(Don't) give us your poor and tired--only the middle class, please.
This story in today's Star-Tribune highlights what, to me, is one of the (if not the most) major problems in urban development today--residential segregation. At issue is the development of affordable housing options in suburban communities. The Met Council, an institution somewhat unique to the Twin Cities, has laid out guidelines for those cities to follow. As this article describes it, there's resistance from those communities, primarily due to residents' concerns about the impact of low income people on social services, property values, and community identity. Here's a classic conservative quote on the subject:
"It's hard for us to continue absorbing lower valued units and have it impact our tax base," said Jason Aarsvold, the city's [Brooklyn Park] economic and redevelopment director."Our city is more than housing. It's quality of life and providing jobs and building tax base."
Now I understand the issue here--especially for a city like Brooklyn Park that's really struggling to keep middle class residents from leaving. It's been documented that poverty is increasingly moving to the suburbs whether they like it or not. But at the same time, arguments like these--especially those cloaked in the guise of maintaining economic competetion--are too often just a cover for the exclusion of poor people who are also usually not white. It's really a NIMBY (not in my backyard) issue. It's fine for the urban cores to have lots of poor people and crime. It's fine for those schools to come close to collapse due to the strain this causes. We just don't want any of that here. In the end, I just don't feel it's a morally justifiable position--it's about looking out for your own interests and shoving problems off on someone else. There's no hospitality in that, no self-sacrifice, and only a narrow kind of love.