Incoming: Heavy use of scare-quotes to emphasize I don’t agree with certain framings which nonetheless get my point across.
It’s hard not to be suspicious of any new housing built in an American city. A new apartment building intended for low-income tenants was opened in the “poor side” of town in an area I used to live.
For op sec, I won’t share which city, but consider a typical American town with rich neighborhoods and poor neighborhoods, and guess where most of the crime and policing is.
Is this a progressive move?
On the one hand, lowering housing costs is always a good thing, especially when it helps people who have less.
On the other hand, it could be a cynical ploy to continue quarantining “the poors” somewhere far away from the “nice” neighborhoods.
My gut feeling is that some sort of mixed-income housing would be the best progressive stepping stone because, gradually, middle class (ie white) people would have an increasing stake in this neglected part of town. But then again, that could also become a form of gentrification which ends up displacing the poorer tenants, so this solution would have to include some sort of rent control to work.
disclaimer: nothing is really progressive without the dictatorship of the proletariat
You’re on the right track. I’d say regarding low-income development in capitalism, it can be progressive if it’s not a concentration of poverty but instead used to create income-diverse neighborhoods. That could be building low income developments in medium to high income neighborhoods. It could be mandating a meaningful portion of units within medium to high income buildings be allocated to low income or public housing. It needs strong enforcement from housing agencies, equal maintenance investment, and a way to absolutely negate the political influence of nimbys (you don’t get these things without a DotP or at least very powerful socialist movement).