<!doctype html public "-//W3C//DTD W3 HTML//EN"> <html><head><style type="text/css"></style><title>RE: [lbo-talk] decentralization, Whole Foods style</title></head><body> <div>At 2:44 PM -0400 30/5/03, Wojtek Sokolowski wrote:</div> <div><br></div> <blockquote type="cite" cite>Most poor communities are horrible places to live - to the point that<br> ACLU won a successful lawsuit against the city of Baltimore for<br> "warehousing" the poor, and forcing the city do dismantle their housing<br> projects.  Interestingly, the main opposition to that lawsuit came from<br> the suburbs (led by the current Repug governor of MD Ehrlich "the<br> exterminator") because they feared  that the residents would move to the<br> burbs.  Relocation of residents certainly poses inconvenience, but ends<br> their dreadful living conditons.  It is true that contractors hired to<br> build new housing projects (such as Hope VI)  profit, but they also give<br> something in return (better neighborhoods).  On theother hand, the<br> current situation benefits only the slumlords who rent their substandard<br> properties to Section 8 tenants for government-guaranteed market rates,</blockquote> <blockquote type="cite" cite>giving nothing in return. </blockquote> <div><br></div> <div>The following story will interest you. (Steve Roach is a firebrand union organiser, he actually started a new union a few years back, the Shearers and Rural Workers Union, in opposition to the conservative Australian Workers Union.) Anyhow, the story demonstrates your point, it also illustrates another point I was making earlier about democracy and the tyranny of the majority.:</div> <div><br></div> <div>Bill Bartlett</div> <div>Bracknell Tas</div> <div><br></div> <div><font face="Lucida Grande" color="#000000"><b>Battle in 'burbs to keep out battlers</b></font></div> <div><font face="Lucida Grande" color="#000000"><br> Melbourne Age</font></div> <div><font face="Lucida Grande" color="#000000">Date: May 26 2003<br> <br> Across Melbourne public housing faces residents' opposition, report Royce Millar and James Button.<br> <br> It was nine days before Christmas, but it wasn't the season of goodwill in the Moreland Council chambers, next door to the old Pentridge Prison. Most of the 60 to 80 people packed into the room were tense, some were angry.<br> <br> A Glenroy man, Neil Davey, brandished a speech and a list of 60 questions. He and other residents wanted a guarantee that a proposed 12-unit public housing project in Pascoe Vale Road would never be built.<br> <br> New councillor and union organiser Steve Roach took the floor. Cr Roach is a member of the Labor Left, loud and proud.<br> <br> At an earlier public meeting in Moreland he had backed the plan to build the 12 units for disabled and elderly people. But that was before he realised just how much his constituents opposed it. Now Cr Roach had to choose between public housing and the voters. He says the choice was "agony".<br> <br> Cr Roach told the meeting not to demonise public housing tenants: he wouldn't hear anyone who opposed the development on that ground. Then, urged on by the crowd, he moved a motion that killed the project.<br> <br> Across Melbourne, growing numbers of residents are campaigning against state and local government efforts to build public housing, or, as the Government now calls it, social housing. The protests have stretched from Kew to Bentleigh, Balaclava, Bayswater, Ascot Vale and Fawkner.<br> <br> They have involved letterbox drops, legal challenges and angry public meetings at which the spectres of drugs, prostitution and pedophilia have been raised. In a Kew dispute, community housing worker John Timmer says he was physically threatened by a resident after a council meeting.<br> <br> The protests have delayed and sometimes defeated low-income housing projects, at huge cost to the tiny budgets of community housing groups, who build or run social housing projects with public funds.<br> <br> The groups also blame state and local government delays but "resident opposition is a real problem," says Mr Timmer, from Ecumenical Housing. "The viability of the whole community housing sector is at risk."<br> <br> Some protests cite the same planning concerns that led to the rise of groups such as Save our Suburbs. But fears of living next to low-income tenants, and of the risk to property values, often play a large role. In a Kew dispute, objectors wrote that the project would "severely decrease our chances of gaining a fair valuation of our property".<br> <br> However, it isn't all bad news for low-cost housing advocates. Steve Bevington of Community Housing Ltd, which runs 550 dwellings, says keeping a low profile has helped his organisation get homes built.</font></div> <div><font face="Lucida Grande" color="#000000"><br> Yet Mr Bevington is worried. "I see some pretty ugly campaigns. I know that some projects do founder... The backlash is community-wide."<br> <br> Even in a traditional Labor area such as Melbourne's north, each time social housing is proposed "we've been met with waves of objections from our community," says Moreland councillor Robert LaRocca.<br> <br> An exception is Clifton Hill, where a group of locals has worked with Ecumenical Housing to provide social housing at the House of the Gentle Bunyip. But even here the project is threatened by another group of about 15 objectors. Yarra Council will decide on the project next month.<br> <br> Karen Barnett, of the Port Phillip Housing Association, blames gentrification. She says hostility is greatest not in areas such as St Kilda but in the more suburban areas of Port Phillip, where residents "have not rubbed shoulders" with low-income people.<br> <br> But former deputy prime minister Brian Howe is not surprised by the hostility. He says that by squeezing funds, Canberra has forced the states to offer housing only to the poorest people, who are often the most troubled. "The result is that people think all they are going to get next to them is people with a whole heap of problems," he says.</font></div> <div><font face="Lucida Grande" color="#000000"><br> It's a dilemma for the State Government, which Housing Minister Candy Broad says must balance the need for social housing with residents' rights.<br> <br> Ms Broad thinks the problem is not insurmountable. She says the Government's $94 million Social Housing Innovations Program, introduced in 2000, will have built 140 new homes by the end of June.<br> <br> But her optimism contrasts with a comment by Jennifer Westacott, former Office of Housing head. During a bitter dispute in Bentleigh, Ms Westacott reportedly told the respected Wintringham company, which provides housing and support to older people, that "if Wintringham can't run social housing without getting so much opposition then no one can".<br> <br> Under its social housing program, the Government puts in $3 for every $1 that councils, community groups or the private sector raise for low-cost housing. The program was designed to stem a rise in homelessness during the 1990s but also a decline in socio-economic diversity as suburbs gentrified. For example, St Kilda had 636 private rooming houses 50 years ago, but six years from now is projected to have none.<br> <br> To counter the trend, the local council has had a 17-year program to build low-cost housing. Port Phillip council now runs 350 dwellings. But plans to build a 30-unit project in Balaclava called Woodstock House, and 60 units at the redeveloped Balaclava Station, are facing intense opposition from residents such as Gerard Mattee.<br> <br> Mr Mattee says that at a public meeting over Woodstock he was among a "screaming" crowd that stopped Port Phillip's housing officer from speaking for two hours.<br> <br> To Mr Mattee it's a question of consumer rights. People buy houses expecting an area to be made up only of private home owners, he says. The council's plan to introduce public housing is a betrayal of "fair trading... The purchase of a home is like the purchase of any other consumer product."<br> <br> The complaints have not deterred ward councillor and former mayor Darren Ray from pushing the housing plan. "I'm not afraid," he says. "I'd rather fight and lose than cave in to this emotional blackmail."<br> <br> In Moreland, Cr Roach is taking a different road. "I stood for election on supporting residents, not developers," he says.<br> <br> Cr Roach says the Chapman Avenue site was a bad choice for elderly and disabled people, at the base of a hill and too far from shops and transport.<br> <br> But he concedes that what really alarmed at least some residents was the public housing issue. "I think if you scratched a few people you are going to find concerns about the character of the people. Some residents are being a little bit snobby."<br> <br> Moreland Council is trying to resurrect the housing on another site - the third attempt to build it in as many years. Cr Roach now wonders whether councils should be involved in public housing at all, because the contradiction between "providing leadership" by backing good projects while also representing residents opposed to those projects is too great.</font></div> <div><font face="Lucida Grande" color="#000000"><br> Housing advocate Karen Barnett thinks, on the contrary, that the Government should require councils to get involved in housing. "If it becomes part of our core business, like rates, roads and rubbish, it takes the political sting out of it and will make councillors more relaxed."<br> <br> Bryan Lippman of Wintringham also wants the Government to step in, to provide exemptions to speed up low-cost housing projects. But Ms Broad suggests the Government is unlikely to intervene if it is perceived to threaten local democracy.<br> <br> Yet as Mr Lippman sees it, in a democracy everyone has rights, including the disadvantaged. "Some of them have fought wars, raised families, paid taxes. Somewhere along the road they lost out. We're not asking for more than what has been an Australian tradition - the right of people to have a home."</font></div> </body> </html>