Over the last couple of years, a new vision of ‘European Style’ social housing has titillated the imagination of hopeful American affordable housing activists. In with the new, out with the old ‘public’ housing condemned by everybody including activists, bureaucrats, politicians and citizens (but not necessarily tenants).
If only America could create truly affordable housing for all, based on housing complexes that attract not only the poor, but the middle class as well. This ‘social’ housing concept has indeed become the subject of some experimental interest of late1.
But quite possibly insurmountable roadblocks stand in the way of ever importing truly affordable ‘European style’ social housing to North America.
First, free market housing builders and investors are well on their way to hijacking the entire idea — powerful forces that have already inserted themselves into a modern form of ‘mixed income’ housing. ‘Mixed income’ housing appears somewhat similar to ‘European style’ social housing, but is very much not the same. In modern ‘mixed income’ developments, at least two kinds of housing are built on a site. Free market housing is built and sold to the profit of the builder — either as a landlord for rental income, or in some condo-style ownership scheme.
Social housing units in the same complex are built to the same or lower standards, then delivered to governments or housing authorities to subsidize in perpetuity as ‘truly affordable2‘ rental for a poorer class of citizen.
‘European-style’ social housing has governments/housing authorities retaining all the income from the housing. There is no private sector developer as a part owner who will waltz off with sizable, or otherwise never-ending, profits. Instead, in a ‘European-stlye’ social housing complex, higher rents for the middle classes will be collected by the housing authority to subsidize the management, maintenance, and replacement costs of all the housing. The taxpayer does not not forever foot ongoing subsidy costs.
Will private market housing developers in the United States ever relinquish their successful ‘mixed income’ profits? Will they continue to pressure governments with ‘free enterprise does it better’ propaganda that seeks to shut social housing authorities out of the income stream so important to new American ‘social housing’ activism?
A second roadblock also stands in the way of ‘European-style’ social housing.
Snobbery.
It first reared its widely recognized head in New York, with new ‘mixed income’ housing projects instituting the concept of the ‘poor door.’
A new ‘European style’ of social housing requires residents of all income ranges to happily co-exist in the same buildings, those with higher incomes paying higher rents to subsidize the economic health of those with low, or even no, income.
Co-exist with a bunch of lower class slobs? Admit the rabble to use ‘exclusive’ higher class doors, higher class floors, higher class buildings? Poorer folks in mixed housing developments have been shut out of gardens, recreation facilities and other amenities — anything that might appeal to the sense of entitlement which snobs assume are exclusively theirs.
Complaints about this kind of ‘dog in a manger’ behaviour are common. Examples are readily available from around the world. Will this form of exclusionary ‘hate thy neighbour’ behaviour doom any new form of ‘European social housing’ shared by equals? Here’s the latest snobbery affordablehousingaction.org has bumped into, this time in the Republic of Ireland, in newsTALK: This Is Segregation: Social Housing Tenants Denied Access to Amenities
