Not everyone appreciates affordable housing
Affordable housing is a good thing, right? The fact that homes have gradually gotten more affordable to the average homeowner is one of the few positives of the country’s real estate slump, right?
Well, turns out not everyone is a big fan of affordable housing.
According to a story on the SFGate Web site, a small number of residents in the high-end Mountain View area of San Francisco are upset that the city plans to build an affordable housing development next to a fairly new condo development.
One resident is quoted in the story as saying that the city is building a ghetto next to the condo development. This, the resident fears, will kill property values in the area.
I used to cover municipal government when I was first out of journalism school. Every time a developer or city proposed an affordable-housing project, the neighbors crammed city hall to complain. After a while, all their complaints started to sound the same: They usually hid behind “fears” that the new development would increase traffic and congestion in the area.
We all knew what they were really afraid of, though: poor people. And if the affordable-housing project was going to be built in a mostly white neighborhood? The complainers were afraid of dark-skinned poor people.
It’s unfortunate that so little has changed. I’m sure, though I’ve never been there, that Mountain View is a perfectly lovely little enclave. The people who live there, though, need a reality check. Affordable housing does not mean the same thing as “ghetto.” To suggest that it does is ignorant.
