Slum Zoning in the U.S.

[Cut-Throat]

Now that we have a global economy and have to compete with India and China, we will be creating lots and lots of very low paying jobs. Since the wages will be so low, housing should be very inexpensive.

The question is. How does the United States properly zone for Slums?

If anyone has traveled the World, they have seen the Slums of Sau Paulo, Brazil, Bombay and the Philipines, and there obviously was not a lot of forethought in the Slum Planning.

We can probalby do a better job of this, and I would like your ideas. Obviously, since almost no one in this country is in favor of giving any subsidies to the poor, there will be slums, tents and/or people living under park benches.

Possible ideas are to build massive fences about 60 feet high near Metropolitan areas, so the slums are not visible to the wealthy and visitors. The poor have to be located near industry so that the cheap labor is available and convienent.

Ideas?

 

[REWahoo]

There is a lot of wasted real estate under all those bridges and overpasses all us taxpayers paid to have built. I say charge the slum dwellers a modest fee to have a concrete roof over their heads. The fee revenue will help support the transportation infrastructure for future generations. Everybody wins.

REW

 

[Art]

I say charge the slum dwellers a modest fee to have a concrete roof over their heads.  The fee revenue will help support the transportation infrastructure for future generations.  Everybody wins.

REW

I like it. I like it a lot.

As for the 60 foot high slum fences, couldn't we hire young vatos and cholos to paint pretty green forest murals on them so the slum dwellers think they are living in a lush tropical paradise?

 

[Michael]

Less expensive housing would be helpful to the poor, but the politicians would never go for it. They want more taxes, not less.

 

[unclemick]

We need more slums of some kind. The homeless already have dibs on the overpasses and under the elevated highways around here.

I used to live in the only zoned slum in N.O. (in contrast to ones zoned otherways) - a nice 'unimproved urban'. Then the fricking turds in City Hall and the Levee board dropped their infighting - quadrupled taxes in the last five years - started granting building permits - and now we are undergoing - puke,puke - gentrification. Next thing you know - they'll want me to tow the abandoned pickups out of the front area, put in a yard - or worst yet tell me I can't use garbage as landfill for the low areas.

I don't know what this country is coming to - when you can't find a decently trashy slum to live in peacefully anymore.

Why - even down the road - the older generation of Vietnamese don't grow gardens - squatting on levee ground anymore. Putting up new houses, buildings, businesses, churches is going to destroy the beautifully seedy character of that old(twenty years ago) neighborhood also.

I wish a lot of people would just stick it - and let a nice neighborly slum stay delitefully tobbaco roadish.

Gentrification and taxes - yuck.

 

[Sheryl]

I don't know what this country is coming to - when you can't find a decently trashy slum to live in peacefully anymore.

I wish a lot of people would just stick it - and let a nice neighborly slum stay delitefully tobbaco roadish.

Gentrification and taxes - yuck.

That's exactly the problem as I see it.   Everytime the hardworking poor work their tails off to establish a new slum some urban renewal expert comes in and gentrifies it and the poor poor folk have to start over with a new one.  No wonder they're always poor.

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Hah...you havent seen some of the places near where I live. The slums are already here and established. We had a mobile home park nearby that appeared to have been struck by a tornado, except thats the way its always looked. Somehow...and its appallingly unbelievable that this could ever happen...shortly after a developer wanted to buy the lot somebody...and we dont know who...drove their car across the middle of the park and severed all the gas lines that ran from a central propane tank to each mobile home. Which of course rendered them unsafe and required that all residents vacate the premises within a short period of time. Real great luck for the park owner as if this hadnt happened he'd have had to evict them all one at a time over a period of a year or more.

They had security teams and a bulldozer standing by to knock down each home once the occupants left. Several held out for months, not leaving.

Not far away new home developments in the 750k+ range are being put up and I just saw that an entire town of 10,000 new homes and hundreds of acres of retail are going in right next to where that mobile home park was. 8' stone walls appear to be all they need. But you only have to cross the highway to get back to the squalor.

Highways appear to be good separators. I'm sure its different now, but just a few years ago tony Palo Alto was seperated by route 101 from East Palo Alto, which was the per capita murder capital of the US for a year or two...

 

[playaman]

Notth is right that there are slums everywhere you look even today. People just don't look very hard for them.

I fear that someday, though, "our" slums -- and there may well be more rather than fewer of them in the years ahead -- will be like those in South Africa, hidden by tall walls on either side of expressways through which wealther folks pass totally oblivious to the misery around them. Maybe they won't have the crisp smell of wood smoke wafting from them, though.

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

We also seem to favor the 'welfare hotel' rather than the ramshackle set of slums found in other countries. Local building codes keep those limited. Guy a few streets over from my wifes old house had allowed a bunch of homeless drug users to build their own 'homes' of cardboard and metal sheets out in front of his house. The cops were pretty ok with this until they discovered his primary reason for it was to have the 'community' slow the cops down from making it to the front door when performing their bi-weekly raids. Then they had to come down and the people had to relocate back to the local scum hotel.

Not terrific places to be. A few of my friends from my high school days 'went in that direction'...no motivation to work, just slid by on subsidies, food stamps, whatever they could steal and maybe a few hours of work here and there before they were fired for not showing up or for mouthing off to a customer. I dropped by a couple of times now and then. Didnt even want to be in the place, let alone live there.