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                                                           August 27, 2018

                                From comments at reddit:
                                https://www.reddit.com/r/sanfrancisco/comments/9apulv/sf_residential_projects_languish_as_rising_costs/
solardawning wrote:

   "Mixed market rate and subsidized housing creates thriving
    communities, with residents who care about where they live."

   "100% affordable housing is what people call 'the projects'. They
    become slums, and reinforce the cycle of poverty."


I responded:

Interestingly, the original Jane Jacobs critique of
'the projects' had nothing to do with how they're
funded-- what she put her finger on was a need for
public spaces to serve a diverse range of uses.

Blocks of residential condos without end would be
just as big a problem as The Projects-- uniform
functionality is the problem, not the funding source.

Since we appear to be looking at a case of "market
failure" (the developers are telling us they can't
build what we want), it would indeed seem make sense
to look at alternative ways of supplying the need.


   "They become slums, and reinforce the cycle of poverty."

That's the kind of language people used to justify
building The Projects in the first place-- they would        We can conclude
label a functional neighborhood a "slum", rip it out         from this
and stick in some gimcrack residential towers, and step      experiment that
back and watch things get worse.                             you should
                                                             forget about Le
Someone made a lot of money off of that.                     Corbusier, not
                                                             that publicly
                                                             funded housing
                                                             is inevitably
                                                             a disaster.




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