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AMERICAN INNER-CITY HOUSING.
Term Paper ID:30688
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Discusses problems of lack of affordable housing and poverty.... More...
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Paper Abstract:
Discusses problems of lack of affordable housing and poverty. The historical social, economic and cultural background. Role of capitalism. Inadequate social services. Homelessness. Exodus of jobs and housing from cities to the suburbs. The mass media as part of the problem. Contends that human values must be placed above money values to solve inner-city problems.
Paper Introduction:
The housing situation that faces inhabitants of the inner cities of the United States cannot be understood without a consideration of the social, economic, and cultural history of the country. The North American colonies were founded by European immigrants who conquered, killed, and marginalized the indigenous inhabitants, and eventually herded them into reservations on worthless rural land. Tens of millions of African slaves were imported to labor on the southern cotton, sugar, and tobacco plantations, with at least as many dying in the terribly inhumane conditions of the trans-Atlantic passage as reached our shores.
The North began to industrialize with construction of a cotton mill in Pawtucket, Rhode Island in 1793. During the next century, an unprecedented influx
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Finally, more than fivemillion rooming houses and single-occupancy units have been destroyed orconverted to higher-priced apartments for the middle class with the aid offederal and local governmental programs. Adult literacy,remedial education, vocational education, and job skills should become thepriority of thelocal educational system. There have been a variety of responses by community activists. Urban Neighborhoods, Networks, and Families.Lexington, Massachusetts: Lexington Books. In the 194 s even northern cities like New York,Chicago, and St. Findingaffordable, available, accessible, and appropriate housing is a problemeveryone faces, but being poor makes it a virtually insoluble life crisisthat just won't go away. Andwhere would she get the energy and discipline for such a long-term effortwhose fruits are far off and only theoretical? Since according to capitalist ideology the profits ofthe fortunate few are always more important than the basic human needs ofthe unfortunate many, nothing fundamental will ever be done under its powerto alleviate the interlocking causes of poverty, homelessness, and crimethat endlessly perpetuate the nation's underclass, except to incarceratethe unruly inner-city urban poor youth, so they will not revolt and demandtheir piece of the pie. Ferguson and Dickens (1999, vii) put it this way: Housing subsidies were seen as an economic stimulus for the real estate, mortgage, and home-building industries as much as a benefit to the ill-housed. Isn'tit possible that one day we will value a human being simply for being ahuman being, and act accordingly to provide the help he or she needs, witha cheerful heart? Increasing numbersof Latin Americans and Asians have arrived, many illegally, and in placeslike New York, Miami, and Los Angeles have entered into competition for thescarce economic and social-service resources that were inadequate for theblacks and other groups already living there. She works as a domestic in Highland Park for a wealthy family. That'sformer Clinton Administration HUD Secretary Andrew Cuomo - not aconservative Republican - in his Report on The State of the Cities in 1999.He goes on to write: "the right mix of public incentives, combined with thewillingness of the private sector to invest in untapped markets, is highlyeffective as a recipe for revitalizing distressed communities". Are we doomed to beforever cold-hearted, uncaring, and dominated by the almighty dollar? Mosca, G. If we are going to keep our economy going,we need to keep it growing. People who for onereason or another are unable to pull their own weight economically orsupport their families fall into a number of groups, none of which deserveinvective for their alleged failures. Among the world's industrialized nations the United States has one of the highest per capita poverty rates, the most children living in poverty, the greatest gap between rich and poor, the largest infant mortality rate, and one of the most severe problems of adult literacy - 1 in 5 - and the world's highest per capita prison population (Daly, 1996, 39).These grim statistics present an irrefutable picture of a society much likeRome, which cares nothing for its poor. The elite is always the less numerous, performs all of the political functions, monopolizes power, and enjoys the advantages that power brings, whereas the second, the more numerous class, is directed and controlled by the first, in a manner that is now more or less legal, now more or less arbitrary and violent (Mosca, 1939, 5 ).Such objective and realistic analysis of power, exercised in the name of"the people" or not, is anathema to American popular and media discourse,although there is never any shortage of fingers being pointed at the powersthat be, usually inaccurately. There has been an exodus of jobs and housing to the suburbs. (1996). If ever clearer proof was needed that capitalism ismore important than democracy in America, here it is. But they all have one thing in common: they areexpressed in capitalist, rather than humane, rhetoric. All these factors make our traditional stereotypeof the self-sufficient nuclear family outmoded, and can complicate ourunderstanding of the true interlocking set of problems that affect theinner city housing crisis. She is resting after a hard day of work and 4 hours onpublic transit, but she still has to descend five flights of stairs becausethe elevator is not working, walk to the grocery store without beingaccosted, buy food with her food stamps, and hope that someone will helpher carry her bags of food up the stairs on her way back. In Media Blight and the Dehumanizing of America, Schraderwrites The subtly noxious intrapsychic stress borne daily by Americans as they face the experiential bind - with their feet on the hard pavements of the firsthand realm and their heads in the beguiling, media-spawned images of the vicarious realm - is well calculated to induce a pandemic combination of frustration, discouragement, and bewilderment (ie., demoralization)(Scrader, 1992, p. As Ken Auletta puts it (1999, 12), "the underclass tends to feelexcluded from society, rejects many values commonly embraced by society,and is often victimized by its own behavior". She fixes TV dinners inthe microwave oven while they all watch TV, which is occasionallyinterrupted by sirens in the street and loud arguments from the otherapartments. Adramatic rise in the number of low-income renters, mainly due to recentimmigration, when combined with the shrinking supply of affordable housingfor them, has resulted in a supply gap of 4.1 million low-rent dwellings"(Daly, 1996, 4 ). There is always the smug and inaccurate notion, analyzed soruthlessly and effectively by Thorstein Veblen and Max Weber, that the poorare poor due to their own lack of initiative, and that God has his reasonsfor why they are always with us. Such a sick sense of priorities gives little cause for optimism.And a brief perusal of some basic facts about how little we value our poorcitizens as human beings in comparison with other societies paints a stillmore sobering picture. If Third World countries like Cuba and Nicaragua can makeland reform and the eradication of poverty national priorities and makeprogressive improvements on persistent, systemic social problems that wesubject to benign neglect, why cannot we do the same? Ordinary people -whoever they may be - are endlessly recruited for TV shows that purport todeal with social problems, by the news media, or by politicians at pressconferences or political campaigns. Almost one-thirdof American families are made up of people who live alone or with childrenbut no other adult (Wireman, 1984, 17). Homeless. Louis were openly racist when it came to housing. All these groups are at a higher risk ofneeding help from outside the family in an emergency, and they are oftendependent on the community for at least some of their physical and socialneeds on a daily basis. The increasing number of women with childrenworking outside the home are often dependent on social service agencies fordaycare, and must sacrifice a high percentage of their earnings for privatecare if they can find it. The North Americancolonies were founded by European immigrants who conquered, killed, andmarginalized the indigenous inhabitants, and eventually herded them intoreservations on worthless rural land. They are used as ciphers, as symbolicpawns whose real purpose is to increase viewership and hence profits, or toget the politician into office. It is ironic that during the Reagan era's colossal military build-up,purportedly to protect us against the very Soviet Union that was collapsingfrom within, while untold billions in government money went to the military-industrial complex for weapons systems that were never used, socialservices were cut back, and the de-institutionalization of mental patientsflooded the streets with hordes of people unable to care for themselves."Recent increases in homelessness are attributable to global economicchanges, a severe shortage of affordable shelter for low-income households,and cut-backs in social programs", writes Gerald Daly in Homeless (1996,1). It is an axiom of anthropology that anysociety takes a handful of ideas or values and recycles them endlessly,something called the "ethos" of a culture. Therefore national urban housing policy will continue tobe defined by politicians' sound bites, rather than by the in-depth studiesof sociologists, or by the personal testimony of those actually living inthe slums, who are politically powerless until they riot. The food banks and emergencyshelters provided by both public and private responses have done nothing to"confront the underlying problems of poverty, housing provision,employment, and resource allocation" (1996, 1). Employment programs with daycare provisions arealso essential. How can all this go on year after year, in Democratic as well asRepublican administrations? A broken window makes the place drafty, andthe smell of urine, burnt food, and unchanged diapers drifts in from thehall. More likely she will betempted to drown her depression in alcohol or crack, further complicatingher condition, and offering even less of a chance for her children to getout of the underclass. Any sensational news about a baby dying from a rat bite or a buildingset on fire by a crack addict will go directly to the top of the eveningnews, but only for its audience appeal, never to understand the deeperissues involved. (1939). Ferguson, R., and Dickens, W. In modern America the primevalue is capitalism. InEurope and some big cities like New York there have been squatters'movements, in which poor people have moved into abandoned buildings, fixedthem up, and lived there until evicted. (1984). It's presented as an investment opportunity, with the potentialfor profit being the carrot. There is no "revolution" in inner-city housing in the United States,unless by that term one refers to the revolutionary consciousness suchnaked callousness and disregard for legitimate human needs breeds among thepoor.There are plenty of solutions available as ideas. Thepolitical climate has been so effectively dominated by the capitalisttrickle-down rhetoric that it has become politically unthinkable to proposegovernmental intervention in social welfare issues. Imagine an African-American woman and her two children, ages 3 and 7,living in an old hotel converted to welfare housing on Chicago's West Side,a predominantly black (butincreasingly Hispanic and Asian) inner city slum that has been the end ofthe line for poor rural blacks migrating to the North for the last fewgenerations. When the mother returns at 7 p.m. With hardly a single exception they were allowed only one housingoption: to live in the segregated inner-cities in the same (but now older)tenements that had recently been abandoned by white immigrants, as well asthe all-black sections of these cities which predated the war. References Auletta, K. NewYork: Praeger. Having black skin has consistently been a more severe handicap tosocial and economic advancement than the simple poverty and foreign originof other immigrants. On his way to school, the older child is robbed of his lunch money bya bigger kid. xxii). In manyneighborhoods (usually those with higher real estate values) homeowners hadclauses in their mortgages specifically forbidding resale to blacks orother non-whites. Italian political scientist Gaetano Mosca studied the subject of theelites that rule every known society. (1999). her older child has beenunsupervised for 3 hours and has been watching TV after passing severaldrunks, drug addicts, and prostitutes in the lobby. Harrisonburg, Virginia: R.R.Donnelly and Sons. The practice of red-lining, whereby banks would not giveblacks loans in predominantly white residential areas, or even financemortgages in black areas, insured that racial segregation in the northerncities of the United States was nearly universal. The housing situation that faces inhabitants of the inner cities ofthe United States cannot be understood without a consideration of thesocial, economic, and cultural history of the country. But the reality of what is happening in the nation's inner cities isworlds away from these shell games of political rhetoric. New arrivals from the upper classes of their home societies(with generally whiter skins, better education, and well-connectedrelatives) all opted for suburbia, because, with very few exceptions, noone would want to move to the urban ghettos by choice. Hence the constant reactionary attacks on"welfare cheats", "gang-bangers", "drug dealers", and other projections ofmiddle-class fear to demonize the poor, usually with racist code wordsthrown in to further diminish their humanity. While in a sense only a microcosmic up-close-and- personal view of anysocial problem can give its full flavor, this personalization of perceivedsocietal ills is too apt to be atrivialization when used by the media or politicians. "Investing in theareas of our country which have been left behind is not only in theirinterest, but in ours as well. Let us try to personalize these rather abstract facts, and endeavorto show how a hypothetical family living in one of America's 537 innercities might fare on a given day, a microcosm to illustrate the macrocosmof a national housing disgrace in the richest country in human history. Teams of sociologists, anthropologists,local poor people's organizations, architects, builders, engineers, andlocal labor should be created to demolish, renovate, and/or construct cheapand durable housing that includes comfort, aesthetic considerations, andgreen spaces. When they finally beganto move into the mainstream of the American middle class, it was due topooling their resources, national prosperity, and ethnic representation inthe seats of political and economic power. (1992). Since American TV exists to attract the largestmass of viewers possible to see the sponsor's commercials, and not toeducate orelevate the people of the nation, it is a fore drawn conclusion that noserious discussion of it will ever occur on prime time - at least not hard-hitting enough to arouse the nation to a sense of responsible shame. Adding to the depressing picture are the concomitant facts that the8 s and 9 s saw the highest foreclosure rate for poor home owners, as wellas rents rising at twice the rate of median income. to take the subway, and then the bus to arrive atwork by 8 a.m. It seems that no social or environmental problems can be solved whenmoney values are consistently placed above human values, with theconspiracy of mass media that endlessly parrot and reinforce this message.The recent ascension of the second Bush administration has made it crystalclear that private corporate interests have far more access to power thanthe needs and pressing problems of the average human being in this country,let alone those of the disenfranchised poor. All of themainstream media in America - those that reach the vast majority ofAmericans - are owned by wealthy conservatives, who have every interest inmaximizing their profits, and zero interest in educating the citizens ofthis country about social problems. Its selfish attitudes dominate mass media, government,and education. What recourse do people living in the urbaninner cities have when only one out of every $8 of federal money goes tothe poor, when only one in four poor families live in subsidized housing,when rents are going up, public transportation is inadequate to get towork, and gentrification is pushing out the poor and making more of themhomeless? The main culprit is the media. It seems to defy solution under current social values,because the average middle-class voters themselves tend to follow the leadof the media and blame the poor for their plight, and deeply begrudge thehuge sums in capital investment necessary to put a dent in the problemnationally. The other aspect of mass media that makes it part of the problemrather than the solution, is that housing problems, and the complexity ofthe facts needed to understand how the culture of poverty robs otherwiseenergetic people of their possibility of personal advancement, is not easyto reduce to sound bites. The Bush administration boasted of its paltry gift of $2 million tofight AIDS in Africa ($9 billion is needed) - less than two-tenths of apercent of the tax break that the rich will enjoy when it passes - whilethe lives of 3 million Africans hang in the balance. What is the value ofmillions of lives when weighed against a few more points of profit forstockholders and corporate management? Woodstock, NY: The OverlookPress. Any microcosmic views should accuratelyreflect the true dimensions and characteristics of the social problem asseen in macrocosm. The father does not live with the family, and provides nosupport, because he is in prison for selling drugs, one of the few avenuesto financial improvement possible in this environment. So it is possible to say withoutexaggeration that governmental efforts to "revitalize" the inner citieshave been devastating in their effects on the poor, and have made theproblem far worse. The Ruling Class. The North began to industrialize with construction of a cotton millin Pawtucket, Rhode Island in 1793. Shehas to get up at 5 a.m. The elderly, the poor, minorities,and women with small children are especially vulnerable. are women. It's alleged glories and wonders are endlessly trumpeted,but open discussion of its far more numerous evils are effectivelysuppressed, at least by the mass-circulation media who are the only sourceby which large numbers of people might actually be induced to question itssystem of exploitation, and its failure to meet the needs of the vastmajority of human beings in the world. Of course to say this togovernmental officials is to invite a shocked, pained expression,protestations of concern, and a recital of all the programs designed toalleviate the situation. Such a verbal sketch might seem melodramatic or stereotypical, butthere can be little doubt that it is closer to the daily truth of millionsof lives than what we see on TV each night. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co. From the capitalist perspective, thepredominantly minority residents of inner cities, with their relative lackof education, job skills, literacy, money, and transport, as well as theirhigher frequency of psychological problems, potential for violence,substance abuse, broken homes, and gang membership, are worthless,unproductive people. All the problems of the poor must be attacked simultaneously,with a concerted effort that should be funded for years. But if the United Nations can find ways to construct cheapshelters for people in the Third World on a shoestring budget, surely therichest country in the world can come up with the money and ingenuity toreally make a difference in solving a housing crisis that affectsincreasing numbers of people from all walks of life. The Underclass. The American people become moretrivially focused and poorly educated, and the cries of the children in theThird Worlds both at home and abroad are muffled to silence. What they lack to becomereality is the political will. It's true that this hypothetical woman could go to an adult literacyprogram, get her GED, and then go to a community college or night school ona scholarship or Pell Grant, but does she want to leave her children evenlonger periods of the day in an environment where they are not safe? Some cities have started cleanupand fix-to-own schemes, which give the poor themselves a sense of ownershipfrom their labor, in place of the virtual impossibility of getting a bankloan to finance the purchase of a home. The woman has an old car, but it's not running, because she can'tafford the repairs, and it sits on the street gathering tickets before it'stowed. Wireman, P. During the next century, anunprecedented influx of European immigrants flooded America, primarilyIrish, German, Italian, and Jewish, most of whom moved into the urbanghettos close to their ethnic brethren. The pressing, urgent,desperate needs of poor human beings, primarily women and children, are notmentioned. Urban Problems and CommunityDevelopment. We need new workers and new markets". She can't help her son with his homework because sheis illiterate. They lived in tenements with poorsanitation, high crime, and chronic unemployment. Evidently poverty is a growth industry. She has been unable to afford even the small co-payment required tolive in this subsidized housing, and she is wondering where she will gowhen she is evicted. Similarly, community development has received almost as much emphasis as a strategy for rebuilding the tax base of cities as it has received as a means of accommodating the needs of those living in deteriorating communities. London: Routledge. Schrader, W. As a macabre side-show, the major pharmaceuticals - the ones who helped derail nationalhealthcare for all Americans - were shamed at the last minute into droppingtheir lawsuit challenging the right of African nations to manufacture theirown generic versions of these life-saving drugs. Our concept of the family itself is outmoded, because the actualgroupings of people living in urban low-income housing do not fit ourstereotypes, let alone the idealized, whitebread portraits of Leave It ToBeaver or Ozzie and Harriet Middle America grew up on. Following American entry into World War II, there was a laborshortage in the factories producing supplies critical to the war effort.Rural Southern blacks, most of whom were not considered fit for militaryservice, were encouraged to emigrate to the North with the promise ofemployment in these factories, and they did so in droves. Thus the discussion of this and allsubjects relating to poverty in this country are always skewed throughcapitalist glasses, and the dialogue is never framed correctly, that is,sociologically and anthropologically- with facts and statistics, and a desire to understand the truth andreality of the situation. The role of TV is thisequation cannot be considered irrelevant, because it exacerbatesdepression, and makes it more difficult to plan one's life realistically,let alone find the wherewithal to clean up or fix one's dwelling, or find abetter one. This is especially trueafter "welfare reform", which has done nothing to alleviate the underlyingproblem of poverty, except to free up more governmental money to be givento the clients of the powerful in the form of the far larger corporatewelfare. Homelessness is the first and most fundamentalindication of the chronic, systemic nature of the lack of humane valuesthat dominate our decision-making and sense of priorities. During the 197 s, 8 s, and 9 s new influxes of immigrants from theThird World dramatically altered the housing crisis of inner-cityresidents. Two-thirds of the urban poor are renters, yet thesupply of low-rent housing units declined in this country in the 197 s and8 s, in large part the result of gentrification - the moving of moniedprofessionals and the middle class into renovated ghetto housing. In otherwords, capitalism will solve social problems caused by capitalism usingcapitalist methods. Media Blight and the Dehumanizing of America. (1999). The woman next door, who is a prostitute and a drug addict,looks after her kids until the oldest walks to school at 7 a.m. Tens of millions of African slaveswere imported to labor on the southern cotton, sugar, and tobaccoplantations, with at least as many dying in the terribly inhumaneconditions of the trans-Atlantic passage as reached our shores. It shows that inadequatehousing is only one element of an interlocking sociological vise thateffectively dooms a large element of American society to a daily, grubbystruggle for existence that offers few ways out. Nine-tenths of the 8% of singleparents in the U.S. The TV isblaring all day, and the child plays among cockroaches and rat droppings,in danger of being burned by the portable heater that provides the onlyheat on this cold winter day. Daly, G. Most likely to be affected are single mothers, the battered andabused, the elderly, the sick, the mentally ill, and the disabled, as wellas workers whose jobs have disappeared. In the meantime, the rich get richer, the poor poorer, the mediastimulate artificial needs for profit, and refuse to cover any stories indepth that do not serve that purpose. Jimmy Carter's involvement withHabitat for Humanity has spotlighted the housing efforts of this non-profitgroup, and focused attention by lending his prestige to this apparentlyintractable problem.
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