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Originally posted by winneythepooh7
I don't think it has as much to do with people not wanting people coming into their neighborhoods as it has to do with there not being AFFORDABLE housing in most neighborhoods. How can people pay for a decent apartment on SSI (which is about $500 a month in NYC)? And even for those that do end up getting a job, most likely it is not at a skilled job and they are only making minimum wage which does not cut it when it comes to paying for the basic necesities of everyday life.
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I do think it is a matter of the NIMBY principle: Not in My Back Yard. I don't know anyone, who is, in theory, against Habitat for Humanity. But if you say you are going to put a Habitat house in certain neighborhoods, people are up in arms about their property value going down. MN had (maybe still has) a policy that gave tax incentives to builders who set aside a certain percentage of their apartments for section 8-type housing. A single mother at my job when I was there lived in a very nice 2 bedroom apartment in a swank complex (avg rent in late 80s in that complex was probably $900 for a 2 bedroom) for next to nothing because of her income.
There is no benefit to housing all poor people together, like there was no benefit to housing all Native Americans on "reservations".
Unfortunately, some mixed use housing as they have called them here in Atlanta have not been successful because people got greedy. Techwood homes (a notoriously bad public housing complex near GA Tech) was torn down recently and "mixed use" housing was built instead. A certain % was supposed to go for market rate (over $1,000 I'm sure), acertain % for low income/working poor and a certain % for people on public assistance. The big complaint is that they have not reached the correct % for the public assistace or working poor numbers because so many yuppies want to live there. Same thing with another Atlanta area called East Lake.