we should stop building houses for an entire class. Should we demand it be built in urban context? Yes. Should we demand higher quality? Of course.

I don't think you are following what we are saying. If a developer believes that he can make a profit by building cheaper houses for those with low incomes, there is nothing wrong with that. These developers are not going to build these in areas with high or growing land values. They are catering to people with less money so they are going to have to build on cheaper land in order to reap a profit. Under this system, land is generally going to go to its highest use.



With government subsidies and housing however, this system gets entirely screwed up. Under the market system, a developer would see the potential that the Washington Apartments have and would try to sell the units for as much as possible. Under the current system, companies like McCormack Barron Salazar can make just as much by making the Apartments into low income housing because they get subsidies from the government. The government has no money of its own, so it takes it from the taxpayers. In effect, we are all paying for people's houses in one of the nicest neighborhoods.



Even worse, once a property is designated as public housing or low income or senior housing, etc it is nearly impossible to change that because of the politics. It is there to stay and holds down the entire surrounding area. Yes, areas can succeed in spite of these developments, but they never realize their full potential.





To stay on subject, when can we expect anything on these corners? I heard that a development company holds much of the southwest corner and plans to build urban style development once the market is ready. What do the Roberts intend to do with the old grocery store?

Luftmensch wrote:


My understanding (and I'm no expert) is that MacCormack Baron's affordable housing properties are only required to be such for 30 years. Many of their properties around St. Louis are already reaching that threshhold, and I've heard rumors that they're considering selling these properties off or allowing the rents to go to market rates.

Great, then only thirty years until Kingshighway and Delmar can reach their full potential!

Everywhere you look, public housing has been demolished in favor of mixed-income housing with a relatively small affordable housing component, so I don't see the reasons for Bastiat's blanket statement above.

"Mixed-income" is a nice little euphemism for public housing. The idea of warehousing the poor failed so miserably that they have tried to dilute them a little. A little improved, yes, but still not ideal.

What is more: If Bastiat's theory about the evils of govt. sponsored affordable housing were correct, then European countries would have a massive homeless problem, while the United States (with its relatively miniscule amount of public housing) would see the god-given market taking care of everyone's needs.

Uh, that does not sound remotely like anything I said...

But have you ever been to Berlin? Amsterdam? Paris? Why is it that those places have almost NO homeless problem, while seemingly every American city has people pushing shopping carts and sleeping in public parks?

Because those people do not want to work for a home and for some reason we allow them to sleep in the parks?

The idea that private charities will take care of everyone has been tried. It was in a place called the nineteenth century. And it was not pretty - even by today's standards.

I'm not going to deny that living standards are much better today than in the 19th century, but you are comparing apples to oranges. Living standards today are much higher due to the market, not because the government provides handouts. Poor people enjoy things today such as television and better food that was not available to even the upper class in the 19th century.

At risk of a tangent--



I've lived in Soulard (back in the late 1980s) an aprtarment on Kingshighway next to the Avalon and in Carondelet near Bates.



It's not the cheek-to-jowl with the poor. I've lived in proximity to many, they're fine neighbors.



It's the cheek-to-jowl with those who deal drugs, shout profanties and urinate off their porch.



Fortunately, a small percentage of poor are that way.

But of those that are that way, they're always (99% of the time) poor.

jasontoon wrote:

Shimmy wrote:To say that a neighborhood isn't reaching full potential because there are poor people there is rather insulting, which is how I interpreted your message of low income housing holding an area down.

It's more than just "rather insulting" - it's antithetical to urbanism.



New York, San Francisco, and Chicago owe their vibrancy to a mixture of classes and races living cheek-by-jowl in the same city. (So did St. Louis, once upon a time.) And they've maintained that, to a large degree, even as the ceiling on real estate prices has shot up into the stratosphere.



How? Evil, evil government action! Rent control! Subsidized housing! And look at the horrible result: world-class cities that people continue to flock to! Oh, the horrors!



Of course we need to break the socially pathological patterns that have damned so many St. Louis neighborhoods. But the solution isn't to recreate the ghettos in the suburbs so the rich people can have the nice old buildings. St. Louis - its government, its citizens, its developers - needs to take action to preserve economic and social diversity, not to stand by and let the apartheid of the market take over.



And not just for its own sake, or because it's the nice thing to do, but because such diversity makes a better, more prosperous city in the long run.



If St. Louis just becomes a playground for the wealthy, it will lose whatever vibrancy it still has, no matter how many new storefronts are built to the sidewalk line. I don't want to live in a St. Louis that is basically a larger, older Clayton.

You guys are really taking it to the extreme. Even if I were arguing explicitly for more rich people in the city of St. Louis, my argument would be the one for more economic diversity.



Other than a few private streets in the Central West End, where are all of the wealthy folks living? They all live out in the county. The movers and shakers, the owners and managers of companies do not live in the city. What private high school in the city would the wealthy and well to do want to send their kid to? There may be some wealthy ones moving into the loft district, but not many and probably not after they have children.



Have you been north of Delmar? Great housing stock, but it is not going to take care of itself forever. We desperately need more wealthy people to move back into the city and save these neighborhoods before there are no buildings left to save.



Plopping down affordable housing in these neighborhoods assures that there will be problem neighbors and people generally do not want to live next to these types.



I can understand that people assume that affordable housing is necessary, but rent control?! When will people learn that price controls lead to shortages? Why do you think it costs thousands of dollars to rent a shoe box in Manhattan?

Matt Drops The H wrote:"Plopping down affordable housing in these neighborhoods assures that there will be problem neighbors and people generally do not want to live next to these types. "



Bastiat...so if I plop down a 400 thousand dollar town home "north of Delmar," it will instantly fill up with monied urbanists?



For one who worships the market as infallible, your grasp of it seems flimsy at best.

I don't worship markets as infallible, though I do realize that they are the best option available.



Also, you are putting words in my mouth and I have no idea where you got them from.



No one believes that you can just plop a 400 thousand dollar town home down north of Delmar. You have to build on existing spots of wealth. We need the Loop to continue to move east and the CWE to move north and east. The problem is that these "affordable housing" units short out the growth.



The Washington Apartments could have been another stepping stone of wealth to the Kingshighway and Delmar intersection before the jump over into neighborhoods such as Cabanne and Fountain Park.



The commercial strip in Lafayette is growing and could potentially connect to the City Hospital Complex and the LaSalle neighborhood if not for the crappy Le Saison public housing.



The Skinker DeBalivierre neighborhood is held back by subsidized apartments on Pershing. Maybe once those contracts run out, we'll see this area's land value start to reflect it's location and we can get some decent infill on DeBalivierre.



Maybe that's not what the people on this forum want though. We can pat ourselves on the back about the Loop and CWE retaining their "grittiness" while dozens of other potentially viable neighborhoods collapse back into the earth in other parts of the city and the vast majority of the wealth in the region stays west of Skinker. Far better to let poor family run a Victorian mansion into the ground rather than have a wealthy family move in and maintain it.



There will always be a place for the poor in the city. Even if Soulard, Lafayette Square, CWE, Skinker-Deb, Cabanne, ONSL, Tower Grove, Fountain Park were all solidly middle to upper class there would still be plenty of places.

Matt Drops The H wrote:Again, I think you miss the point.



If you're so much a fan of the best solution--the free market--then you need to realize that affordable housing units are in demand. This city absorbs a high percentage of the impoverished population of the St. Louis MSA. The City of St. Louis is attractive to low and middle income people because they're the most likely part of the population to own no automobile and thus be transit dependent. They have fewer housing options and must often rent or depend upon cheaper housing.



Despite examples to the contrary like Botanical Heights, there is no mass migration of monied people into the city. Until this city is able to address the school situation adequately, and to reduce perceptions and the reality of crime in many neighborhoods, there likely won't be anything other than this gradual trickling (relatively speaking) of urbanists into the city.



I know someone who works for a large apartment complex on the South Side who tells me that there is a waiting list years out for low income units. Yes, this is an anecdote, but I doubt sincerely that other apartment complexes who offer such units don't have the same thing. Housing low and moderate income in this city is in demand.

Again, you seem to miss the point. When speaking of "Affordable housing", it's proponents and opponents are always speaking of housing that is in some way directly subsidized by the government. Government intervention is the opposite of free market.



There are plenty of "affordable houses" in the city. When I see run down older houses, I do not see these as an impediment to further development of neighborhoods such as the CWE. I think of them as future developments. Their historic character is good for the neighborhood and the low income people currently living in them will be greatly compensated. What makes me think "oh, crap!!" is when I'm riding my bike on the "outskirts" of neighborhoods like Lafayette Square and CWE and see "Senior housing" or a HOPE project, etc because I know that it is pretty much impossible for a developer to buy these and convert them.

That said, Bastiat, what do you do? Do you make the value judgment that the poor don't deserve these beautiful buildings and start incentivizing upper income projects in the city? Given your status as free market speakerbox, I'd like to hear a solution to the housing problems "north of Delmar."

What part of free market do you not get? How can you have a free market with the government intervening in the housing market. You don't incentives for the rich just like you shouldn't offer incentives for the poor. The Washington Apartments received subsidies to make it low income. That is not free market. In order to reap a profit for rehabbing a building like that, I'd bet that the market rate would have at least made them middle income.



The housing problem north of Delmar is simple. Get rid of the property tax.

Also, I do not believe that affordable housing invariably invites problem tenants. Speak to a property manager at Renaissance Place at Grand, a HOPE VI mixed income community. They witness very little crime and yet contain many low income units. They do screen tenants, but anyone involved in HOPE VI would balk at your blanket statement.

This place broke ground in 2003. Laclede Town was the model of government planning at one time as well...