[Peace-discuss] Re: [cu_citizens] Questions about Section 8

[Laurie]

John, 

I have a friend, who with funding and association with the Catholic Church,
is an activist living in NYC, where he was involved in organizing poor in
various neighborhoods of NYC to occupy vacant city owned slum buildings and
put their sweat equity into remodeling those facilities into affordable, up
to code, co-op apartments for themselves to live in and own via the sweat
equity and moderate mortgage payments to the City.  He and another friend
acquired their own individual two apartments in a building on the Lower East
Side.  This other friend also, in another building, used this method of
homesteading and sweat equity to acquire and fix up a ground floor space as
commercial space in the form of a Juice and Jazz bar giving employment to
himself and a few other low income persons.

Unfortunately this idealized world began to come apart when the
neighborhoods having been cleaned up by the homesteaders became a popular
creative class location and valuable property.  Gentrification began to
result in the wealthy creative classes and speculators offering the poor
homesteaders more money than they had ever seen before to sell their coop
apartments.  Many of the resident low income persons began to sell their
properties in order to get this windfall of big money, figuring that they
could find a new residence with the money they got and have some to spare.
In-fighting among the coop members who wanted to sell and those who did not
tore the coops apart. The movement began to fail, the coops and other spaces
in the lower rent areas started to become gentrified, and those that sold
could not find any affordable places in NYC to replace their old coopt
apartments and were forced to move out of the City to NJ or were homeless
and on the streets again but this time without even slums being available
for them to rent at high but barely within reach rents.  The City began to
realize that it could make money from the condemned and government owned
properties by selling those properties to the creative class and developers
willing to speculate on the new found popularity of what traditionally were
commercial undesirable spaces; hence, it stopped cooperating by allowing
homesteading and sweat equity as methods for opportunities to own property.
The affordable housing stock disappeared along with the opportunities for
the poor to acquire any property of their own for their own living space.
Game Over.

By the end of the 1970's the era of residential and commercial homesteading
programs disappeared; the use of notions of sweat equity as a means of
making down payments and buying property became rare with those projects
which do use it being small in scale compared to the earlier period when
this was considered the way for government to go and to support on a much
larger scale.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net [mailto:peace-discuss-
> bounces at lists.chambana.net] On Behalf Of John W.
> Sent: Tuesday, October 16, 2007 4:14 PM
> To: Laurie; 'Christopher Evans'; 'cu citizens'; 'Caroln Aaron'; 'Brian
> Dolinar'; 'Danielle Chynoweth'; 'Peace-discuss'
> Subject: RE: [Peace-discuss] Re: [cu_citizens] Questions about Section
> 8
> 
> At 03:27 PM 10/16/2007, Laurie wrote:
> 
> >I personally think that Chris's questions are excellent ones that
> someone
> >should bring up and ask the Champaign City Council tonight at the
> Council
> >Meeting.  I do not think that the asking of these questions will
> change any
> >votes; but it will put the questions on the record and put the Council
> >Members on the spot.  As such they may actually discuss the questions
> and
> >the possibility of giving answers to them; and they may even be forced
> to
> >respond if merely to rationalize and justify their votes.
> >
> >Long term, John is right; but unfortunately looking for long run
> solutions
> >to the affordable housing problem is like looking for long term
> solutions to
> >the health care problem, the quality education for all issue, and/or
> the
> >provision of adequate, livable wage, non-"dead-end" job opportunities
> for
> >minorities and the poor problem.  It is not going to happen in
> capitalist
> >corporate Amerika, expect in the form of a series of small privately
> funded
> >demonstration projects.  The people of Amerika, unless it is happening
> to
> >them, would rather spend the money on police chasing and arresting the
> >homeless poor from their camps and the city sidewalks, streets, and
> >properties so as to keep them out of sight than on subsidizing the
> building
> >of affordable housing or the making of rental properties affordable to
> those
> >who need it without stigmatizing them.  They would rather give money
> to
> >build prisons to house the arrested homeless than to build living
> quarters
> >for them.
> 
> You're absolutely right, and hence my weariness and frustration and
> discouragement.  Amerika is a place where ever greater punishment is
> seen
> as the solution to everything.  "If we can't get compliance, let's just
> make the laws even MORE draconian.  And whatever we do, let's not
> address
> the root causes of ANYTHING!"  Whoever coined the phrase, "The right to
> life stops at birth" certainly had Amerika spot-on, and s/he wasn't
> talking
> only about Republicans.
> 
> At the same time, I'm aware of churches in larger cities, for example,
> that
> purchase blocks of apartment buildings, rehab them, and make them
> available
> for low-income tenants or purchasers.  Then they plow the money back
> into
> purchasing more units.  It can be done.  Where there's a will, there's
> a
> way.  You call them "demonstration projects", but there's a point at
> which
> demonstration projects could burgeon into a significant number of
> housing
> units (and rehabbed neighborhoods).  I wish I had the business acumen
> and
> the energy to make it happen.
> 
> And yes, Chris's questions ARE good ones.
> 
> John
> 
> 
> 
> 
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net [mailto:peace-
> discuss-
> > > bounces at lists.chambana.net] On Behalf Of John W.
> > > Sent: Tuesday, October 16, 2007 2:17 PM
> > > To: Christopher Evans; cu citizens; Caroln Aaron; Brian Dolinar;
> > > Danielle Chynoweth; Peace-discuss
> > > Subject: [Peace-discuss] Re: [cu_citizens] Questions about Section
> 8
> > >
> > > At 11:10 AM 10/16/2007, Christopher Evans wrote:
> > >
> > > >The key questions about Tonight's Section 8 vote:
> > > >
> > > >1) Where are Section 8 voucher holders supposed to live?
> > > >2) Will this proposal reduce available low-income housing in
> Champaign?
> > > >3) What educational steps has the City taken to educate landlords
> about
> > > >the Section 8 program?
> > > >4) Why do landlords need the right to refuse Section 8 voucher
> holders?
> > > >5) If the council votes to allow Section 8 discrimination, will
> the City
> > > >publish a directory of landlords who refuse to rent to Section 8
> voucher
> > > >holders to aid Section 8 families in their search for housing?
> > > >6) Does this ordinance tarnish the reputations of Section 8
> holders and
> > > >thus make housing less available for Section 8 Voucher holders?
> > >
> > > As one who has tried and failed to even get someone to TALK to me
> about
> > > GETTING ON THE LIST of qualified Section 8 recipients, it strikes
> me that
> > > our time might be better spent in exploring alternative ways of
> creating
> > > more affordable housing for the less affluent citizens of Champaign
> and
> > > Urbana.  I can (barely) imagine a society in which, instead of
> wrangling
> > > about niggling ways of legalizing ever greater discrimination, we
> all asked
> > > ourselves, "What can _I_ do, in partnership with others, to
> alleviate the
> > > shortage of affordable housing in my community?"  Habitat for
> Humanity is
> > > the right concept, but it's merely a drop in the ocean.
> > >
> > > John Wason
> 
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