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    The False Stigma of Public Housing

    My housing complex has a newsletter and I wrote this article for it - with the topic of public housing as the center of it. It turned out pretty fantastic - all the other ideas I had weren't very good. I thought I'd repost it here. Adrienne, who I mention in the article, was/is my editor. Let me know what you think. 

    Adrienne encouraged me to write another article for the Q Notes newsletter and I was unsure. I even talked it out with Roger - trying to arrive at some new ideas somehow.

    Then I happened upon an article in the Utne Reader while I was picking up a prescription at the Lake City Bartell’s. If you’re unaware, Utne Reader is a progressive journal with articles on everything from marijuana policy to the meaning of life and death. In their latest issue, there was an article called “Subsidized Housing That’s Luxurious And Affordable.” (http://www.utne.com/politics/subsidized-housing-zm0z13jazlin.aspxThe article was about the subsidized housing program in Vienna, Austria.

    The housing program was set up in the 1920s and 30s - before native Austrian Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany and unleashed hell on the whole world. Austria had a democratic socialist government with a focus on the socialism - some of the housing created, which are still there to this day, have names like the “Karl Marx - Hof.”

    Extreme political ideologies were much more popular back then than they are now and Austria has a mixed economy (a term meaning a mix of capitalism and socialism) just like most countries in the Western world. What’s striking is that, as industrialization grew and Austria evolved just like all countries did in how they dole out money to various segments of society, Austrian society kept these housing complexes going. The war (that war being World War II) didn’t wreck Austria the way it did many other countries in Europe so many of these housing complexes, which were created almost a century ago, are still being used for their original purpose.


     

    What really struck me about the article were several lines about efforts taken by the maintainers of these housing programs to stop “ghettoization.” The complexes, from the picture above, obviously stand out but they are not neglected cesspools of poverty - not like the huge housing projects that once dotted the New York skyline. The article mentioned also that public housing isn’t “stigmatized” at all in Vienna - certainly not the way it is here. The programs have acted as safety nets for people who needed them and never caused unbreakable dependency or the country to turn in to a communistic dictatorship or anything like that.

    I’ve lived and traveled throughout alot of the United States - I’ve been to the East Coast, Alaska, Canada and our various protectorates in the Pacific Islands. America is as socialist as it is capitalist. No matter what the Tea Partiers say, most of us have at some time lived in public housing, attended a public university, worked for a public institution or public services or received some sort of payment from the government. Some of us have been successful in private business but many more have failed and almost all of us have had “big government” in our lives at some point.

    Nevertheless, the fantasy continues - and the fantasy keeps the social programs we have from being as strong as they are in places like Vienna. My uncle, who I stayed with briefly in the Pacific Islands, could have qualified for the public housing program in the area, which, believe it or not, was pretty healthy. He didn’t, of course. Why? “Pride,” according to his son-in-law.

    One of my siblings even asked if me if I “had self-respect” when I told her I was applying for public housing. She, of course, grew up in public housing herself during the late 1980s and early 1990s, just like I had. The stigmatization is really used to bring people down - almost everyone in this society is dependent.

    The reality of the world is that everyone - every single person - is dependent on other people in some way. The boss of a successful company is dependent on the people working for him, from day laborers to the people who write the propaganda for various products. A professor at a university is dependent either on serious subsidies from tax dollars or contributions from well to do contributors.

    No one is independent. No one is an individualist. The way to move forward, I believe, is by accepting this reality and the need for community to really push things forward.

    Comments

    One of the downsides of much past public housing is that in a society that already is divided as to race or ethnicity or tribe being stuck in an certain economic class, it serves to perpetuate segregation.  This was not as much of a problem in a place like Austria of old, where most who were poor were white Austrians just like everyone else aside from economic class. But if a large perecentage of your poor are immigrants from say, Turkey or Pakistan, or unemployed Afro-Americans, then huge public housing "projects" perpetuate segregation by race and/or ethnicity and/or tribe as well as by economic class.

    But then I'm one of those liberal people who thinks integration is a good thing, not someone yearning for the good old days where people stuck with their own kind and policed themselves (or not) socially according to their tribal cultural norms.


    I can certainly see that. It's important to remember also what part of the world made the word "ghetto" so famous. You could say that the German National Socialists set up their own horrific public housing program for that country's Jews.

    I may take that in to account in another article on the subject. They want me to write for this newsletter more often and this is certainly the appropriate subject matter.

    Liberals and the folks at Utne in particular tend to be utopians - the blotches on various social programs might be wiped off in articles like this. What can you do? Keep hope alive.


    Wasn't it  better for society; that Fannie and Freddie helped to eliminate some of the problems associated with public housing and the bastards of wall street and their government; destroyed the better solution?    Just another example of the contempt; those in power have towards their subjects. 


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