Imagine a world where we decided to implement fairness across the board.
To be absolutely fair we would have to raze the entire infrastructure and rebuild all housing units, one no more opulent than any other. After all, who would get to live in the luxury skyscrapers on the water and who would have to live in the less luxurious units facing the back alley? Who gets to live in Malibu, and who is designated to live in Palm City?
Obviously, this can’t be done, and it won’t be done.
What can be done, however, is what was done at 50 Riverside Blvd in Manhattan.
55 units in a luxurious high-rise on the Hudson River were designated low-income housing. The developer was able to take advantage of a program where they would get tax abatements for incorporating the low-income apartments into the overall structure.
The low-income renters would not have the river view, they wouldn’t have access to the 2 pools, the gym, the bowling alley, a movie theater, a 24/7 doorman, nor would their apartments be accessible if they were to use the entrance with the doorman. Their entrance was in the back, and it’s been dubbed “the poor door.” The address isn’t even the same.
The low-income renters also wouldn’t have the 1.3 million dollar price tag for the apartments that have all of the amenities.
The Poor Door
What the residents do receive is a brand new 2 bedroom apartment in a million dollar location for $1038 a month. In Manhattan real-estate terms this is absurdly low. A studio would go for $833. You can’t get a parking space rental for that price.
So what’s the problem? Why is this a microcosm of everything that is wrong with socialism/communism?
Low-income renter Eric Olm, 44, moved into his sixth-floor one-bedroom unit last week, and all his windows look out over the forbidden courtyard.
“It would be nice to actually get to enjoy it,” he said, gazing at the roomy patio.
Assemblywoman Linda B. Rosenthal slammed Extell: “No landlord should be allowed to tell a child that they are not able to walk through the same doors, or play in the same areas, as their neighbor,” she said.
Tenants who were chosen to live in one of the 55 low-income units in Extell’s ritzy 33-story building recently started trickling in through the poor door — and many are disturbed by the glaring disparities.
“The thing I don’t like most is we don’t have the same amenities,” said Christina Figueras, 27, a single mother of two.
!snip!
Throw them the f*ck out.
Don’t let the poor door hit you on the way out. 🙂
What kind of moron would pay for the full price real estate in that building…you’d have to know that the low incomes would eventually start bitching about the disparity. Now you have to share all the perks with the riffraff.
“The thing I don’t like most is we don’t have the same amenities,”
the battle cry of the justice warriors.
if ya want what the rich have, then become rich.
I cannot stand to listen to the baby’s cry about minimum wage earners either. if the baby’s want to pay employees $15 an hour then the baby’s should start a business and then they can pay their employees what they considers fair, $15 an hour. otherwise but out. it’s none of the gov’s business how much people charge for their services or get paid.
On one hand, once you agree to taking the government’s money, you’re obligated to play by their rules.
On the other, I’ll bet the architect/developer were pretty darned clever. I’ll bet there were NO requirements that all amenities be the same, or that the same entrance and core services (elevator, trash, etc) could NOT be split…and they exercized common sense to the fullest in separating the filthy freeloaders from the paying customers.
But it won’t surprise me if, as ERB suggests above, some nuisance lawsuit requires some merging.
Where did I hear that before? Separate but Equal, or was it separate and unequal? Something like that. I forget. Something to do with educashun.
Yeah, that will be the argument in court.
UNFORTUNATELY for the societal leeches,
NO ONE EVER SAID it had to be EQUAL here.
They get what they can afford.
Socialists are people who envy what others have but lack the ambition to earn it.
This proves that they’re poor because they’re stupid.
How @&#?-ing high are the taxes that the developer would even agree to loosing out on 55 apartments at a mil a piece? Start there and this gets solved by allowing market forces to work. Ohh, but that makes no sense to them and is why they have to centrally plan everything.
Intentionally having the poor live right next door to wealth – iow IN YOUR FACE – will always create resentment. Keeps it fresh! Daily! What could go wrong!?
I work with millionaires. It would be odd, and bad for the millionaire’s land values, to have my small home, lifestyle and bills right next door.
I’m looking forward to seeing how the dynamics play out. No way the luxury side isn’t already suffering lower prices. Why buy built-in trouble?
A beautiful example of one of the perils of socialism.
A “philosophy” founded on greed and envy will always destroy itself.
Humans aren’t bees. Try as they might, the socialists can never make humans believe that they are bees.
Or ants.
Don’t the “poor” tenants realize that just living in the same structure as their “betters” has benefitted them immeasurably? They should get down on their knees and say thanks to the “swells” who have sacrificed to let them live in the same zip code.
“Be happy in your work.”
— Sessue Hayakawa
Check back later when either the rich will have moved and left it to become a junk yard or the poor will move and make a junkyard out of somewhere else!
Security is their last concern which indicates they could give a rat’s ass about it. Go back to living in the slums where the only luxury you desire is a Benz with ANU package (all niggered up).
Luxury high-rise with built-in rats!
Only in New York …
It’s a fact of life that you don’t appreciate what’s been given to you, you only get that from working for it.
I saw this happen in a development where I lived. They converted an old store into apartments. Some of the floors had to be section 8 as part of the government grant deal.
The result was they couldn’t find tenants for the non-section 8 housing at the prices they wanted to charge. Big surprise!
I suspect they’ll have the same results. It will not be a status symbol telling folks you lived in a luxury apartment building when people know a portion of the tenants are riffraff. The questions will follow: “have you be broken into yet?”
Not only that but their problems will eventually become your problems. Count on it. First will come the vermin and then the crime and then the declining property values. You’re right. You would have to be a fool to buy an apartment in that bldg. Just wait until “the poor” start figuring out how to rob the wealthy people.
Nope. Because that would be counter to human nature (like everything else about marxism) – it’s natural to become envious and resentful of the things that are right in front of one but that one can’t have. Unless one is well grounded in morality. And where would these people ever get that?
Turns out even the ants can’t even make marxism work.
According to the latest research as many as 1/3 of the ants in an anthill actually just sit around all day doing nothing and let the rest of the anthill support them. Maybe marxism is more successful than we realized. Since his original intent was to try to create a human society modeled on an ant colony. It seems he DID manage to create exactly that.
Even more likely, some Judge rules the denial of access to the “good stuff” is racist/class warfare/social injustice and you’ll have to share your goodies with the didn’tdonuffins.
“Intentionally having the poor live right next door to wealth – iow IN YOUR FACE – will always create resentment. Keeps it fresh! Daily! What could go wrong!?”
and this is exactly what the HUD “affirmatively furthering fair housing” rule is intended to do……make sure every single neighborhood in America has its fair share of “unfortunates” living within walking distance of the local version of the 1%….
yeah, this will end well…….
Clueless air head liberals who come up with this shit should be forced to live there. Under their own rules. Filthy rich liberals are patting themselves on the back for taking care of the little guy yet the filthy rich liberals always live far away from places like this.
Section 8 Housing: First comes the graffiti, simultaneously with the 24/7 thumping beat of rap music echoing through the very concrete and steel structure, itself. Then, the used needles and crack pipes all over the common areas. Next, the furniture dragged outside for chillin’, followed by the loud arguments between the people who do nothing all day, save breed and get high.
I wonder how they keep the cockroaches and the bedbugs from spreading out of the low income housing units?
Is this what is meant by “New York values?”
They’ll post signs that say,
“NO BUGGERY ALLOWED”.
?
If any part of that building is section 8, it’s ALL section 8. Same goes for neighborhoods. Sure, your building may not have the label, but it has the stink.
Are they not happy that all their asses aren’t on the street? Now they’re going to be picky? Pay the fees for the pool and all, and they could use it, too. Oh, you can’t afford it?
No soup for you.