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| No | 39% | 42 votes | Total: 108 votes | |
| Yes | 61% | 66 votes |
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Add to FavoritesIt seems that governments just cannot keep themselves from becoming involved in social housing. From municipal, all the way up to the federal level, governments at one time or other, have all gotten themselves into the role of creating and managing public housing. This has been to the chagrin of some people who question whether governments should be in the housing business at all. Over the years, governments' involvement in affordable housing has proven to be a mixed blessing. Go to any government housing project in Canada or the United States and almost invariably one can find social blight and elevated crime rates, especially as they relate to illicit drugs.
Governments should not be involved in the creation of ghettos, and yet that has become their legacy. More think tanks are required to search out alternatives to the creation of low-income housing that historically has tended to perpetuate poverty and a sub-standard lifestyle. Buildings for the most part are neutral. Despite what some wishful architects and planners may say, they in themselves do not cause or stem poverty or the incidence of criminal activity. The way in which people treat buildings and other property is symptomatic of other social problems. On the surface it may appear that cities breed crime, but in reality they just provide opportunities for good or bad social behavior, depending on the organizational or management structures that come with them. Where there is accountability there tends to be positive social interaction; where there is not, the opposite occurs. Having said this, we already know that democratically elected governments tend to be notorious for their lack of long-term accountability.
At least a partial solution to the problem of housing within cities is of course to provide more of it. By eliminating the shortage, costs for housing tend to decline and bring it within reach of poorer people. Naturally, if prices decline, so do profits and incentives for builders to create more of it. This is where governments can play a meaningful role by providing incentive programs for developers and builders through tax breaks, construction loan guarantees, or other means by which they both stimulate construction and the economy. Rather than continuing to be ghetto builders by creating government housing projects in the traditional manner, governments should be considering longer-term solutions to inner city-core housing crises. Perhaps they could revisit planning issues such as zoning and density, while leaving the bricks and mortar to the private sector and market forces. For governments, it is always wiser to invest in people rather than in buildings that become sores in the urban landscape as they fester with social diseases of all sorts due to lack of true accountability to management or community leadership.
It does not require a genius to realize that there are basically two ways in which to deal with the housing need in downtown cores. We can either provide more of it by building upwards, or we can try to disperse the population currently living in downtown cores. Dispersal through the construction of government sponsored and subsidized housing projects on the outskirts of cities to house the poor and disadvantaged is obviously not the answer, as governments now dealing with crime and drug infested projects continue to discover.
Nor is artificially controlling rental rates the answer. Again, governments have discovered the hard way that there is a price to pay for trying to manipulate market forces. In Toronto, the attempt to do so for a number of years brought about some interesting and perhaps unanticipated consequences. Firstly, it precipitated the deterioration of rental housing in the city due to lack of incentive to maintain it properly. Then, it practically halted the construction of new private sector rental housing, while pressuring governments to fill the void, which was one of the worst things that could have happened as we now see in hindsight. Finally, it stimulated the construction of a relatively new form of housing: the condominium, which circumvented the traditional rental market by introducing group ownership to the building type normally associated with rental property, the residential high-rise.
Government s need to stop creating new fiascos and learn the lesson that it is better for them to invest in people, not buildings and programs. One-on-one solutions to poverty and urban housing crises involve assessing individuals' needs and addressing them rather than providing a blanket solution which in effect only covers over the problems but allows them to grow all the more. Of course, one-on-one solutions do not come cheap. But this is where governments need to realize that they are not in the business of solving society's social problems.
However, they are in the position to help those who are in that business. Rather than spending on direct government programs to help the needy, governments should be acting as the catalyst and liaison between people, and supporting those organizations which are on the front lines of assessing and working to eliminate society's social problems. Some government institutions are still necessary (such as courts and prisons), but if governments put more effort into upholding some traditional institutions such as churches, and less into undermining them through the creation of their own social agencies that compete with them, they would likely see an improvement in the social conditions within cities.
Learn more about this author, Bohdan Rewko (Bo of T.O.).
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Yes
Should public housing be run by the government?
I would have to say yes. Now far be it from me to want to put anything into the hands of the government,the way they are now, after all its such a mess already. The fact is though who else is going to do it? You might say well the government is so corrupt and that it is. Who is it that makes that possible? Privet businesses. Big corporations. Unions. They lobby, they make the bribes, they give big benefits, they give gifts. Without them paying off the government to vote in their favor on this bill or that you would have a lot less corruption.
But on to the problem at hand. Say we say no to government public housing who do we turn to. Do we turn to Joe Blow down the street who is about to have his house foreclosed on? I don't think so. Do we turn to the middle class who can barely keep their heads above water as it is? Again I don't think so. So that leaves us two basic choices the super rich who bribe and twist and turn the governments heads to work laws and taxes and payout in their favor or the government who graciously accepts the bribes and gifts and what not offered to get the rich richer and make the poor poorer.
If we turned it over to privet sources they would bypass the government but the same kind of things would be going on. Privet organizations simple do not have to power to secure the area when problems break out. It falls back to people out of control. There is a drug problem because no one is there to control the drug problem. Put a cop on every corner and there will be one less drug dealer on that corner. Watch the going out and coming in of people and stop them and ask questions and get involved and you might just save one more child from becoming a junkie. One thing is for sure they will not be coming in the house with a pound of pot if they know a cop could a very most likely will be there to meet him coming in asking how his day has gone, what he's been up too, did he see the braves game, etc... etc.. etc..
When Parents, community, and police all get involved and do not give a chance for crime to happen it will kind of throw a spoke in the wheels and crime will not turn near as fast as it use to. With proper education and guidance and hope for a better future for themselves and their families people will turn from drugs. Young people that live that "ghetto" life see how bad life is and their uneducated and undeveloped minds give up on any thing in life further away than the next joint or the next drink or the next hit. It is up those those stronger and more educated to show them to make them see there is a better way.
In ancient times we paid tithes to the church and the church was the government and they took care of those who could not take care of themselves. Today we pay taxes to the government and they in turn take care of the poor for the most part. There are a lot of good organizations out there helping the poor I'm sure but the government is the biggest by far for what little help they are doing. The government is the only organization that has the power to police it like it should be. They can not do it alone though, again communities and parents have to teach their kids good family values and morals and help look out for each other.
The Police and neighbors have to keep a watchful eye to see when people are not acting right or look suspicious to nip it in the bud and find out right then and there whats going on. It may take a generation or two but people would change. Still there are always folks that just will not be able to make it on their own for one reason or another but you would find less and less as time went on.
We have some very stupid laws like the one where if a kid does not finish school or quits when they are 16 they cant get a license to drive. So a child has his mind made up he is going to quit school and he might as well if all he is going to do is sleep in class and get straight f's but now he need to go to work. He does not have a license so cant look far for a job and cant get back and forth to and from work especially in a rural area so what does he do? Get in to trouble. The parents at work and because they are 16 they can legally quit without the parents permission. He spends four years getting into trouble and he probable ends up in public housing.
The government ties parents hands to do a lot of thing many times. The rich are too busy for their kids and give them cars and money to go get in trouble with but they can buy them out of it and keep it hushed up. The government needs a overhaul, as i have said many times before kick them all out and start by hiring a staff at minimum wage with social security benefits like every one else. Keep them from taking any kind of gifts bribes and special packages. Let them live like the poor and they will fix the problem in no time. Politicians are in there for the power and money. Take away the power and give it back to the people and work them at minimum wage and the only reason they would want to be there is because they truly do care about the people and want to help them. With all the money and Power striped away there is no reason for people with the I am god complex left to want to be there.
Rules and laws need to be changed to keep work in America to battle poverty. The government could do so much more with so much less if they change their way of thinking. Get some compassion folks. A man that lives in a cardboard box and eats trash, would rather live in a old run down trailer and eat chicken, if he could, and the man that lives in a old rundown trailer would like to live in a new one, if he could and the man that lives in a new one would rather live in a house, if he could and etc... etc... etc.. most anyone can get that picture. NO ONE wants to live like this it is forced upon them. The government is the biggest organization there is in America. They are the only ones with the power to police public housing. The government needs changing but the super rich type organization it would take to run housing would need even more changing. Look at what the privet owned security teams have done in Iraq. Do you want them policing in America?
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