This article reminded me of a thought I’ve often had: that the USA is a great place to live for the upper middle class and above, but it’s one of the worst wealthy countries to live in when you’re poor.
From the context of the USA it seems downright amazing to see a society where public housing isn’t automatically assumed to be a number of bad things: taxpayer waste, crime haven, and antiquated disrepair.
The benefits of the tenant management system also seems like it’s good for everyone in society. Our daily surroundings really shouldn’t be a race to the highest bidder for high-rent tenants like McDonald’s to come in, underpay employees, and poison local residents with junk food. The approach to the city as a public landlord being selective and building a neighborhood through balancing available goods and services seems incredibly desirable.
In the US this is all inverted the wrong way: the wealthy neighborhoods are the only ones that can keep chains like McDonald’s and Walmart out, walkability and positive urban fabric is a luxury amenity for the few (e.g., NYC, Miami, and Chicago’s best neighborhoods), and the wealthy are the ones that are subsidized instead of those who are low income or middle class.
Boutique shops and artisinal fares aren’t what poor immigrants to the USA are looking for. Being poor in the USA already means you’re better off than you’d be in most of those “wealthy countries’” in income. The bottom 10% in the US have a life index on par with or better than the top 10% in most European countries. The lowest 20% in America consume like an average person in a wealthy European country. Meanwhile my cousin is a third generation German and still gets called Ausländer by her teachers (who get to decide for her which academic future she’s allowed to have).
Every poor immigrant family I know from around the early 2000s, ourselves included, now _owns_ at least one house. Their kids went to college, people started businesses.
Also if you haven’t seen chains in <wealthy European city> pay less attention to McDonald’s and more attention to luxury clothing brands. Trust me, unlike Subways, you won’t be seeing Europe’s poor in any of these places. And for what it’s worth, Paris is swarming with homelessness, including that of small children. The fact you see the opposite written in the New York Times should be a clue that they’ve got a reason to skew that reality otherwise.
Also: Reported by Le Monde covering a study of GDP per Capita:
> Italy is just ahead of Mississippi, the poorest of the 50 states, while France is between Idaho and Arkansas, respectively 48th and 49th. Germany doesn't save face: It lies between Oklahoma and Maine (38th and 39th). This topic is muted in France – immediately met with counter-arguments about life expectancy, junk food, inequality, etc.
I think the big issue is it's a lot harder to start social housing in 2024 when you have extremely limited historical action on it. But in general a city buying real estate is a hedge on real estate prices increasing in that city, which can be extremely useful for city budgets if you have any costs associate with housing some portion of the population. Most cities of a certain size find they can't function without some amount of social housing: the free market prices out entire occupations that cities need. Even someone as non-essential as a Barista is actually quite important in that many of the people in NYC want to be able to buy coffee. But you aren't going to get Starbucks to pay the $20+ /hour needed for them to rent within a reasonable commute of where they live.
There are also questions about how much of out of control rents employers are responsible for and should bear the cost of, and how much it is the cities fault. To the degree to which rental prices are high because of politician supported NIMBYism it seems fairer for city budgets to bear those costs than third parties.
>Our daily surroundings really shouldn’t be a race to the highest bidder for high-rent tenants like McDonald’s to come in, underpay employees, and poison local residents with junk food.
A good term I heard for this was "strip mine society".
In the USA the government does things like this by subsidies to private people and businesses (section 8 housing is somewhat similar and is paid to landlords).
If the government wants to do this, they really should cut out the middle man and do it directly - purchase the building at something akin to fair market value and manage it themselves going forward.
I've often suspected third world countries stay "third world" because being rich in a poor country makes it a great place to live?
(just as the second world countries which bordered the first seem to have done better than their ideological cores, it seems to me that first world countries which bordered the second have also done better)
Poison? More like extremely nutritious and very cheap. Maybe too nutritious. Thanks to modern technology, even the poorest among us can afford to look like King Henry VIII. Would you take that privilege away from them?
From the context of the USA it seems downright amazing to see a society where public housing isn’t automatically assumed to be a number of bad things: taxpayer waste, crime haven, and antiquated disrepair.
The benefits of the tenant management system also seems like it’s good for everyone in society. Our daily surroundings really shouldn’t be a race to the highest bidder for high-rent tenants like McDonald’s to come in, underpay employees, and poison local residents with junk food. The approach to the city as a public landlord being selective and building a neighborhood through balancing available goods and services seems incredibly desirable.
In the US this is all inverted the wrong way: the wealthy neighborhoods are the only ones that can keep chains like McDonald’s and Walmart out, walkability and positive urban fabric is a luxury amenity for the few (e.g., NYC, Miami, and Chicago’s best neighborhoods), and the wealthy are the ones that are subsidized instead of those who are low income or middle class.