Commentary –

I’m Better Off Building Housing For Them?

By William A. Collins

Poor-folk housing,

Is my dread;

Residents,

May whack my head.

Our family lives in a nice house. It looks out on a pond. Our friends live in nice houses too, as do most folk who read this column. Even many unpleasant people live in nice houses. That’s just the way it is in Connecticut.

All these nice houses make for some very nice neighborhoods, even some very nice towns. Naturally we all want to keep them nice, so we alertly raise a ruckus when a developer wants to squeeze in still more nice houses, which would destroy a lovely pasture or woodland. We ruckus still louder if he proposes nice condos rather than nice houses. And if, under state law, he suggests including nice affordable units in with the nice condos, we ruckus really loud. This watchfulness is what keeps our neighborhoods so nice.

At the same time, we worry about our downtowns. Along with their nice houses, many cities harbor both public housing and private tenements. They’re not so nice. But the tenements often cure themselves. They’re given to fires and to urban renewal. Thus their numbers dwindle and their tenants are often set free to look for better quarters elsewhere.

Good luck.

It’s getting that way with public housing too. Conscience-stricken citizens who live in nice houses feel terrible that so many hapless folk live in crowded, dirty, dangerous government apartments. As a result, in some cities whole projects have been torn down, replaced by nice new units amounting to about a third of the number removed. Thus a lot of these tenants, too, are set free to look for better quarters elsewhere.

Again, good luck.

Nationally, in the last seven years, 27,000 HUD units have been demolished, while only 5,500 have been rebuilt. Another 33,000 are waiting to be torn down.

The results of all this gentrification (some call it ethnic cleansing) are plain. Connecticut newspapers often report it. Many families now spend half their income on rent. Homeless shelters are overflowing. There aren’t enough foster homes to care for all the kids from these disrupted families. Some families double up. Some leave their kids home alone. Schools teaching these rental refugees watch their performances sag, for want of a home.

A few of our cities are especially adept at this sort of demolition. Hartford, Bridgeport, Stamford, and Meriden come to mind. And most of our suburbs are equally adept at keeping new housing out. Stratford and Monroe have been in the headlines lately, but mentioning them only tends to raise their property values.

The problem is, from a public policy standpoint, that housing failure is much harder to correct than school failure. With bad schools we’re all in it together, rich and poor. Big classes, weak counseling, and low test scores taint everyone. We’ll all lobby and march shoulder to shoulder for relief.

With housing it’s just the opposite. It’s every family for itself. If I have a nice place to live, then others can look out for themselves. In fact it’s worse than that. If too many people in my town live in substandard housing, it’s bad for me too. They’ll erode my property values, raise my taxes, weaken my schools, and increase my crime rate. So while I may join with them in muscling the governor for better schools, I’d just as soon they’d move away. Least of all, do we want any more of them moving in.

This behavior is known as The American Way. It’s as American as, say, West Nile virus. And about as healthy. But in truth, it’s self-destructive. Our schools will actually be cured faster with more apartments than with more teachers, with better nutrition than with better lighting, and with more health care than with more computers. It sounds crazy, but providing housing is in our own enlightened self-interest. It’s much easier to teach kids who come to school ready to learn, than to try to jam knowledge down their throats when their lives are centered on not having a nice place to live.

(Columnist William A. Collins is a former state representative and a former mayor of Norwalk.)