NYC apartments

Which is fine if you know the fire isn't going to get you. And how could anyone know that?

 

The issue was doors that failed to close in the New York fire.

 

New York City IS a "dystopian nightmare"! A balcony looking out at a mess like that would be like living some hellish scene out of Dante's "Divine Comedy"....

 

Agree that it must be hell, however plenty of people screen their little city balconies for privacy. You retain the benefits of outdoor space, and avoid the glare of your neighbours etc:

 

And then there are all the removable screen options:

 

And in NYC, even a tiny outdoor space is way better than none:

 

I know it seems counterintuitive, but think about the riots we've had recently, and in the 1960s -- people looting and trashing and burning their OWN neighborhoods.

 

I mean we get that kind of behaviour in certain demographics here, too. But they're not the majority, so we don't specifically cater to their bad behaviour.

I'm puzzled by the inference that this is majority behaviour in your public housing tenants.

 

I don't think it's majority behavior, per se; but one bad apple can spoil the bunch, i.e. a small amount of people can do a lot of damage. Add in that good tenants are intimidated by thugs, and the cultural attitude towards "snitching", and it runs rampant.

 

But why would those few become the blueprint for designing public housing? Isn't the priority the majority?

And what do you mean about 'snitching'? We don't really have that issue here - your heroin addicted neighbours will still call the police if you do crazy sh!t.

 

In most US cities/areas there has been a real shift away from large scale public housing complexes. I haven't heard of any being "designed" for a long time. Now when they shut them down (too expensive to renovate) residents are given vouchers to go rent in other neighborhoods, which sounded good in theory and can be, but causes issues of it's own -- finding landlords willing to accept the vouchers, tenants being willing to conform their behavior and assimilate to the new neighborhood, and missing their friends and family they were used to being around and who helped each other out, perhaps with transportation, child care, etc.

Most of what you're seeing in these pictures is older housing stock and other than some dense inner city areas such as NY, even large complexes with many buildings were originally designed with a lot of green space to serve residents needs to be outdoors. Today, with the breakdown of the nuclear family, the widespread selling of drugs, criminal subcultures, gun proliferation, etc it's just not safe to congregate outdoors in these areas. People hole up indoors. This even happens in many lower-income neighborhoods with single-family homes when the criminals take over the streets. Police departments have difficulty getting anyone to admit witnessing a crime, much less testifying about it. There is a definite belief among many in that situation that you don't snitch on people, and in many cases there is a credible fear of retaliation for doing so or it even being rumored that you may have considered it.

 

Yours is a very interesting and useful post! More than anything else, it presents a compilation of factual observations that support the idea that the government should GET OUT AND STAY OUT of the housing 'market', the rental 'market', and anything else that interferes with an individual's arrangements for living-space.

All these problems you accurately listed become the taxpayers' problems because we ALLOW them to become problems! If the government stopped building these 'rat-warrens', stopped handing out 'vouchers' to pay people's rent, and stopped interfering in people's ability to rent, lease, or buy housing of ANY kind, we'd have a much better relationship between government and those who PAY for it....

Moreover, if we had law enforcement and a court system that was worth a damn, we wouldn't have a problem with "the widespread selling of drugs, criminal subcultures, gun proliferation, etc", as you say.

Hint to all the 'sob-sister', welfare-shoveling Democrats: it is the responsibility of law enforcement agencies and the court system to protect law-abiding citizens of the United States from criminals of EVERY kind -- and the best way to do that is putting those convicted of crimes in prison for the full term of prescribed sentences... because criminals kept securely in prisons don't commit crimes any longer! It is sheer idiocy to think that by putting people on welfare, building complexes for them to live for free, and thereby creating the perfect atmosphere for many kinds of crime, that anything is made one bit better....

 

It is hard for me to express my gratitude for not having to live in a New York city apartment. I enjoy taking a coffee to the back of the house and watching the deer feed in my hay field. No muggings, no murders, no authoritarianism, no drug deals on the street corner. No natural gas or fast internet either but it is relatively small price to pay.

 

Great post, and, it should be added that nobody is FORCED to live in free or government-subsidized housing.

They live there because as professional parasites, they expect to be given everything they need in life, including a free, or heavily-subsidized place to live.

 

I imagine it is difficult for most people to uproot their lives and move on to something different. It takes some desire to do so and some courage. I have done it several times and improved my life style every time. I lived in an apartment in a large city for two years quite a few years ago. I don't miss it.

 

The inconvenience of moving from one place to another is relatively easy, though, when other people (tax-PAYERS) are paying for all of it....

"Beggars-can't-be-choosers", but they bitch and complain endlessly that they aren't given even more of everything they want... and they VOTE for the scumbag politicians who give it to them!

 

We really have no idea how bad it is in America, most of the time. We like to imagine there are a few streets here and there where it might be risky to walk after dark, but that's based purely on our own experience. There really isn't anywhere here which has that much dysfunction - even the roughest places seem super safe by comparison. I regularly visit a rough area, and think nothing of parking in a side alley and walking alone to wherever I have to go. Unarmed (as is normal here), and carrying a wallet full of cash, car keys, etc. The worst that happens is I'll be shouted at by a crazy (but harmless) person.

The problems we have in the 'bad' public housing clusters is domestic disputes, drugs, and people not keeping their places tidy. The conditions aren't a safety issue for the general public, if that makes sense. It doesn't prevent the general public from walking the streets and going about their business safely and normally.

 

What is sad is that you look at the situation at our southern border and the millions of people who are desperately trying to enter the United States to try to build a better life, and contrast it to these issues we're talking about in this thread. Fortunately for most US citizens, these issues are generally confined to poor areas in the inner cities -- but it is getting worse, not better. All I can say is that it SHOULD be blatantly obvious to everyone with a brain that the "great society" policies that began in the late 1960s and continue today with enabling undesirable behavior and throwing money at the "poverty" problem doesn't work.

 

Trade your ingrates for industrious migrants!

 

To each his own I guess. The $500 million would buy a nice ranch in the mountains and a helicopter to go to the grocery store.

 

Same. The claustrophobia, lack of sky, lack of privacy, lack of community, lack of nature, lack of quiet, the hedonism and decay, the loneliness and disconnection of urban people, being limited to manufactured and purchased entertainment and recreation, etc etc. All very anti-human, in my view. Absolute hell.