Блокнот Жмудя

Что же с ними стало? А не стало их, и ныне Каскадия славится обилием бомжей, живущих в лучшем случае в палаточных лагерях (благо зимы в этих краях не бывает -- действие Твин Пикса в конце февраля происходит, чтоб вы понимали):

In Cascadia, such living quarters have almost disappeared. A century of rising affluence is one reason. With higher incomes, we have bought more space and privacy. Young, upwardly mobile, enterprising residents moved out of hotels, depriving hotel districts of their best customers. Those left behind were harder to employ, poorer, on the wrong side of the law, or simply eccentric.

This trend accelerated in the 1960s and 1970s when authorities de-institutionalized many people with mental illnesses and began sheltering them in rooming houses and other cheap hotels. In most cases, mental health authorities intended such arrangements to be temporary. Some planned to build and support constellations of small, neighborhood-based care facilities, for example, but NIMBY politics intervened. The care facilities never got built, and some of society’s most vulnerable were stranded in rooming houses, which by then had come to be known as single-room occupancy hotels (SROs).

Another part of the explanation of residential hotels’ disappearance is legal. Successive generations of laws made residential hotels more expensive to operate. Other rules simply made them illegal outside of historic downtowns: as cities expanded outwards, rooming houses could not spread to the new neighborhoods.

The rules were not accidents. For a century starting in the 1880s, real-estate owners eager to minimize risk and maximize property values worked to keep housing for poor people away from their investments. Sometimes, they worked hand in glove with well-meaning reformers who were intent on ensuring decent housing for all. Decent housing, in practice, meant not only physical safety and hygiene but also housing that approximated what middle-class families expected.

This coalition of the self-interested and the well-meaning effectively boxed in and shut down rooming houses and cheap lodging houses, and it threw up barriers to in-home boarding, too. It acted through federal, state, and local rules in ways that sounded reasonable at the time: occupancy limits; and requirements for private bathrooms, kitchens, and parking spaces. The net effect, however, was to essentially ban affordable private-sector urban housing for those at the bottom of the pay scale.

Publicly supported low-income housing came in its place but never in adequate quantities. It may never fill the gap. Building housing is expensive, and no place in North America has ever demonstrated the political will to build enough of it to meet all the need.

То есть пока европейцы (включая даже англичан) пробовали те или иные варианты доступного жилья, богатые американцы могли себе позволить расселиться по частным домикам всей страной -- а к последним не съехавшим нищебродам подселили ещё выгнанных из психушек ради экономии (для оправдания чего сняли "Пролетая над гнездом кукушки") психов, чтоб не скучали.

Масла в огонь подлили всевозможные правила и ограничения на жилую застройку -- чтоб она была качественной и выдерживала лимиты по числу жителей в доме. Причём с 1920-х в пределах одной локальной зоны допускалось жильё только одного типа -- так окончательно задоминировавший в те же ревущие 20-е single-family housing задавил все остальные типы.

Ну и бум дорогих апартаментов последних десятилетий (в Сиэттле особенно постарался Безос со своим Амазоном) окончательно сделал жильё недоступным, а остатки старых дешёвых домиков в центре города отправил под ковш экскаватора.

Многие коренные от этого в таком же восторге, как коренные жители Bay Area, особенно в районе Кремниевой Долины -- от IT-бума там. Кто-то наверное и пополнил армию бездомных.

И тем любопытнее, какими способами Сиэттл и Ванкувер (помимо центра) пытаются эту проблему решать... и нет, речь не про коммиблоки, всё гораздо интересней.

www.tgoop.com/shm512_shared/11208

94 viewsedited  Oct 19 at 00:46

Что же с ними стало? А не стало их, и ныне Каскадия славится обилием бомжей, живущих в лучшем случае в палаточных лагерях (благо зимы в этих краях не бывает -- действие Твин Пикса в конце февраля происходит, чтоб вы понимали):

In Cascadia, such living quarters have almost disappeared. A century of rising affluence is one reason. With higher incomes, we have bought more space and privacy. Young, upwardly mobile, enterprising residents moved out of hotels, depriving hotel districts of their best customers. Those left behind were harder to employ, poorer, on the wrong side of the law, or simply eccentric.

This trend accelerated in the 1960s and 1970s when authorities de-institutionalized many people with mental illnesses and began sheltering them in rooming houses and other cheap hotels. In most cases, mental health authorities intended such arrangements to be temporary. Some planned to build and support constellations of small, neighborhood-based care facilities, for example, but NIMBY politics intervened. The care facilities never got built, and some of society’s most vulnerable were stranded in rooming houses, which by then had come to be known as single-room occupancy hotels (SROs).

Another part of the explanation of residential hotels’ disappearance is legal. Successive generations of laws made residential hotels more expensive to operate. Other rules simply made them illegal outside of historic downtowns: as cities expanded outwards, rooming houses could not spread to the new neighborhoods.

The rules were not accidents. For a century starting in the 1880s, real-estate owners eager to minimize risk and maximize property values worked to keep housing for poor people away from their investments. Sometimes, they worked hand in glove with well-meaning reformers who were intent on ensuring decent housing for all. Decent housing, in practice, meant not only physical safety and hygiene but also housing that approximated what middle-class families expected.

This coalition of the self-interested and the well-meaning effectively boxed in and shut down rooming houses and cheap lodging houses, and it threw up barriers to in-home boarding, too. It acted through federal, state, and local rules in ways that sounded reasonable at the time: occupancy limits; and requirements for private bathrooms, kitchens, and parking spaces. The net effect, however, was to essentially ban affordable private-sector urban housing for those at the bottom of the pay scale.

Publicly supported low-income housing came in its place but never in adequate quantities. It may never fill the gap. Building housing is expensive, and no place in North America has ever demonstrated the political will to build enough of it to meet all the need.

BY Блокнот Жмудя