Mar
9
Blog Post #6
March 9, 2015 | Leave a Comment
I completely agree with how making people enter through the “poor door” is a different form of separate but equal. Yes, they may be able to live in the city and in a nice building, but what purpose does that have if they can’t use some of the amenities because they’re going through a different door? Even as I write this, I’m thinking of ways how the building can have a positive side: motivation. I still believe it’s unfair that people are being segregated and although the owners probably didn’t even consider the next point as a reason for there to be separate doors, it could motivate the lower income families to work harder. Living in a fancy house, being so close yet so far in obtaining the rest of the amenities, might make them want to work harder and earn more money in order to also be able to obtain those things.
Another negative would be just like how co-location can be bad; the poorer tenants might feel defeated and their self-esteem ruined because they’re separated from the rich so obviously. And it would be clear not only to the rich but everyone else in the area what their income level is like, since they’ll be entering a separate door which basically announces them as “not rich enough to go through the main door.”
“New York’s poverty — which, alongside its wealth, accounts for its economic inequality — also reflects the city’s generosity. The New York City Housing Authority provides homes for more than 400,000 people in public units and housing vouchers to another 225,000 residents.” I actually know someone who is benefiting from NY’s housing help. This seems like a decent argument for why income inequality isn’t as bad as we make it out to be. We get help that another place that’s more equal wouldn’t receive because they don’t need it as much. That leaves the people who do still need it in those places to have to fend for themselves. This sort of seems like a good thing is coming out of a bigger and worse thing, though. If we were all equal, then we wouldn’t need any housing help. But the fact that NY provides so much housing help just reinforces how bad the income gap is and how much help we really need.
“The problem that should concern candidates across the political spectrum is the missing middle — the ordinary people who move elsewhere because real estate is too expensive, taxes are too high, and schools underperform relative to many suburbs.” This made me realize that maybe we were too focused on how the poor were affected by the income inequality and not about the middle class. It’s true that the middle class also have to deal with the high real estate, high taxes, etc, and probably don’t get as much help as the poor because they make over a certain threshold and therefore don’t qualify for aid.
“Make New York City’s public sector far more generous to those at the bottom, and it will attract more poor people. Attract more poor people, and inequality will grow.” The author suggests that the mayor should make housing more affordable and create a better education system in order to bring in more middle class people, but wouldn’t those solutions also attract poor people? Then like the author said, bringing in more poor people would just make the city more unequal, so he seems to contradict himself.
I’m somewhat confused about the article about zoning. I’m not sure what the author proposes as a solution to inequality: creating more affordable houses? But then like he mentioned earlier, the rich might just make the prices so unaffordable that it would become segregated again. I wonder how zoning would fight inequality, though. Yes, poor people will be able to live in better houses but they would still be poor and I feel like nothing would have changed except their living space.
-Margaret Wang
