Commentary—

A Place To Live: Not For Everybody

By William A. Collins

Does no good,

To moan and groan;

Got no bed,

To call my own.

Social compacts, of course, are not written down. They just sort of constitute a public understanding of what’s fair in society, and what are the responsibilities of leaders and citizens. Voters hope to see those leaders operate within the compact’s generally understood boundaries.

As part of America’s compact, many still cling to the notion that if you have a job you ought to enjoy enough food to eat, a place to live, school for the kids, and maybe health care. While we often rail at welfare, we don’t seriously object to providing these benefits to anyone who labors. Except, that is, the housing part.

The reason is that while providing subsidies for food, school, and medicine may cost us, those services don’t otherwise degrade our own personal lives. Housing, on the other hand, needs a location, and that location is bound to be near where somebody else lives. Further, if you need assisted housing you’re bound to be poor. Well, nobody wants poor people close to them, especially in multiple units. It’s bad for property values, schools, and image.

Thus has America’s social compact decayed from its high point in the 30s and 40s. You can see it in the homeless statistics. Not only are all Nutmeg shelters jammed these days, but in 2002, 27,000 folks were turned away for want of space. This, even after sticking cots or mattresses in every spare nook and cranny in the building. Yes, even people with jobs get denied.

But that’s really not so surprising. The real estate market is no great respecter of jobs. Either you have enough money for the rent or you don’t. Landlords are not the guardians of the social compact. They just need to pay their taxes, insurance, plumbers, and other expenses. Indeed being a renter at all is a low-prestige way to live. Politicians may earn brownie points with schemes to subsidize homeownership, but they earn only scorn by subsidizing tenants. Instead, many voters prefer to assuage their conscience by simply supporting the homeless, as long as they stay hidden away in industrial zones.

By way of example of our attitudes, the mayor of Ansonia has lately gone so far as to badmouth public housing residents and to reduce their number in local projects. That’s drawn him a lawsuit, but probably won’t hurt him at the polls. At the same time, a clear-eyed developer in that same town is proposing to add a couple floors of apartments above a strip mall he owns. The units won’t be subsidized, but will add to the local affordable housing stock. Obviously, Ansonia is where the rubber meets the road.

So is Norwalk. On the one hand, an old warehouse site here just got zoning approval for 56 subsidized nonprofit units. On the other hand, another neighborhood has hit the ceiling over a plan to expand a public housing site there with 60 new ownership units. “Public” housing, even if resident-owned, is about as popular as Osama bin Laden.

And this latter case demonstrates another large problem. Even when blacks do get to own a home, it’s often in a poor neighborhood with stagnant property values. White homes are better situated to enjoy increases in price. In time, therefore, the gap between white and black wealth invariably widens. Even when all the players work full time.

The Bush administration is graphically worsening this crisis by cutting back on federal rental assistance (Section 8). This sends more workers to live in tents, under bridges, and with relatives and friends. And Connecticut, because of its prices, is one of the harshest places in the nation for victims of this political withdrawal from the social compact. Luckily for our sensibilities, though, we’re also very sophisticated, so we’re usually able to hide the homeless from public view. Being out of sight of the naked eye, they fail to impinge on the comfort of the naked mind.

(William A. Collins is a former state representative and a former mayor of Norwalk.)