31–40 of 72 posts
What does this have to do with hacker or tech news?
So I know in London any new housing development has to allocate part of the properties for shared ownership or social housing, To be able to get planning approval. Seems very reasonable because property developers make a lot of money selling luxury homes. And also in a lot of places the development is made after demolishing "unsightly" high density social housing. Often with far fewer homes than there were there orig…
> The architecture of their home is telling them that they are inferior every time they enter their homes. Rather is it telling them that the tax payers are paying for their home. The idea being that (for those without a permanent disability) social housing should not be something you stay in forever, rather only until you have the means to find a place to stay on your own. Is it necessarily bad that people are remin…
That's not been the political attitude of all UK parties. Even Thatcher's government thought life long social housing was acceptable, although they preferred home ownership.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not rich by any measure but I know the kind of people who receive social housing. Not saying they are all problematic but many of them are, and one bad neighbour is enough to make your life hell.
You don’t know the kind of people who receive social housing, and it shows.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>The architecture of their home is telling them that they are inferior every time they enter their homes. Well, they don't belong there. They are there because the government has mandated it. It's unnatural, and this is the result.
I see. So, who is going to make your coffee, sweep your streets, drive your buses, collect your trash, teach your children, and cook your meals, once all of the lower wage earners have been excluded from the area? You?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not rich by any measure but I know the kind of people who receive social housing. Not saying they are all problematic but many of them are, and one bad neighbour is enough to make your life hell.
You don’t know the kind of people who receive social housing, and it shows.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> social housing should not be something you stay in forever, rather only until you have the means to find a place to stay on your own What if you have a mental or physical disability that precludes you from paid work? (Note that doesn't include charitable work)
That should be a different category of housing (and I believe it is in the UK, “sheltered housing” vs “council housing”)
Additionally, not all conditions require sheltered housing levels of care - they just mean you won't hold down a job.
This might be going in the wrong direction. To address wealth inequality, shouldn't we instead make it obvious? For example, by publishing tax records. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect
Poor Doors are arguably a realisation of the cobra effect; It depends if the goals of "affordable housing" are about reducing inequality (like, systemically, not just finding somewhere to live) or not, and if poor doors have an effect on that.
What if the poor people are alcoholics, drug dealers, petty thieves, antisocial people? Why should other people be forced to deal with them?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The social housing in luxury high-rises is not luxurious. Where you might have two, four or eight units to a floor for private owners, social tenants are usually in much smaller units, 16 or 24 to a floor. The fit-out and finish tends to be “cheapest available”, and it shows. The layouts are often unbearably cramped, and windows are often smaller. Corridors are frequently left in an unfinished state - painted breeze-…
>The social housing in luxury high-rises is not luxurious. It is, by the virtue of the location alone Complaining about the fit and finish just shows the mountain of privilege you’re standing on.
Public transport in London is painfully expensive, and if you are earning minimum wage on a part-time contract, a private tenancy that would be affordable to such a person would be well outside of the city, and their commuting costs would be a substantial portion of their pay - and you would need to subsidise them to a greater degree than you would by simply having them live near their place of work.
So, again, I assume you count having a job and a home as a “mountain of privilege”, and not as a fairly universal underpinning of society.
The solution? Drive moderately rich people out of the city with brutal taxation of luxury homes (according to building types and straightforward measures like residents per total area of the property).