My knowledge of this subject is fairly minimal, so I was hoping to have some of you out there shed some light on a few questions I have. I am trying to educate myself, not attempting to make an argument, so I would appreciate the most factual information possible without ideological talking points. Thanks, everyone!

1. Who has to sacrifice for affordable-workforce housing to flourish? People say it benefits everyone in the community, but surely at some point along the line someone has to give up money to make this happen. Is it the taxpayers, employers, construction companies or a combination of people who have to cough up the dough or forego other potentially more profitable opportunities to make affordable-workforce housing happen?

2. It has been mentioned in another thread that we need affordable-workforce for people in the community such as grocery store clerks, bus drivers, nurses, etc. I assume those are only examples and the idea is to include a lot more professions whose members earn a comparitively low wage. This strikes me as being an IMMENSE amount of people. How do you go about building all of these affordable homes? It seems like if you incorporated all of the people you desire to incorporate into this program, you will end up having to provide this type of housing to hundreds of thousands of people.

3. The literature always reminds people that lovely Nurse Shirley will be the one moving in next door, but what protections are in place to keep out a lower element of society from neighborhoods who certainly do not want/need those people? A lot of people who are involved in crime/drugs/other such things also fall into these income levels. Nice areas certainly do not want to become dilapidated over the next few decades by bringing these people into communities who currently have low crime rates. So my question is, how do I know the person moving into the affordable home next to me will be lovely Nurse Shirley and not bad news Bus Driver John who has just been released from prison?

Also, if anyone out there is a critic of the affordable housing program, I would like to hear your reasoning and arguments. It seems like for the most part everyone on this particular forum has been preaching to the converted.

Thanks again,
Jeremy

Thanks for your responses Kimberly! On the first two questions/answers I think I have a better understanding, but still need some more info to help fully understand the issues. On the third question, as you will see, I have to respectfully disagree with your logic and approach to answering the question. Citing the fact that doctors are not 100% crime-free in no way, shape, or form addresses the question at hand. Of course anyone is capable of commiting crimes, but your response, to me, is like saying that leaving a child in the care of a priest is just as dangerous as leaving them in a run down neighborhood in the city because priests commit crimes against children too! Sure there are bad apples, but they are few and far between, but more to come on this later . . .

Again, thanks for answering and I don't mean to be insulting with my impassioned response.

There are many thousands who can't access affordable housing because their incomes are too low and the rental or mortgage payments are too high. There are also many families being displaced from their housing because of gentrification of the neighborhoods they had been living in. Therefore, in order to not have many thousands of families living in the streets, in shelters, or in very substandard housing, they must have government subsidies to live in the housing that is available and new housing must be built for them or old housing rehabilitated.

This is a moral imperative that we have in our society: to assist those who cannot help themselves. The government has to use the tax money it receives from all of us to help these people. It is important to spend these taxes for the social needs of Americans, rather than to spend all our tax money on wars and weapons building while our social and physical infrastructure falls apart.

We need to reiterate what we mean by affordable housing: that is housing for those who are earning 30% or less of the area median income.

Hyperbole aside, this assertion is a common misunderstanding about the Federal government which is being promoted ad nausem by the left. The price tag for the War in Iraq is $123 billion. This figure seems outrageously high out of context, but when placed in appropriate context seems anything but. $123 billion represents less than 1% of the US's $12 trillion economy. Defense spending under Bush is not all that different than it was under Clinton. How terrible that we should spend less than 1% of our GDP on efforts to defend our nation and attempt to build stable democratic governments in a part of the world which is quite hostile toward us!

Also, people do not NEED housing in a certain area or at a certain price level. People WANT it. Shelter is a need. Moving from a crappy apartment in the city to a newly built home in Creve Couer is a want. Why do people deserve to receive my money to improve their own personal standing?

I'll leave you with this, and take from it what you will. A physician who makes $200,000 can't afford to live in certain areas and neighborhoods in St. Louis. Should we give him/her money because it is unjust that certain citizens can afford to live in those neighborhoods and he/she can not? No one has a HUMAN RIGHT to acquire luxuries. A nice home is indeed that, a luxury, not something necessary for survival. I suppose the federal government should start buying poor people big screen TV's as well to end the injustice of certain priveledged members of society owning them all.

Well here's one more viewpoint on the subject. If living in affordable housing means having to deal with the loud music, drug sales and prostitution, well then I don't want any part of it. I left "affordable housing" a few years ago and I'd take a bullet before I'd go back.

But there's more to the story. I have lived in historic Soulard. Rent is high and its considered a "nice neighborhood". But drugs sales, car theft happen and not just once in awhile. I have lived in Benton Park neighbor where rehabed homes can go for $500,000 and more. Lovely Benton Park has it share of issues as well. Puablic urination, shooting, cars with the sound systems turned on blast. To be honest I have experienced all the crime I thought I left be hind in "The Hood".


So just because housing isn't subsidized doesn't mean you will get to excape the woes of the world. What I left behind when I left subsidized housing was the cycle of dispare. The feeling of being trapped in an existance that challenged morality.

The St. Louis city does not have a monopoly on "nice neighborhoods" with crime issues. Wonder what the folks in Chesterfield thought when there was a meth lab busted out there. But then that's life in "the ghetto"

Oh, and please spare me all the drama! Govenment spending on war vs what cause your most passionate about today. The argument is old. Human history has examples of what happends when people truly get fed up with govenment. I dought that real revolutionist or anti-establishmentdisentarianists use this venue/soap box to stand on

Although I am not religious, religions generally instruct us to help those who have the least. That is all we should be trying to do: to give a helping hand to those who cannot help themselves. We should also be helping these families to increase their abilities to support themselves, to get work skills if they do not have them, and to help them find jobs so they can become self-sufficient.