Safe affordable housing is complicated.
Building new or rehabilitating deteriorating housing requires putting together complex and expensive deals. The people with the money and power to accomplish this, therefore, make the decisions about what gets built and where. This may or may not match with what works best for the people who will live there or for the community as a whole.
Most of us don’t get the opportunity to make the development decisions but we do pay for the shortage of good places to live. Many pay with the quality—or even the length—of our lives. Even if we have adequate housing ourselves, we all absorb the costs of health care, schools, public safety, and social services when people have to choose between dangerous places or moving from homes they can’t afford. Some are displaced by gentrification when whole streets are transformed from high-risk to high-cost; others live in neighborhoods that just continue to export dollars, as rent payments out (to landlords out of state or across town) exceed investment coming in.
Fellow CELE bloggers describe the complexities of raising our voices, as neighborhood residents and community advocates, about the impact of housing decisions. (See blogs tagged Affordable Housing)
BUT… However difficult it is to speak up, we must do so. Here is what is at stake for us and our communities: