I'm not sure if you're arguing with me or not but I certainly don't believe that poverty is a highway to a life of crime with no exit ramps. People react to identical circumstances in completely different ways.
A few hundred feet from my house here there are people living under roofs of corrugated steel and walls of sticks. They don't even have doors. Poverty at this level is unimaginable to me.
I'm not sure if you're arguing with me or not but I certainly don't believe that poverty is a highway to a life of crime with no exit ramps. People react to identical circumstances in completely different ways.
A few hundred feet from my house here there are people living under roofs of corrugated steel and walls of sticks. They don't even have doors. Poverty at this level is unimaginable to me.
When I mentioned this conversation to my wife, her comment was that her childhood had no doors. Unsurprising since she also had no shoes.
She told me something that I didn't know. The home that her sister lived in when I first met her and that her father lived in when I last saw him were on government land. They were allowed to build a house and pass it on to their heirs, but they could not sell it. Termites ended up collapsing her sister's house and she moved away. None of her children wanted it. When her father died, her sister didn't want to live there because she is afraid of ghosts. We would have built her a better home on that land than the thatched hut her father lived in, but it went back to the government.
I actually think that family plots that will never go to developers is a good way to let the poor own a home.
My mother had a home under the 235 Program (most people thought that you had to be black for that, but you just had to be low-income to qualify). One of the things that I noticed, both in her neighborhood and in the black 235 neighborhoods that I saw when I lived in Georgia was that they were well kept compared to low-income rental neighborhoods. I think that it was about pride in ownership.
Now that home ownership is becoming less possible for many, the vultures are buying up homes, fixing them up a bit and renting them out. The rent is higher than any house payment I ever had so they have two family renters trying to avoid living in apartment complexes. It does not bode well for society.
When my wife first came to America, we visited my mom in Saint Louis and drove past the projects. She couldn't comprehend an apparently new building with broken windows, curtains hanging out and trash everywhere. Stick a bunch of poor people in a high rise, sprinkle in some criminals and drug dealers and you destroy all hope of pride. Inspiration for James Brown's "Say it loud, I'm black and I'm proud."
In several of the countries that I've been in in Asia, there were high rise apartment buildings, where people bought their apartments. They too were better places. I lived in several four family flats (rentals) as a child, a step up from bedbug row, but not by much. While I'm not a big fan of many government programs designed to fight poverty that don't work, I would like to see something that gives more people their own home. I think that that really does help.
Not arguing, Chris, just clarifying since my previous comment may have been misunderstood. I think that we are in basic agreement.
During the war there was a huge refugee area near Danang like that. Americans called it Dog Patch. Since places like that have some semblance of permanence (for better or worse) they can construct those shanties. Years ago, in Japan, I saw a trash and litter free homeless encampment under an overhead that consisted colorfully decorated cardboard. I was told that they were allowed to stay because they created no public nuisance.
After typing this I'll go out for my morning walk around the park where there are homeless encampments. Impermanence since they periodically get dispersed by the police. No doors, no walls, no roof. To their credit they use the public restrooms rather than crap on the sidewalks like in San Fransisco. They often discard clothing when it gets filthy. We gave a big bag of my wife's old clothes to a young homeless woman about a month ago. While I consider the crime, they bring to the neighborhood to be a nuisance we've managed to hold onto some compassion.
Meanwhile in Vietnam people will drop their styrofoam garbage on the ground with a trash bin literally within arm's reach. A housekeeper walks out of the house with a dustpan of litter, mostly plastic, walks (smiling) past the same bin and across the street ... and dumps it in the grass.
Once I made a pole with a nail sticking out the end and walked around near my house picking up the trash and tossing it in a bag. The neighbors were probably thinking "stupid foreigner" (ng╞░с╗Эi n╞░с╗Ыc ngo├аi ngu) but the shame must've cut through because after a week or two they all got a lot more conscientious about keeping the 'hood clean.
I'm not sure if you're arguing with me or not but I certainly don't believe that poverty is a highway to a life of crime with no exit ramps. People react to identical circumstances in completely different ways.
A few hundred feet from my house here there are people living under roofs of corrugated steel and walls of sticks. They don't even have doors. Poverty at this level is unimaginable to me.
When I mentioned this conversation to my wife, her comment was that her childhood had no doors. Unsurprising since she also had no shoes.
She told me something that I didn't know. The home that her sister lived in when I first met her and that her father lived in when I last saw him were on government land. They were allowed to build a house and pass it on to their heirs, but they could not sell it. Termites ended up collapsing her sister's house and she moved away. None of her children wanted it. When her father died, her sister didn't want to live there because she is afraid of ghosts. We would have built her a better home on that land than the thatched hut her father lived in, but it went back to the government.
I actually think that family plots that will never go to developers is a good way to let the poor own a home.
My mother had a home under the 235 Program (most people thought that you had to be black for that, but you just had to be low-income to qualify). One of the things that I noticed, both in her neighborhood and in the black 235 neighborhoods that I saw when I lived in Georgia was that they were well kept compared to low-income rental neighborhoods. I think that it was about pride in ownership.
Now that home ownership is becoming less possible for many, the vultures are buying up homes, fixing them up a bit and renting them out. The rent is higher than any house payment I ever had so they have two family renters trying to avoid living in apartment complexes. It does not bode well for society.
When my wife first came to America, we visited my mom in Saint Louis and drove past the projects. She couldn't comprehend an apparently new building with broken windows, curtains hanging out and trash everywhere. Stick a bunch of poor people in a high rise, sprinkle in some criminals and drug dealers and you destroy all hope of pride. Inspiration for James Brown's "Say it loud, I'm black and I'm proud."
In several of the countries that I've been in in Asia, there were high rise apartment buildings, where people bought their apartments. They too were better places. I lived in several four family flats (rentals) as a child, a step up from bedbug row, but not by much. While I'm not a big fan of many government programs designed to fight poverty that don't work, I would like to see something that gives more people their own home. I think that that really does help.
Not arguing, Chris, just clarifying since my previous comment may have been misunderstood. I think that we are in basic agreement.
During the war there was a huge refugee area near Danang like that. Americans called it Dog Patch. Since places like that have some semblance of permanence (for better or worse) they can construct those shanties. Years ago, in Japan, I saw a trash and litter free homeless encampment under an overhead that consisted colorfully decorated cardboard. I was told that they were allowed to stay because they created no public nuisance.
After typing this I'll go out for my morning walk around the park where there are homeless encampments. Impermanence since they periodically get dispersed by the police. No doors, no walls, no roof. To their credit they use the public restrooms rather than crap on the sidewalks like in San Fransisco. They often discard clothing when it gets filthy. We gave a big bag of my wife's old clothes to a young homeless woman about a month ago. While I consider the crime, they bring to the neighborhood to be a nuisance we've managed to hold onto some compassion.
Meanwhile in Vietnam people will drop their styrofoam garbage on the ground with a trash bin literally within arm's reach. A housekeeper walks out of the house with a dustpan of litter, mostly plastic, walks (smiling) past the same bin and across the street ... and dumps it in the grass.
This country really needs a Lady Bird Johnson.
Sadly, the problem has become all too universal.
Once I made a pole with a nail sticking out the end and walked around near my house picking up the trash and tossing it in a bag. The neighbors were probably thinking "stupid foreigner" (ng╞░с╗Эi n╞░с╗Ыc ngo├аi ngu) but the shame must've cut through because after a week or two they all got a lot more conscientious about keeping the 'hood clean.