Six reasons people hate public housing
Two U.S. cities are engaged in a knock-down-drag-out fight over public housing in their communities: Galveston, Texas and Huntsville, Alabama.
In Galveston, Hurricane Ike demolished 569 units of public housing just a year ago. Now residents of Galveston don’t want that public housing rebuilt.
And in Huntsville, the local housing authority is planning to buy some foreclosed homes and turn them into public housing. But not if the upper middle-class residents of South Huntsville have anything to say about it.
They even took out an ad in the local paper, stating “Public housing is coming to your neighborhood,” trying to get people to come out to a local meeting, where both sides engaged in a heated debate over whether public housing should be allowed there.
It’s not just Galveston and Huntsville – it’s everywhere.
People have a visceral reaction to the words “public housing” and it’s usually not good. These reactions often appear in the comments sections of articles like this or on this blog, at community meetings and in other public forums.
But why? Why do people hate it so much?
There are probably a hundred reasons. But here are the top six reasons I hear that people despise public housing:
1) Public housing residents are poor.
A 2002 study shows that, generally, Americans don’t like the poor.
And who you are has a lot to do with why you don’t like them. The more money you have, it seems, the more likely you are to blame poverty on an internal factor – a poor person being lazy, unmotivated or unintelligent – than you are to blame it on an external factor – such as prejudice, few employment options or lack of inherited wealth.
So, generally, we don’t like poor people. And if you live in public housing, you’re probably poor. Thus, large concentration of poor people = large concentration of hate.
2) Public housing residents are lazy.
This is the one I hear most often. It usually sounds something like this, “If they would just get off their butt and work for a living like the rest of us, they wouldn’t need public housing.”
It follows from the idea that the poor are lazy (and if they would just work for a living, they would be fine like the rest of us), but there’s an special loathing for the laziness of public housing residents. Lazy and living in decent housing? If you’re going to be lazy, you should at least suffer.
Just as a note, the Chicago Housing Authority’s statistics show a variety of income sources for residents. About 37 percent are employed, while 28 percent receive disability, and 17 percent get Social Security. Just 14 percent get welfare assistance.
3) Public housing brings crime.
We’ve had a big debate over this lately – here, there and everywhere.
Same in Huntsville and Galveston. There’s a strong feeling that public housing residents bring crime along with them, despite the fact that HUD guidelines screen for criminal convictions and drug activity.
Some say it’s not the residents themselves – but trouble-making family members and visitors that bring the crime in. I’ve also been told that many of the drug dealers that pray on public housing aren’t residents, but people who target the low-income with their business.
Regardless of what you believe, people associate crime with public housing, and they don’t want to invite crime into their neighborhood.
4) Public housing redistributes wealth.
I call this the “my tax dollars…” argument. Oh man, do people get pissed about their tax dollars. Sometimes I think we’re like little Pavlov’s dogs – the moment we hear the phrase “taxes,” we start foaming at the mouth and growling.
There is a huge (HUGE) debate in this country, decades old, about whether tax money should go to programs like welfare, WIC, medicaid and public housing. Some people think the answer is no (NO!) and some people are fine with it.
I think the majority are in between – they don’t mind helping people out, but they don’t want tax money spent on programs that suck – either because they don’t work well or because people take advantage of them.
Some days, there is much weeping and gnashing of teeth over the comments I get on my blog posts. But it’s been helpful for me to realize this fact: some people do not believe government money should go to help the poor. It’s as simple as that.
5) Race
Oh, Lord in heaven, I said it again. Some day, I’m gonna be burned at the stake.
When you say the words “public housing,” particularly in Chicago, no one has any doubt over the color of people who live there.
And our country’s history with racism, discrimination and racialized public policy, all of us have a negative mental association with people of color, particularly African-Americans. Like it or not, it’s in your brain.
Again, we’re like Pavlov’s dogs, only with higher cognitive association skills.
6) Declining property values
In college, we had to read John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government, which coined the phrase “life, liberty and the pursuit of property.”
Yeah, property.
You might be more familiar with the idea of the “pursuit of happiness,” but many of our laws and principles relate to the idea of owning property. You used to have to own property to vote. And owning property is still the American dream.
So anything that disrupts our right to own property, and thus wealth, pisses us off. When rich people live nearby, our property values go up. The opposite can happen when poor people move in.
John Locke wouldn’t like that. Oh no, he wouldn’t.
So are these six main reasons that I think people screw up their face in disgust whenever the words “public housing” are mentioned.
Are they valid? Yes and no.
Some of them are based on truths or portions of the truth. Much of it is based on stereotype, which may contain a small grain of truth somewhere, but have been greatly exaggerated.
Whether they’re true or false, valid or invalid, this is the undercurrent we’re dealing with whenever we talk about public housing.
On Monday, I quizzed my twitter friends about why they think public housing is hated. I got several good responses, but the best one? The best was from the Poverty to Opportunity campaign’s Doug Scheckelberg.
Ain’t that the truth.
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Our family has seen how the whole blame the poor thing works. I grew up pretty well off, but this recession has knee-capped us financially. Some family have been really supportive. Other have run for the hills as our situation has gotten progressively worse.
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I agree with Doug’s Twitter 100%. Nice breakdown of the issue. I’m interested to hear alternatives to public housing. What ever happened to mixed income initiatives? Does “mixed income” evoke the same set of reactions?
Thanks for reading!
I think most of the time “mixed-income” gets a blank stare. Most people don’t know what it is, and it hasn’t been around long enough to get a reputation. So I guess we’ll see! Good question.
In response to another comment. See in context »I hear a lot of people in Skokie are hating on the Sec 8 that has been the “cause” of everything bad in the neighborhood. Everyone that does anything wrong – they must be on Sec 8. Unlike in the city, discrimination IS permitted against voucher holders in many of the ‘burbs. Doug Scheckelberg’s twitter was right on the money.
Hi, Megan,
Great, thoughtful piece. I hadn’t come across your page before, and it’s good to see someone focusing on these kinds of issues.
It made me want to know more. For example, when you write: “Regardless of what you believe, people associate crime with public housing, and they don’t want to invite crime into their neighborhood” … I’d love to know what the facts actually are.
I really like, for example, how you wrapped up No. 2, because it gives me a basis from which to judge the merit of public-housing-residents-are-lazy argument. As for some of the others, is there a strong correlation between public housing and crime? If so, why? What about the actual racial breakdown of public housing?
We think of them as predominantly black. No doubt because it’s true. But how true is it, exactly? What about poor whites? Latinos, Asians? I grew up in a government subsidized apartment. It wasn’t in the project towers, so people didn’t think of them it the same way. But they were overwhelmingly white. And we were definitely poor.
This isn’t a criticism: I realize the piece is about people’s perceptions. I’m actually just asking for my own edification because I often end up thinking and writing about some of the same things. I’d love to hear your thoughts if you have the time.
Hi Austin – Thanks for reading. I just started yesterday, but when I was interviewing with Andrea, you were the person she told me to connect with. She thought we would have a lot in common.
I can answer some of your questions but not all. I also looked for stats on whether public housing does breed crime, but I couldn’t find any. I didn’t do an exhaustive search – it may be out there. I’ll look again and tell you what I find.
As far as racial demographics, I only have stats for Chicago (where I live). Currently, 78 percent of family housing residents in Chicago are black. Ten percent are white and ten percent are Hispanic. Where did you grow up? I lived in subsidized housing in Michigan, where people were definitely white and poor.
Just as an anecdote, my friend Marian used to write a blog about legal issues. In Chicago, there was a case where a mother sued the Cook County Housing Authority because they failed to fix her faulty wiring and a fire started which killed her three kids. The mom’s name was Ebony, and a guy commented on the blog, saying he knew just from her name what kind of person Ebony was and that he was actually relieved to hear her kids died, as they wouldn’t grow up to become welfare sucking pigs like she was.
Nice, huh? Anyway, that didn’t really answer your question, but it came to my mind, so I thought I’d share.
Looking forward to reading your stuff and continuing to share information! Thanks for the comment!
In response to another comment. See in context »I despise public housing because it is run by the government. Nothing the government has done has ever been efficient. People wouldn’t be “foaming at the mouths” so much when it comes to taxes if the money the government spends actually helped people.
“No man’s life, liberty or property is safe while the legislature is in session.” -Mark Twain
I appreciate public housing because it gave my dirt poor family a place to live growing up. We use to egg rich assholes like you.
In response to another comment. See in context »I don’t like the government, therefore I’m a rich asshole? Nice logic. Who is the one calling people names on a blog? Whether or not I’m an asshole could be debated, but one thing I am not, nor have I ever been, is rich.
In response to another comment. See in context »Great piece.
Having spent most of my life living next to one section 8 project or another, I am always fascinated by how the architecture creates an “us vs. them” attitude among neighbors. Some things that have helped in my current neighborhood are creating some shared gardening space not to mention good ol’ fashioned neighborliness.
Still, when people are isolated in big, ugly falling down buildings inside seriously isolating spaces of florescent lighting and poorly designed space, public housing serves as a sort of spatial punishment of the people who live there.
As if the “we don’t like them very much” has to get built into the environment.
What we need is public housing that is no different than middle class housing (and therefore not easily singled out).
Megan, excellent piece as usual. Welcome to True/Slant!
Wow! Very diverse comments. I grew up in the projects. Yes crime was there. Shootings just about every week.Section 8 tenants that moved from the projects, based on what I know to be a fact they have no respect for property because they have not been taught. For instance, most people in the projects pour grease down the drain when finished cooking. Well we all know that when you pour grease down the drain it thickens over a period of time and clog the pipes. When that happens the tenant calls the landlord to have the pipes unstopped. They dont have to pay for it thhe landlord does. It’s not thier property. Same for the outside structure. I’m not saying not knowing is an excuse but I do alot of mentoring to people living in these types of situations now. I’m looking for people that grew up in the projects and despite the challenges mentioned in this article ended up being very successfull.
Hi Megan,
The Urban Institute is going to release a series of papers that look at how former public housing residents have fared after they moved from the Madden/Wells Homes. If you’re interested, email me at scombi@urban.org.
We’ve also published a book, “Public Housing and the Legacy of Segregation.” An overview and the first chapter are available at http://www.urban.org/books/publichousing/. I’d be happy to mail you a copy.
Best,
Simona Combi