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What went wrong? Why was/is public housing such a spectacular failure in the United States?
>>384148
>Why was/is public housing such a spectacular failure in the United States?
Americans.
More seriously, in Europe (both Western and Eastern capitalism), public housing was the triumph of the proletariat in capitalism over the private interests in land. Manufacturing capital was quite willing to discipline rentier land capital over the issue of rent super-profits, in part to shift working class consumption towards the manufacturing industries.
Public housing in Europe was a triumph of the 1930s over the war, experienced in the 1950s. It was a triumph of "the nation" as embodied in the social democratic-esque state, or in Sweden of the co-operative spirit.
In contrast, US public housing was largely charity.
>>384148
If you give everyone housing but don't give everyone a job, then people have a place to call their own but they have no way of surviving. Combine this with the drug habits of the middle class and antagonism from mostly white police forces, and you quickly have a lot of cynics with a lot of opportunity to make money illegally in a very small space. The illegal job market is just like the legal job market, it has competition. Politicians pass harsh drug laws. If you're a drug dealer then you are always carrying enough evidence on you to be convicted of crime requiring multiple decades of prison time, so killing a rival becomes trivial in terms of relative legal risk. Police forces in the 70s and 80s were not equipped to handle the increasing amounts of crime, so public housing essentially became ungoverned territory within the US. If you have even a small amount of people acting in accordance with what I have described above, then you end up having a lot of lethal antagonism in communities that are large in population but small in area. We are social creatures and we take things personally, we seek revenge and we take sides. Gangs start as ways to protect yourself from others but quickly become corporate structures for organized crime.
Being the United States, political power is held by those with wealth, and those with wealth in this country are overwhelmingly white. Setting aside the possibility of racism, if you are a politician you are wealthy, and if you are wealthy you don't live in public housing. People naturally take care of their community first, so even if a politician were to draft legislation to help the people in public housing, they likely lack the experience or intimate knowledge of the issues to combat them effectively.
>>385051
Policies such as increasing time served for drug and gun offenses, making guns more difficult to acquire, aggressive police tactics, lowering taxes (this concentrates wealth in the hands of the already wealthy), recklessly spending money on "dem programs", the list goes on, and it was all simply misguided. One of the worst things that happened was the destruction of the public housing. In Chicago, this lead to gangs dispersing through out the city, increasing the extent of their territory and rapidly increasing the number of border conflicts.
Eventually, even if the problems that lead to the creation of all this poverty and violence are alleviated, being a man of the streets or a gangster becomes a cultural institution. This problem is compounded by the massive number of poor people who are incarcerated and who are incapable of raising their children. When kids grow up without parents or a warm and supportive family, they can only identify with the environment around them. The physical isolation of public housing also leads to cultural isolation. Rich people don't want savage gangsters in their neighborhoods, so they segregate.
To answer your question
>What went wrong?
Everything. The consistency and enormity of the mistakes made in terms of policy regarding poor people and public housing is really amazing. There is literally nothing good that came out of public housing in itself. Practically all of the domestic antagonism in the US today can trace its roots back to public housing and how politicians treated poor people in general 50 years ago. It's really astounding.
>>385052
The Great Society wasn't designed to free the working class and lumpenproletariat. It was designed to enslave them.
Individualism. Or rather the American concept of it.
>>385052
Personally, I believe there is nothing wrong with the government providing its citizens with housing. Everyone deserves a place to live. The problem is that housing is not enough. Everyone deserves the dignity of being able to contribute to their well-being and provide for themselves. Poor people and black people are not stupid, they are not lazy, they are not ignorant (maybe ignorant about like particle physics, but its an irrelevant subject when you're being forced to struggle every day).
People will take care of themselves whether it is legal or not. If an environment is created where those in accordance with the law must suffer for it, then you have created an environment in which criminals will prosper and in an environment like that, anything goes. The inhumane begin to rule.
The ironic thing is that these problems are ongoing, and it is still only the wealthy who are politically represented. Even the black people who are getting policies changes are only making such progress because they have enough money and free time to go to college and disrupt Presidential candidates, professors and the soon-to-be middle class. The "real" black lives are still mostly ignored. To be honest kohai, things are much better then they ever have been in terms of poor communities and public housing, but the fact that it happened in the first place really leaves a sour taste in my mouth.
>tfw born in the usa
>>385070
>designed
You really think it is a conspiracy against the poor and the "nigs"?
>>385105
Why do you frame this existentially instead of collectively or communally, i.e., why do you believe this to be a problem of the individual as opposed to the society?
>>385123
>conspiracy
Why oh why are americans fascinated with this concept?
The 1950s sorted the unionised white proletariat, in a way which meant that the problem of the AFL and CIO (later AFL/CIO) was solved for US capital. There were no subsequent anti-union attacks after the late 1940s, and capital and labour were allowed to fight on the uneven terrain generated in the 1930s.
But when it came to the ununionised and semi-skilled sectors of the economy, there was no need to buy off the black or white lumpenproletariat, unlike in (for example) Australia or Sweden or New Zealand. So instead you get concentrated poverty.
Geographically you get projects instead of standard accommodation.
Economically you get welfare instead of an industry policy.
Socially you get bussing instead of decent schools.
Like Bismark's social programmes, these were designed to enslave and delimit.
>>385123
LBJ certainly did.
Suburbs are quite simply better.
>>385136
Nice, I agree with this.
>Why oh why are americans fascinated with [conspiracy]?
I don't know.
How did you develop this line of thinking?
>>385155
>How did you develop this line of thinking?
30 years in the movement. 19 years of 20th century social historiography.
>>385157
But you're not American? Why study class antagonism in Burgerzone? What do you think about class consciousness?
>>385172
>Why study class antagonism in Burgerzone?
Because it is the class antagonism in the centre of the circulation of financial capital and the chief metropole of the capitalist world system?
>What do you think about class consciousness?
I think it would be a good idea.
>>385200
Okay yeah I gotcha.
>>385132
Why do you think individuals and society are separate and distinct? Is society not made of the aggregate decisions of individuals?
>>384148
Dumping solely poorfags into shitty towerblocks. CBF chasing it up now but there's a bit of research into mixed class housing, seems a much more sensible way of doing things.
>>384165
That's not quite right, at least not anymore.
In France Public housing has become a place for housing undesirables. Youre seeing this now much more often in Western Europe.
>>384148
Because they were designed as prisons solely segregate a community that was devoid of jobs and prospects and has historically been oppressed and shut out of life prospects.
As jobs were lost, crime grew, which caused white flight, which caused jobs to be lost etc. Class conciousness in the US doesn't exist in the same sense. Your race defines your class, to this day even, and what you can achieve depends heavily on both your parents income or your skin color.
>>385323
>In France Public housing has become a place for housing undesirables. Youre seeing this now much more often in Western Europe.
This was a significant change in the strategies of capital after the 1968-1972 revolutionary situation in Europe.
>As jobs were lost, crime grew, which caused white flight, which caused jobs to be lost etc. Class conciousness in the US doesn't exist in the same sense. Your race defines your class, to this day even, and what you can achieve depends heavily on both your parents income or your skin color.
A lot of this is to do with stratification and partial class consciousnesses amongst the US working class. Class consciousness in the US never had hegemonising institutions like a Labour party or a Socialist union movement, and has been more diverse and much more susceptible to "in-itself" arguments from the bourgeoisie.
>>385333
Well, they did have a couple of labor movements, nothing substantial but they existed. But here comes the striking thing, even without the direct influence of the bourgeoise, given their own meetings dedicated to the liberation of the entire Working class, the Socialist/Communist parties were still separated along racial lines. Blacks had their own Labor party that occasionally cooperated with the white Labor party, with a few attempts at integration, but not enough to reconcile the reality of the social stratification.
Read Black Boy by Richard Wright, the later half of the book talks a lot about his frustrations in trying to manage his local Communist party and shows how even when united under the cause of liberation from bourgeois tyranny, it was almost impossible to get everyone of both races to agree. It got to be so bad that he quit the party altogether because of how dilusioned it made him.
Racial lines run way deeper than people like to admit, and only a couple of people are really beginning to realize just how long it's going to take for any true reconciliation. Generations, perhaps centuries. And that's assuming it won't get worse overtime.
>>385419
Social stratification of a socioeconomic group isn't always based on race, but in this case it was.
>>385419
Racism is part of the problem is The US simply because even today blacks are more likely to be poor. It's all got to due with poverty essentially, just like in homogeneous countries.
>>384148
>Why was/is public housing such a spectacular failure in the United States?
Public housing strips the residents of a sense of ownership, responsibility, and independent agency.
People have no sense of attachment to the place they live, and indeed come to see it as something rather like a prison. It's owned by the government they distrust, the government that demolished their old homes to build the projects they were relocated into. They transfer their anger at the government onto the projects themselves, turning to vandalism and eventually crime.
It's basically the same reason schoolkids vandalize the bathroom stalls.
>>384148
Excuses: Racism, drugs, unemployment, and so on.
Truth: Because they're filled with blacks, who are naturally less intelligent & more violent than most other races.
>>385454
This is a good answer.
>>385494
Your dog is less intelligent that you, that doesn't predispose it to be criminal.
Crime exists where there is few options for economic improvement, and becomes ingrained in ones culture overtime if they're left to their own devices. Eventually, it becomes so bad that even in the face of improved opertunity, those people will still turn to crime as abandoning that aspect is considered betraying their roots.
American blacks aren't unique in this sense, see Gypsies, Aborigines, and Russians in Ex-Soviet countries.
>>385555
>Crime exists where there is few options for economic improvement
like in a parliament
>>385549
>political conception of the methodological individual
Who comes up with this shit?
>>385578
People who fucking read before posting.
>>385444
The struggles between the races is just another expression of the class system, eh
you marxist fuck <3
>>385419
Public housing, just like any social project, can fail for a variety of specific reasons.
In more homogenous societies, e.g. Western Europe, public housing is failing for different reasons. This doesn't mean public housing in the States should work because we're not a "homogenous" country, it simply means things occur for a variety of historically contingent reasons.
Anyways, other anons have already explained how class and race in the US interact, and the split between the white working class and black working class- which occurred both from the racism of white workers and from institutional benefits granted to whites in order to placate the white working class.
>>385555
>Your dog is less intelligent that you, that doesn't predispose it to be criminal.
This argument makes no logical sense. I did not say that all unintelligent beings are violent, only that blacks are both less intelligent & more violent than us.
>Crime exists where there is few options for economic improvement, and becomes ingrained in ones culture overtime if they're left to their own devices. Eventually, it becomes so bad that even in the face of improved opertunity, those people will still turn to crime as abandoning that aspect is considered betraying their roots.
Blacks are in poverty because they're intelligent & violent, not the other way around. Look up any study of black intelligence (as well as the heritability of intelligence), or the various genes blacks carry that predispose them to violence.
>>385665
That's partially true.
It's more they believe that they're exploited by those less fortunate than them (the unemployed, minorities, single mothers), who prevent them from becoming millionaires, via the government who doesn't represent them or their interests.
They want to have their cake and eat it too essentially.
>>385682
It is truly a stroke of genius that the moneyed interests were able to convince the middle classes and working classes that their enemy was the impoverished and not the wealthy.
>>385595
If you can't successfully spout this kind of bullshit to an audience of your beloved lumpen proletariat, why do you feel that you can spout it here?
Are you implying illiterate public housing tenants would understand what the fuck you are talking about when you say those kinds of things?
Poor black americans are richer than the vast, vast majority of the world's population. They have access to luxury electronic items, all food they could possibly want, clean water, sewage treatment, a fairly decent education system compared to countries just south of them, and even cars.
But no, capitalism is evil, there is a businessman conspiracy to make white and black "working class" hate each other, "poverty" is the cause of crime even if it has no economic incentive, like rape, and people absolutely lose living in commie blocks.
>>385694
It's the difference between an abstract threat and an immediate, physical threat. Yes, the wealthy elites are destroying the country at a macro level, but if you live in a culturally enriched diverse neighborhood there's a very real chance of being mugged, robbed, beaten, raped, murdered, etc.
It's not very hard to figure out why the middle class would fear the radicalized (in whatever appropriate sense of that term) impoverished population in their vicinity more than elite bankers and politicians.
Now, you can argue whether it was by design that the poor minority populations were weaponized by the elites to keep the middle class in line, but nonetheless it is a very real, immediate threat to their existence.
>>385726
>If you can't successfully spout this kind of bullshit to an audience of your beloved lumpen proletariat
A straw man ad hominem? Good way to start. The lumpen proletariat aren't my beloved. I do speak this way with them. They appreciate it enough that they ask me to run extended courses for them.
>Are you implying illiterate public housing tenants would understand what the fuck you are talking about when you say those kinds of things?
No, you're implying that by producing a straw man from out of your own fucking arsehole.
By the way, the demands of this board are not whether American lumpenproles can comprehend what's going on, but rather that "a high level of discourse is expected." I bring it. Become capable of it.
Read something about the Great Society. You should enjoy just how much of a scheming fuck LBJ was. And, in the words of LBJ, "DO YOU SQUAT TO PISS SIR?"
>>385773
I've read plenty on the Great Society and LBJ, as well as the New Deal housing policies that preceded it, but I've never heard about "a political conception of the methodological individual."
Could you explain what you mean by this? It seems like a bunch of intellectual wankery but I'm curious nonetheless.
>>385792
Methodological individualism claims that individuals are all that there is, or that they are the only significant or most significant point of analysis. It is deeply controversial in the social sciences and rests on a pathetic fallacy of identifying the researcher or reader with the "individual" who is the subject of research. It is commonly used to deny group formation and group behaviour as a significant factor in scholarly works.
If you haven't encountered the concept of "methodological individualism" before, then you might need to read more social science theory, because it is a significant concept, and the argument over its sufficiency or deficiency will be throughout the more social science oriented histories you read.
Common arguments for its deficiency includes its importing as "natural" the assumptions of the enlightenment. Or, from the actual left, that it represents as a transhistorical state of being the nature of the capitalist in their relation to the market.
By saying that the method, "methodological individualism" is politicised in this context, I am arguing that the reason why methodological individualism was chosen by >>385454 for their explanation is because >>385454 is politically invested in individuating ("turning into individuals") subjects that are actually much more complex. This is visible in the lauding of morality, "sense of ownership," "responsibility," "independent agency." These are political catch phrases, the slogan of active social movements. This is not an analysis of the 1960s public works programmes from the categories or perspectives of the day.
Finally, the trite "homespun yarns" are a key indicator that the poster's methodological individualism is politically motivated, "It's basically the same reason schoolkids vandalize the bathroom stalls."
If allow me to make a similar argument by analogy to show how politicised it is, "the reason you will go to hell is because you don't confess in the catholic church."
>>384148
>Put a bunch of poor people in one spot
>????????????
>Ends in failure
That's it
The ugly architecture encouraged ugly behavior.
>>386063
Thanks for explaining wall street in the 1980s.
>>386180
västra frölunda
>>385419
there are numerous homogenous countries where it isn't any failure.
>>386190
kc tier
>>385312
Yeah he simplified it to "white people suck". At least he didnt offend your liberal belief .
>>386195
It's unfortunate that both sides of a debate like this are unable to objective in their analysis. Obviously government housing and welfare policies played a significant role in the ghettoization of public housing, but the culture of the people living in these places also plays a huge role and cannot be denied in any serious analysis of events.
>>386299
Nice false equivalence, why don't you equivocate somewhere else and make a fucking argument from historical sources next time.
>>386313
Are you denying that culture plays any part in ghettoization?
Why weren't Japanese internment camps rife with crime and violence among their inhabitants?
>>385555
>im poor so i can commit all the crime i want and whine to you for free shit like a toddler
lol
>>386324
>Are you denying that culture plays any part in ghettoization?
No, I don't need to make that argument to call out an absence of argument and equivocation.
>Why weren't Japanese internment camps rife with crime and violence among their inhabitants?
I don't know, and more I don't know whether your claims is true, what do the sources say?
>>385755
But BLM covers police brutality that effects the black community.
>>386313
>>386337
I haven't seen an argument ITT that actually references historical sources. It seems to me that everyone has just been providing opinions without any concrete evidence.
List the sources that you are referencing that support your viewpoints otherwise you are no better than anyone else providing an opinion.
>>386384
>There were no subsequent anti-union attacks after the late 1940s
How is that a "standard" union history? It's a bunch of bullshit, considering that in the late 1940s the Taft-Hartley act and Right to Work laws were passed across the nation, and the big corporations never really stopped anti-union activities through the 1940s, 50s, and 60s, they were just less overt and violent about it. Kim Phillips-Fein's "Invisible Hands" discusses this in detail.
Also saying "LBJ biographies" is worthless. So far exactly one source has been provided (from me), you've just provided rhetoric and "standard" interpretations that aren't even accurate.
>>386391
Sure sure. That's why the US state tried to destroy Miners Fed after 1946…
Draw shorter bows and you can rely on standard sourcing.
>>386401
Not even sure what you are trying to say at this point, or what you mean by "standard sourcing."
Does People's History count as a "standard source"? So far you haven't providing a single source. Can you not name any off the top of your head?
Surprised you haven't even mentioned Jackson, Sugrue, Rome, etc. You aren't very good at backing up your arguments with anything specific.
>>385136
>There were no subsequent anti-union attacks after the late 1940s, and capital and labour were allowed to fight on the uneven terrain generated in the 1930s.
There was an Oscar-winning documentary involving violence against miner's unions in the 70s. You should check it out.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harlan_County,_USA
>>385419
The only part where race comes into my argument is when white people look at black people today and see the degeneracy that is there. The mistake they make is to think that it isn't a recent phenomena.
>>385773
fucking fallacy man god damn it go and stay gone
>>388381
I always laugh when people compare the blacks now to back then and ignore everything that elapsed during the time span and ignore history.
>>386313
FALLACY MAN PLS GO YOU SOPHOMORIC TUMOR
>>388403
The history of black people in the US has no single thread running through except perhaps racism, whether intentional or not. I'm not a BLM totalitarian facist muh soggy knee faggot. You don't need race at all to analyze the failures of public housing. I only brought it up because it can explain much of the behavior of poor black people today. It doesn't admonish them for their crimes, but there is a reason for why people act the way they do.
>all the progressive-collectivist circle jerking in this thread
>lowering taxes somehow hurts the poor and middle class, who somehow aren't effected by high taxes
>state that lack of economic opportunities is the reason for crime, forget that most crime ridden areas in the US are densely packed urban areas with high taxes, large amounts of public housing, and heavy economic regulations
>no mention of the observed drop in quality of public services experience as they attempt to apply/cater to more and more people (see: housing, education, healthcare)
>push obsolete marxist dichotomies involving the wealthy being the "enemy of the people" while faulting people who blame the poor
>no mention of the dependency that forms between those receiving government benefits and the government itself, how said government needs to continually increase its political and economic control in order to provide an ever increasing amount of subsidies for a population that loses more and more of an ability to provide for themselves, thus rendering them dependent on more and more government subsidies.
>keep pushing to concentrate all political/economic power in the hands of a few government bureaucrats in the name of an intangible and subjective greater good, constantly wonder why political/economic power ends up in the hands of a wealthy few, repeat the cycle with more government
>repeat continuously until your country experiences an economic collapse and/or balkanizes into several warring democratic people's republics
>>388596
I'm >>385323 and if you want my opinion, government housing was never designed to be for the greater good, just as a way to designate a black vs. white region of a city. Dependence made the black population easy to control, and lack of economic opportunity as a result of high taxes and regulations was on of the reasons that white flight took place, which undoubtedly caused most jobs to disappear.
Black people didn't do themselves any favors that's for sure, but the drop in quality observed by the lose of tax revenue is quite clear.
Crime was result of all this, it didn't have to be the result but that's what happened. The U.S. government, Democrats in particular, have a maligned
Idea of what makes a community prosper. That's why democrat majority countries are mostly inner city ghettos. They don't understand that money needs to flow and be generated within a community in order for there to be sustainable public works. The results are that they scare away business, which destroys their tax base and helps impoverish their already struggling constituency.
American liberals need someone to call out their bullshit and have them work towards realistic goals rather than ones based in idealistic populism.
>>388681
To help build on this, on of the reasons Detroit went the way it did was because the public housing built there relied on the tax revenue generated by GM, who would benefit from the revenue generated from newly arrived black laborers. However, during that time, Detroit had a string of the most corrupt mayors in US history (which is really saying something) and the numerous scandals mismanagement brought the cities economy to a grinding halt. When the Automobile Unions refused to back down on benefit cutbacks in the 60's, GM knew that it had to find a way to bail from the sinking ship if it wanted to stay competitive.
The result of this was the outsourcing of labor that caused both blacks and whites to be laid off. Unlike with blacks though, the white families usually had other options and, when they had enough money, they too would bail from the sinking ship. The crime that spiked soon after only excited the trend, until the only people left with jobs in Detroit were a couple of state employees and a handful of automobile factories that decided to stick it out. All the while, Detroit's government not only failed to stop it, but only made the problem worse.
And the result is the city you see today, unable to pay for basic amenities because its politicians are corrupt retards saying one thing yet doing another. The people who stayed behind are utterly broke and devoid of life prospects outside of criminal enterprise and a factory job if they are lucky.
>>385823
But if you deny that the problems of the projects came from individuals' responses to their environment, and instead making a vague suggestion that the source of the problem lies in group behavior, your argument is basically a very eloquent way of saying "niggers gonna nig."
Analyzing this phenomenon in terms of group behavior is at best a weak proxy for the motives of the individuals that comprise the group, and leaves you at the mercy of either anecdotal thinking or notoriously biased mid-20th century demographic data.
>>389681
>and instead making a vague suggestion that the source of the problem lies in group behavior, your argument is basically a very eloquent way of saying "niggers gonna nig."
Not if I conduct a class analysis.
>Analyzing this phenomenon in terms of group behavior is at best a weak proxy for the motives of the individuals that comprise the group
Back to methodological individualism. You don't get to claim that individuals "exist" in social science. Margaret Thatcher's bombast was precisely that: bullshit.
>demographic data
Or we look at rent strikes by working class black people organised through churches in the 1950s and 1960s? Or factory floor organisation? Or diarisation by black and white impoverished workers? Or union demands? Or government papers?
There's more than reductivist mid 20th century statistics out there.
>>385673
>enslave a race for two hundred years, then free them but completely disenfranchise them for another century or so
>create a home loan system that actively segregates blacks from richer whites, causing poorer blacks to be clustered up
>pass extremely harsh drug laws that will put users and dealers in prison for decades, both increasing demands for drugs and making gangs more likely to be violent
>let gangs cluster up in these concentrated areas, creating a culture of violence and poverty that even today persists in black culture
>WOOOOOOW why are niggers poor bugged socioeconomic mechanics nothing I could do /pol//pol//pol/
>>388596
>poor somehow aren't affected by high taxes
Food isn't taxed anon.
>>390296
To be fair whites bought all their black slaves from Arabs and other blacks. We never "enslaved them", we just bought some exotic property and put it to use.
I agree with most of the rest of your post though.
>>390330
I'm aware of that, maybe "enslaved an entire race" isn't quite right but we were definitely the biggest market for black slaves.
>>390398
WE
>>384148
i wonder how successful public housing is
but a quick glance through this thread gives me the impression that its pretty much uneducated opinions
the wiki link you gave cited lack of maintenance as primary cause of this particular examples failure
but public housing success obviously depends on its execution and i am more interested in general consequences
generally valid consequences are almost certainly that public housing has a negative impact on private market and that it lessens constructive incentives of people living there
>>384148
I hope you aren't dissing commie blocks son, because they're actually really cozy when you don't cramp ghetto trash who can't even take care of their own kids into them.
>>386195
>obligatory racebait post
Never change, 4chan.
>>392956
Why single out that one? nearly every post in this thread meets that criteria.
because it concentrated poverty. which had an affect of making poverty worse.
poor people should be spread out. So that they are a tiny part of any local population group. So they are less of a burdern and poor people do not drag them selves and others down.
>>395623
The problem with this is that once they start commiting crime, even after being spread out, people don't want them there anymore. There will always be cases when a black student simply acts criminal, like in Boston when a white kid was nearly stabbed to death. The chance of this happening makes people afraid, parents especially. It brings in elements and crime that they didn't have to deal with in the past. Until a system is developed that spreads poverty out without causing crime to spike, people will inherently be against it.
>>395623
>let's force well off and testing communities to take in tons of poor people
I don't think so jim.
Ghettoization is the logical conclusion to any Public Housing scheme.
>>395563
It's the obligatory "Liberal Bias" post.
