Would You Put Your Money Where Hungry Mouths Are?

It may sound naïve to some, but I don’t think we have quite the same degree of “us and them” as our U.S. neighbours. Not because we’re superior thinkers necessarily (although …) but simply because we have eschewed a two-party system that naturally creates such a divide. We have viable parties that are more down the middle, and have even seen many elections where the Liberal/Conservative platforms aren’t that different.

I wonder, though, how the left-leaners among us would feel if what’s happening south of the border were to happen here. Is it easier to lean left when you don’t have to face the reality of some of the policies we, in theory, thoroughly support? Our American cousins are about to find out.

On June 25, the U.S. Supreme Court narrowly (5-4) decided that policies that segregate minorities in poor neighbourhoods, even unintentionally, violate the Fair Housing Act in the Texas Department of Housing Community v. The Inclusive Communities project ruling. On July 8, the Department of Housing and Urban Development issued “Affirmatively Further Fair Housing.” What both boil down to is stronger enforcement of the 1968 Fair Housing Act, requiring predominantly middle-class white neighbourhoods to build significantly more low-income housing.

I’ve long been an advocate of mixed communities — all one needs to do to decide that segregating residents by income doesn’t work is to look at the mess that was once Regent Park (Daniels' master-plan in the area has made it one of Toronto's best up-and-coming neighbourhoods). There are probably more than a few of you nodding right now, but one wonders how agreeable we’d all be if we had to actually accommodate lower income families on our blocks.

Anecdotally, we’re not that happy about it. I’ve met more than one luxury rental tenant who resented their rent-assisted neighbours. Just as we tend to think wind power is a wonderful idea until someone wants to put a generator behind our house, our NIMBY mindset is at odds with our Canadian-bred inclusionary desire to think of ourselves as good people. What happens when we have to actively embrace our loftily held social philosophies is often quite different from how we feel when we’re just mulling it over while sipping a latte.

Alexandra Park is another revitalization project in Toronto by Tridel that features affordable housing.

Remember Joe the Plumber? Joe was trotted out as a metaphorical middle-class Everyman by John McCain in the 2008 presidential election whenever they needed someone to demonize Obama’s wealth-spreading ideals. There are a host of Joe-types down there who are staunch right-wingers, against their own best interests, because they live under the illusion that their circumstances are temporary, that one day the American Dream will flop into their laps and they’ll be among the one percenters they habitually support. Joe refused to confirm which candidate he voted for, but criticized potentially higher taxes for small businesses making more than $250,000 a year if Obama was elected, not because he actually made that much (or even close, by his own admission), but because someday he might. Or someday Obama might decide that $100,000 was enough before his tax rate got hiked, as Joe invoked the ubiquitous “slippery slope” argument.

Joe, as a small business owner, had projected himself not only into a position where he was making far more than he was actually ever likely to, but implicitly rejected Obama’s assertion that, even if he climbed to the upper echelons, the “little people” who helped get him there deserved a share in his success.

In communities like Westchester County, N.Y., which boasts a median household income of more than $80,000 US compared to a national average according to the Census Bureau in 2014 of just over $50,000, they have historically embraced the wealth-sharing ideal, moving solidly from the Republican to the Democratic party since the early 1990s, now at a ratio according to the New York Times of 1:2. And yet, they voted in a Republican candidate in 2009, largely because of a consent decree by the incumbent Democrat that would provide low-income African Americans and Hispanics with 750 units of affordable housing in the jurisdiction, to be built in the county’s 31 most affluent white communities before 2016. (This despite the fact that Bill and Hillary live and vote here.) The Republican candidate they elected, while reluctantly moving toward the 750-unit target, has criticized the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development for its lack of restrictions. He warned constituents that they could end up with a five-storey building (or, gasp, even higher!) on their street, and disparaged the agency for its eventual goal of more than 10,000 affordable housing units in the county. With a population of more than a million, surely even the 10,000-unit goal is a drop in the bucket.

The consent decree is similar to what affluent, predominantly white neighbourhoods across the U.S. will face with increased enforcement of the 1968 Fair Housing Act. While the long-term effects of the Supreme Court Decision remain unpredictable, it’s hard to harden one’s heart to the realities of growing up poverty-stricken. Evidence supports the notion that poor minority children have a better chance at a substantially higher income in adult life by moving from high-poverty to low-poverty neighbourhoods, not to mention some less tangible benefits such as the increased share of births in which fathers are present, i.e. listed on the birth certificate. Looking at the long term, that can only be good for any neighbourhood in which they’re raised.

Racial and economic integration isn’t easy. There are documented difficulties through which all involved races tend to “hunker down” (according to Harvard public policy professor Robert Putnam in 2007) and mistrust even their own race, turning away from altruism and community involvement.

Whatever the outcome, the backlash has begun. An Arizona Democrat in June pre-emptively won House approval for an amendment that barred the use of tax dollars to reinforce the HUD ruling. The mere wording of some critics is alarming: “Once HUD gets its hooks into a municipality, no policy area is safe,” according to National Review writer Stanley Kurtz. When did you ever hear of anything perceived as good “getting its hooks” into you? He went on to say that furthering fair housing could “spell the end of the local democracy that Alexis de Tocqueville rightly saw as the foundation of America’s liberty and distinctiveness.”

In spite of my own leanings towards conservatism, at least in fiscal matters, this makes me sad. As a wise man once said, democracy has to be more than three wolves and a sheep deciding what to have for lunch.

I sure hope that, faced with the inclusion of economically struggling racial minorities into my neighbourhood, I’d genuinely react with the class and open-mindedness for which we Canadians are renowned. Would you?

Feature image: Demolition in Regent Park