Inhumane Lack of Urban Planning
Today's News Journal has an article about FEMA City, a mobile home farm outside Punta Gorda, Florida. This supposedly temporary housing was built for 1,500 people displaced by Hurricane Charley a year ago. The population hasn't decreased any, and they're having horrible problems with crime, depression, and substance abuse. Why is this?
For one thing, landlords in Punta Gorda, realizing that available rental housing is a scarce resource, have dramatically raised their rents. I'm a big believer in free markets, and clearly the price point will rise in the presence of supply-demand shortfalls. Unfortunately, we (as humans) simply cannot expect low or fixed-income people to find their own housing when there's little or none available. Also, it's unreasonable to use tax dollars to line the landlords' pockets (which is what happens when FEMA funds reconstruction, and resulting rents skyrocket).
Another contributor to the problem is that the city of Punta Gorda has razed the waterfront housing projects to make way for high-rent condominiums and apartments. Affordable housing has been displaced by luxury or high-rent housing. I think it is a good thing that housing projects have been torn down. Public housing doesn't work because it stigmitizes the residents and locks them into a socioeconomic pattern of failure.
We, as Americans, cannot continue neglecting entire social classes - from an economic or creative standpoint - and expect to be able to compete in a globalized world market.
Don't believe me? There are others who have done a much greater amount of research, and I encourage you to have a read:
Suburban Nation, a well-researched and eloquently presented analysis of sprawl, urban planning, and the widening gap between social classes.
Designing for the Homeless: Architecture that Works is a new book on multiuse integrated housing that addresses the problem of social stigmatization and lack of community in public housing.
For one thing, landlords in Punta Gorda, realizing that available rental housing is a scarce resource, have dramatically raised their rents. I'm a big believer in free markets, and clearly the price point will rise in the presence of supply-demand shortfalls. Unfortunately, we (as humans) simply cannot expect low or fixed-income people to find their own housing when there's little or none available. Also, it's unreasonable to use tax dollars to line the landlords' pockets (which is what happens when FEMA funds reconstruction, and resulting rents skyrocket).
Another contributor to the problem is that the city of Punta Gorda has razed the waterfront housing projects to make way for high-rent condominiums and apartments. Affordable housing has been displaced by luxury or high-rent housing. I think it is a good thing that housing projects have been torn down. Public housing doesn't work because it stigmitizes the residents and locks them into a socioeconomic pattern of failure.
We, as Americans, cannot continue neglecting entire social classes - from an economic or creative standpoint - and expect to be able to compete in a globalized world market.
Don't believe me? There are others who have done a much greater amount of research, and I encourage you to have a read:
Suburban Nation, a well-researched and eloquently presented analysis of sprawl, urban planning, and the widening gap between social classes.
Designing for the Homeless: Architecture that Works is a new book on multiuse integrated housing that addresses the problem of social stigmatization and lack of community in public housing.
posted by Unknown at 12:07 PM
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