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Think there was a study that found families relocated from Chicago projects to suburbs did better than those that stayed. Concentrated poverty can be rather toxic though in that case there might have been a selection bias in who moved vs who didn't
I don’t understand your “problem” with Strong Towns as you state it here. #1 they don’t advocate for (or against) HOAs and in fact, one of the articles (you must have missed) explains the problems HOAs will have related to suburban poverty. : Suburban Poverty Meets Homeowner's Associations #2 if people choose to live in an incorporated entity like a town or city, they’ve agreed to be part of a community. i.e..pay taxes accordingly, use its services, abide by its laws, etc. If this isn’t of their choosing, they’d live in a rural area or unincorporated entity. There is nothing “faux” about it. What am I missing here?
Not really on topic but the strongest HOAs aroud here tend to be in unincorporated communities. Places like El Dorado Hills (affluent enclave) are unincorporated and basically run by HOAs rather than municipal governments. HOAs define zoning, are who you go to variances, set the tax rates Mello-Roos, contract to provide sewer, water, power, trash pickup, and so on. Generally, EDH has much more prescriptive zoning requirements than you'd find in municipalities.
For the most part, I'm with you though. If you don't like the rules, simply don't move there. By moving there you agree to the rules. The caveat to that is oftentimes HOAs have acted unscrupulously and there's less, or in some cases no, checks against that. For example, we had a family move in to a house that had something like 40 potted plants in the front yard. Okay, that's weird. Next thing you know there's a new rule about how many potted plants you can have in your front yard. There wasn't anything wrong with these people. They weren't disruptive or annoying but for whatever reason the HOA bullies had it in for them. That's very much how our HOA acts and has acted for since I've been here. It's more of a powertrip than anything else. There's ridiculous rules about what colors you can paint your house, for example. Being the generally rule abiding person I am I dutifully sent in my request before painting the house. Since they didn't get back to me in the specified time, I went ahead and painted it. Then a couple months later I get a friendly notice from a collection law firm that I owed $1,000 ($400 in fines and $600 in "legal fees") plus $200 a month until I returned the house to an approved color. Since there are no approved colors, that could have been ugly. They could just keep denying colors and charging me $200/mo indefinitely. No requirement that I notify them via certified letter but since I'm not an idiot, I did. Same deal when I replaced the siding on the garage door minus the "law" firm. You don't need to go through architectural review for repairs. Then I've had fines for having a dead lawn. I don't have a lawn in the front yard at all. For bushes within ten feet of my front property line being more than five feet tall, which okay they were. Standing water. That's kind of legitimate as mosquitoes are a huge concern. But then my Koi pond (A) isn't standing water and (B) has Koi in it. I've probably had around $2,000 in fines and fees over the seven years I've been here. The only one I've paid was the $50 for having bushes that were too tall but it's a waste of time.
Fortunately, one of my retired neighbors had nothing better to do and after losing the election just went after them for violating their own bylaws and California law with regard to notice of intent for changing rules. The last couple years we've had a professional management company in. They're still annoying but much less so.
I don’t understand your “problem” with Strong Towns as you state it here. #1 they don’t advocate for (or against) HOAs and in fact, one of the articles (you must have missed) explains the problems HOAs will have related to suburban poverty. : Suburban Poverty Meets Homeowner's Associations #2 if people choose to live in an incorporated entity like a town or city, they’ve agreed to be part of a community. i.e..pay taxes accordingly, use its services, abide by its laws, etc. If this isn’t of their choosing, they’d live in a rural area or unincorporated entity. There is nothing “faux” about it. What am I missing here?
You're already pushing the abstract of "community" over the actual and existent real people.
You're missing lots. StrongTowns promotes communitarianism. There are no such things as "community rights" - yet that is what StrongTown is promoting. "Community" is used to deprive people and disenfranchise them - not to support them. I've seen their mission statement. Look at this statement:
"Land is the base resource from which community prosperity is built and sustained. It must not be squandered."
The land doesn't belong to a "collective community" - it belongs to the individual land owners. The "community" is not a person and doesn't actually exist.
The clear objective of StrongTowns is to use the faux concept of "community" to deprive the actual landowner's right to exclude, right to use and enjoyment, right of alienation of the owner's property. The property doesn't belong to the town, it doesn't belong to any "community", the property belongs to the owner. There is no such thing as a "community" unless you are talking about the individual owners and their individual interests - in which case it isn't a collective "community" decision, it is a decision of individual owners.
Quote:
Originally Posted by capitalcityguy
Also (and maybe this is different where you live), anyone that lives in a neighborhood with an HOA has done this voluntarily.
and where do you live? It's not voluntary at all. It's laughable to suggest otherwise. The only feasible decision one has in many parts of the country (particularly sunbelt states) is WHICH HOA.
It's not possible to ridicule your remark to the level it deserves. Prospective purchasers will have a very difficult time finding homes built in the last 20-30 years that aren't burdened by involuntary membership HOAs. Virtually all new housing is HOA-burdened. Homeowners have to have housing and they have to select from what's available.
Quote:
Originally Posted by capitalcityguy
There are plenty of non-HOA neighborhoods people can choose to live in if they don’t wish to live under those rules or restrictions.
That's a myth.
Quote:
Originally Posted by capitalcityguy
It seems you’re wanting to create victims here as if people are mandated to live in places that are not of their choosing.
Now you're the one getting off-topic. However people need housing and they have to choose generally from what's available. To suggest that they "choose" to live in a place and therefore choose to be abused, deprived of fundamental rights, etc. because the "agreed" to it is laughable. Your argument is like claiming people had a choice whether to inhale contaminated air or water - because they "chose" to breathe or drink.
Let's also be quite frank here. StrongTowns is going to be a heavy HOA promoter because it promotes the economics for the TOWN not the people there. As a result and as numerous local governments have done all over the country - no only will they mandate HOAs, they expect to dictate many of the provisions in the restrictive covenants, impose perpetual liens, etc. and saddle the HOA (and therefore the homeowner) with financial responsibilities that really belong to local government. They also want to heavily empower local government and HOA boards (what did you think they were referring to by the term "strong people" and "neighborhoods"). A "neighborhood" isn't a person or entity.... If you promote "StrongTowns" over people, you will also be promoting HOAs.
Who are these elusive "some people", especially those you are accusing of racism? That is a serious accusation.
It's a serious representation of who we think uses (and, some say, abuses) welfare. It would be hard to miss all the talk in the last 20 years about "welfare queens," and it's worth noting who does that talking.
Take food stamps:
Quote:
At a campaign stop in Sioux City, Iowa on Sunday, Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum singled out blacks as being recipients of assistance through federal benefit programs, telling a mostly-white audience he doesn't want to "make black people's lives better by giving them somebody else's money."
There really ought to be a message that is somehow pinned to the top of every page in this subforum clearly expressing the caveat that when people are talking about "suburbia" or "the suburbs" here they're by and large talking about the general pattern of suburban development as it occurred during the mid-20th century and continued until the present day and not literally every place outside a city limit. It should be obvious to begin with but virtually every thread here still seems to require someone to explicitly make this distinction.
Just passed through Levittown , NY. The sign entering the town said "america's first suburb". So assuming the sign is accurate there weren't any suburbs before the 40s
It's a serious representation of who we think uses (and, some say, abuses) welfare. It would be hard to miss all the talk in the last 20 years about "welfare queens," and it's worth noting who does that talking.
So African Americans are 13% of the population and use 26% of the food stamps, and white non-Hispanics are 63% and uses 40%. What's the issue? Blacks use a lot more food stamps than whites do proportionately. I don't agree with his statement but call a spade a spade. Welfare does disproportionately go to blacks. Everyone knows this.
Welfare and the war on poverty has been completely unsuccessful at ending poverty. As I said previously, I'm not against the principal of spending other people's money to make the poor have a higher standard of living. I disagree with Santorum there, which is fine. People can disagree. I am in line with the Republican line of though, however, that welfare has not done much of anything in terms of lifting people out of poverty though. It hasn't.
Singling out blacks wasn't necessary and really wouldn't change the message. It's the same hand up, not a handout cliche that's been the Republican party line for the last 80 years.
So African Americans are 13% of the population and use 26% of the food stamps, and white non-Hispanics are 63% and uses 40%. What's the issue? Blacks use a lot more food stamps than whites do proportionately. I don't agree with his statement but call a spade a spade. Welfare does disproportionately go to blacks. Everyone knows this.
Welfare and the war on poverty has been completely unsuccessful at ending poverty. As I said previously, I'm not against the principal of spending other people's money to make the poor have a higher standard of living. I disagree with Santorum there, which is fine. People can disagree. I am in line with the Republican line of though, however, that welfare has not done much of anything in terms of lifting people out of poverty though. It hasn't.
Singling out blacks wasn't necessary and really wouldn't change the message. It's the same hand up, not a handout cliche that's been the Republican party line for the last 80 years.
I don't want to get in to an argument about welfare, because, first of all it would be a wide tangent and, second, because "welfare" and "poverty" in the US have been very amorphous things, meaning that any broad conversation is a broad generalization. More meaningful would be to have a discussion, in the correct forum, of if X program has helped Y group during Z period of time.
Look, I was only pointing out reasons that it can be hard to talk about suburban poverty, one reason being that there are people who see poverty (and welfare) as a black and brown, inner city issue, not also as a white and suburban issue. So, for some people there's no issue to be discussed because poverty doesn't happen to people like themselves, only to a distant "other."
You're already pushing the abstract of "community" over the actual and existent real people.
You're missing lots. StrongTowns promotes communitarianism. There are no such things as "community rights" - yet that is what StrongTown is promoting. "Community" is used to deprive people and disenfranchise them - not to support them. I've seen their mission statement. Look at this statement:
"Land is the base resource from which community prosperity is built and sustained. It must not be squandered."
The land doesn't belong to a "collective community" - it belongs to the individual land owners. The "community" is not a person and doesn't actually exist.
The clear objective of StrongTowns is to use the faux concept of "community" to deprive the actual landowner's right to exclude, right to use and enjoyment, right of alienation of the owner's property. The property doesn't belong to the town, it doesn't belong to any "community", the property belongs to the owner. There is no such thing as a "community" unless you are talking about the individual owners and their individual interests - in which case it isn't a collective "community" decision, it is a decision of individual owners.
and where do you live? It's not voluntary at all. It's laughable to suggest otherwise. The only feasible decision one has in many parts of the country (particularly sunbelt states) is WHICH HOA.
It's not possible to ridicule your remark to the level it deserves. Prospective purchasers will have a very difficult time finding homes built in the last 20-30 years that aren't burdened by involuntary membership HOAs. Virtually all new housing is HOA-burdened. Homeowners have to have housing and they have to select from what's available.
That's a myth.
Now you're the one getting off-topic. However people need housing and they have to choose generally from what's available. To suggest that they "choose" to live in a place and therefore choose to be abused, deprived of fundamental rights, etc. because the "agreed" to it is laughable. Your argument is like claiming people had a choice whether to inhale contaminated air or water - because they "chose" to breathe or drink.
Let's also be quite frank here. StrongTowns is going to be a heavy HOA promoter because it promotes the economics for the TOWN not the people there. As a result and as numerous local governments have done all over the country - no only will they mandate HOAs, they expect to dictate many of the provisions in the restrictive covenants, impose perpetual liens, etc. and saddle the HOA (and therefore the homeowner) with financial responsibilities that really belong to local government. They also want to heavily empower local government and HOA boards (what did you think they were referring to by the term "strong people" and "neighborhoods"). A "neighborhood" isn't a person or entity.... If you promote "StrongTowns" over people, you will also be promoting HOAs.
Wow, a lot to digest here but I see us talking past each other if we continue down the path that we’ve started. I will acknowledge an appreciation for individual property rights (this is a core tenant in which the US was founded) and despite what you might think at this juncture, I have strong libertarian leanings.
In an attempt to get us closer to mutual understanding, let me offer this and see if that gets us any closer to understanding where each of us is coming from. I think we are a lot closer in worldviews than what you think.
Do you not agree that a city (town) has finite borders (i.e….the boundaries in which it has annexed) and thus a finite amount of land within its borders available to collect the property taxes needed to maintain everything within its borders? In other words, even though I personally own land within my city' borders, do you not acknowledge that there is a governmental body that has jurisdiction over that land? It doesn’t’ mean they own it per say, but they do have jurisdiction. Right?
Assuming you agree and thus a city has the responsibility to provide basic services(streets, sewer, water, fire protection, etc.) for the land it has claimed within its borders, it needs to be a good steward to ensure it efficiently and responsibly maintains that for which it has laid claim to govern…at least to the level to which those that have chosen to live there and pay taxes expect it to
In other words, the city doesn’t own the land but they own the responsibility to service the land that falls within its borders. If a city lays claim to land (again…jurisdiction, not ownership) , but promotes development of the land within its borders in a manner that will eventually cause the city financial hardship, that could be characterized as squandering the land in which it has agreed to be a steward.
It's a serious representation of who we think uses (and, some say, abuses) welfare. It would be hard to miss all the talk in the last 20 years about "welfare queens," and it's worth noting who does that talking.
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