Why are there slums here rather than there? It isn’t just happenstance that a formerly proud, working-class neighborhood deteriorates into shabby, run-down housing stock where used hypodermic needles litter the gutters and where roach infestation coincides with above-average incidence of asthma. It is no accident that ghettos appear where people formerly were proud to say was home for them. Much of the answer lies far from where blight reigns. It lies throughout the greener pastures of suburbia and exurbia. This means that the majority of the population situates our slums.
Regional contribution agreements are illegal, thanks to affordable housing proponents who took the matter to the New Jersey Supreme Court, which said in the Mount Laurel decision back in the ’70s that all communities must provide a fair amount of low-cost housing. RCAs were instances in which wealthier communities paid poorer ones to build lower-cost homes within the latter’s municipal limits, effectively keeping affordable housing far from those able to buy off their responsibility to the common good. Those with less income have to live somewhere, so those with more resources used to see to it that it would be far from them. Larger cities like Camden, Newark and Trenton have long been desperate for money since their shrunken tax bases simply cannot pay the bills, the largest of which are for police and schools. So they would agree to accommodate ever more poor people for the short-term gain of the payoffs. Communities now “fulfill” the law by providing affordable housing for the aged.
With continually growing cities taking in more disadvantaged population, the disparity grew to the point where Camden this year had to lay off half of its police, fire and emergency personnel. This is the city that won the distinction of being the second most dangerous city (up from the most dangerous) in the U.S. for its size, so doing without enough police protection is a mortal threat. If ever an area needed such municipal police and fire services, it is the crime-infested, dry-wood housing stock cities where sickness, crime and violence are worse.
Political irresponsibility on the state level explains why Trenton has no choice but to constrict many services long taken for granted. With bipartisan raiding of the teachers’ pension fund over many years being no longer an option, cutbacks on everything but tax breaks for the rich become necessary. City dwellers are in an understandable uproar. They have the same desires for security for themselves and their children as the rest, but they have nowhere the means to see to it. Yet they are the first target of the expense cuts.
The irony is unmistakable. Pushing the poor farther away into ghettos has run up the price of maintaining whole cities on municipal welfare. The state with the highest property tax in the nation cannot fathom why it costs so much. Demanding local rule with school boards and municipal councils Lilliputian in size means tens of thousands of salaries for administrative jobs rather than merging the 566 municipalities into fewer ones with fewer administrative jobs.
At this point the gnashing of teeth can be heard as I seem to be making excuses for the negligent. Sure, the poor would be more welcome if they kept their property clean. Sure, the destructive use of alcohol and other drugs and the ensuing social ills should be kept far from here. Sure, the gangs of unemployed males are a menace to society. Ask the poor if they enjoy these things in the ghettos where they live.
It is we who bring down the whole roof upon our heads as we undermine the structure with short-term selfish policies. If towns and cities fairly divided up the imperative for affordable housing, leaving no place without its just share, there would not be the catastrophic concentration of poor in massive slums that are time bombs. If the vast middle class absorbed piecemeal the less fortunate in small sections, mainstreaming their children in public and private education for the benefit of both classes, it would be a win-win. If we realized that we reap what we sow, everyone’s life would be better.
But I am pessimistic that anyone is listening. I foresee that our collective fear of anything new will lock us into status-quo thinking. Don’t change what is admittedly not working. Don’t try any of that social engineering, as they tried in the failed U.S.S.R. Keep expecting improvement by repeating exactly the same failed experiment
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