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Paris preserves its mixed society by pouring billions into public housing

nytimes.com

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Re: Paris preserves its mixed society by pouring billions into public housing

#561

Post by underlipton »

robertlagrant wrote: post #532
bedobi wrote: post #525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Who do you think laid the infrastructure for people to get water and sewers in the first place?

That depends on the city. If it was originally a company town, probably the company. If it's a new build, probably the property developer. But either way, something that already exists is not subsidising the plumber's salary. The plumber is paid by the customer.

Anything built post-GD (which is going to be the vast majority of what you service) was likely touched by government subsidy in some fashion, whether grants, loans, or municipal bonds (tax-exempt, so effectively a subsidy). "Company towns" built before then were often subsidized, in effect, by companies not having to bear the financial burden of their many, many instances of illegal or rights-infringing behavior.

That's not considering your customers, who are likely also subsidized by the government in some fashion - if their jobs do not involve federal or state government contracts or supplying or servicing companies holding such contracts, they're almost certainly taking advantage of advantageous tax rebates or deductions.

Re: Paris preserves its mixed society by pouring billions into public housing

#562

Post by int_19h »

carabiner wrote: post #435
rTX5CMRXIfFG wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> build taller As someone who lives in an area with plenty of high-density residential buildings, I can attest that this is a perfect recipe for creating congested cities with such intense light and noise pollution.

Part of the draw of a city is bustling night life. You don't move to Manhattan for dark skies.

Can we at least acknowledge that it is not universally a draw, and many people actually hate it?

Re: Paris preserves its mixed society by pouring billions into public housing

#563

Post by cycomanic »

vladvasiliu wrote: post #422
mpweiher wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> [increase friction for cars...no improvement to public transport] Hmm...aren't you forgetting something? Last I checked, Paris had a veritable bicycling revolution. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycling_in_Paris Le Plan vélo de Paris (2015-2020) doubled bicycle lanes to 1000km and increased ridership (apparently already high?) by 50% or more. The current plan is to add another 180km and make Paris 100% cyclable.

Sure, if you live in the city proper. But what that doesn't mention: the bike sharing schemes are hit-and-miss. I usually commute each way a good hour before rush-hour traffic, so I have a good probability of finding a usable bike. But during rush hour? Fat chance. Oh, you're going to point out that there's a scheme helping you purchase your own bike? Indeed. What are you going to do with it, though? At home, you may…

The original post was complaining about increasing density and how investment in public transport hasn't kept up. The previous poster said what about bikes, and you are now saying that bikes are not a solution to people coming from the greater Paris region. But that was not what we are talking about, we were talking about higher density (=more people) in Paris proper. Bikes are certainly a solution to transport in the high density city.

Re: Paris preserves its mixed society by pouring billions into public housing

#564

Post by everforward »

bloppe wrote: post #465
everforward wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People also don't like it because it in effect means the government is competing against you for property using your own money. I.e. if the government buys up 10% of the posh neighborhood to add cheap housing, the number of posh units goes down 10% and you paid for the taxes to make that happen. So you're paying taxes to give someone else the thing you want, and make it harder for you to get that thing in the future.…

Fairness is not the same thing as equality, and most people appreciate that.

I don't mean equality, I'm talking about the basic kind of fairness that I would hope we can all agree on.

Some children are going to grow up in abusive or neglectful homes, which isn't fair to them. Some portion of them are going to do poorly in school, which isn't really their fault, they're children. Those children then become adults who have to enter the workforce or try to get into college and be basically ranked in a lineup against everyone else, including people who had loving and supportive parents that bought them tutoring and what not. Where do we suddenly cross the line into being fair?

Repeat that situation across a variety of different attributes.

Sure everybody has to meet the same bar, but that doesn't imply the same odds of meeting it, or work to get there, or risk incurred to try. Is it fair to not build ramps on buildings because people in wheelchairs have equal access to the stairs? Is it fair to not give poor defendants attorneys because they have equal access to the market of lawyers?

I don't think equality of outcomes is desirable because of externalities, but I do think it's worth closing the gap between the haves and have nots out of deference to the inherent unfairness in the system. I don't care for the extremes of income inequality we've arrived at under the guise of the system being perfectly or mostly fair.

Re: Paris preserves its mixed society by pouring billions into public housing

#565

Post by int_19h »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #408
amelius wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course, because what does it mean to be rich if you can't show it off to poorer people. Note, by the way, that this inflicts real psychological damage, and perhaps we could also make the case that this should be financially compensated.

Not at all. The rich need it to maintain some humanity and empathy, not to boost their ego.

I wouldn't be so sure it does that. Slave owners interacted with (some of) their slaves daily, and yet...

Re: Paris preserves its mixed society by pouring billions into public housing

#566

Post by rdmreader3319 »

I can't pass the paywall but does it mention Paris is losing people? I was living in the 15th arrondissement and this family area turned into a violent zone in a couple of years as they put public housing everywhere. Drug dealers, violence at my kid school, theft... My street became a spot for druggies and I had to pass them with my kids. 15 minutes from the Eiffel tower...

I left this city 3 years ago and found safer land. All my friends did the same. There is no sane reason to stay in an area with so much violence. Parisians will deny this but will just say "you have to avoid this and that, have a pepper spray, do not wear a skirt, do not go there at night..."

Re: Paris preserves its mixed society by pouring billions into public housing

#567

Post by jvanderbot »

mrguyorama wrote: post #337
jvanderbot wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> instinctively repugnant To some. In very-red areas that I have relatives, they're happy to do a food drive, make donations, help pay for weddings or funerals, or show up to help repair houses. When you have 100 cousins and 10 brothers, this is a viable option. They frequent each others businesses, work on interconnected industries, and in general help out however they can. It's not instinctively repugnant to help ,…

>In very-red areas that I have relatives, they're happy to do a food drive, make donations, help pay for weddings or funerals, or show up to help repair houses Unless you are gay, trans, not the right kind of christian, have mental issues, are progressive in any way, are willing at all to contradict their absurd views of reality, want cheaper electricity through green energy, want any form of public transit, their fa…

> Unless you are ...

This is a well-trod stereotype, probably for good reason, and it may also be your personal experience, so I'm not going to refute it generally. But this is not the case for the folks I was referring to.

Re: Paris preserves its mixed society by pouring billions into public housing

#568

Post by int_19h »

everforward wrote: post #271
smeej wrote: post #169

> The program has allowed Mr. Chaillou and his wife to raise their two boys in the city. But he knows that the future of social housing will always face at least one big challenge: “The problem is that once you get in, you never want to leave.” I think this is the reason so many in the U.S. are skeptical of/resistant to such plans. Why work your butt off for 10 years to get to a place where you can afford a nice dwel…

People also don't like it because it in effect means the government is competing against you for property using your own money. I.e. if the government buys up 10% of the posh neighborhood to add cheap housing, the number of posh units goes down 10% and you paid for the taxes to make that happen. So you're paying taxes to give someone else the thing you want, and make it harder for you to get that thing in the future.…

> I think American culture has a weird fetish for fairness. We'll do something that makes everyone worse off because at least it's distributed evenly.

When you phrase it like that, it's not really an American-specific thing. I remember reading about ethological studies on very young children - not in US! - where they would be given a bunch of candy to distribute in various contrived situations. One of those was picking between something like "you get 1 candy and the other kid gets 1 candy" vs "you get 2 candies and the other kid gets 4 candies", and similar arrangements in larger groups. What they found is that there's a very strong bias towards fairness, meaning that kids were pretty consistently willing to end up with less candy themselves if that means that another kid would not get an unfair share. Which, if you think about it, is not an unreasonable trait to evolve in a social species.

Re: Paris preserves its mixed society by pouring billions into public housing

#569

Post by _3u10 »

HenriTEL wrote: post #514
_3u10 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most demand for houses is from people. Most price increases are due to a lack of supply that exceeds population growth. Most lack of supply is caused by it being illegal to build higher / more dense, and a variety of other rules and regulations. Landlords are for the most part capitalizing on these broader market / regulatory trends.

No, price increase is mostly due to inflation trends. When there is an inflation trend the house market follows, for example in London, after the start of the war in Ukraine things like gas and gasoline price went up which created a legit price increase for products that depends on those. But we've also seen an increase in rent. And that's because estate agents knew that since there was an inflation trend people were…

You’re wrong and you don’t know what you’re talking about, I don’t mean to be rude but it’s more than just inflation. There is a mismatch between number of people and number of housing starts, it’s been this way for 20 years. Estate agents charge more because people will pay it because anyone who can’t afford it goes homeless or moves somewhere else.

In London, where housing delivery has long trailed short of need, the population rose by 3.4 for every new home.

This mismatch of housing supply and need has had drastic consequences for affordability. Rents increased 2.0 per cent per year in England on average over the last decade, according to data from Hometrack. Growth ranged from 2.4 per cent per year in London, where housing delivery was lowest relative to population growth. In the North East, by contrast, housebuilding all but kept pace with population growth and rents grew just 0.7 per cent per year.

https://www.savills.co.uk/blog/article/309803/residential-pr...

The ratio of house prices to earnings, another basic measure of housing affordability, increased from 6.9 in 2010 to 7.8 in 2019 across England. In the North East, where we delivered almost as many homes as people, homes became more affordable. In London, where housing supply falls far short of need, the ratio of house prices to earnings has ballooned.

Re: Paris preserves its mixed society by pouring billions into public housing

#570

Post by usr1106 »

harimau777 wrote: post #462
mpweiher wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> [increase friction for cars...no improvement to public transport] Hmm...aren't you forgetting something? Last I checked, Paris had a veritable bicycling revolution. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycling_in_Paris Le Plan vélo de Paris (2015-2020) doubled bicycle lanes to 1000km and increased ridership (apparently already high?) by 50% or more. The current plan is to add another 180km and make Paris 100% cyclable.

How do people deal with being sweaty at work? Do offices generally have showers?

I have biked to work over 30 years in various places. Some with uphill in the morning. The point is just that you bike comfortably. When I was younger that probably meant something like 18 km/h in sligthly hilly places. Nowadays it's less. You can actually debug your code while biking (mentally, no screen involved). I have solved many problems after 15 minutes on the bike better than in 3 hours in front of the screen. Yes, I avoid heavy traffic, even if it means a detour.

If you want to bike fast you can do it when not on the way to the office.

(I once biked in Dallas at 95F. There not getting sweaty might be a challenge...)

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