
Ask HN: Disrupting housing segregation in the US? - charlescearl
The impact of housing and educational segregation based on race and ethnicity in the US have been documented and debated for over a century[1]. Is there any technology or processes that might be a game changer here?<p>I realize that the HN community is no doubt divided on whether racial segregation is a good thing or not -- and it is good that it is debated in a thoughtful and rigorous fashion.<p>But in this question I look at the impact on my immediate community [2] in terms of class and economic mobility, and think that there must be some disruptive approaches that can be explored.<p>As HUD looses it&#x27;s bite [3] what&#x27;s next? An AirBnB for achieving integrated neighborhoods? An app to suss out red lining? Curious.<p>I realize that this is a US-biased question. Also curious to know if there are lessons and struggles to learn from globally.<p>[1] https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Housing_segregation_in_the_United_States<p>[2] https:&#x2F;&#x2F;southernspaces.org&#x2F;2015&#x2F;segregations-new-geography-atlanta-metro-region-race-and-declining-prospects-upward-mobility<p>[3] https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2016&#x2F;12&#x2F;05&#x2F;us&#x2F;politics&#x2F;ben-carson-housing-urban-development-trump.html
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tbihl
I'm going to try to keep this brief in the hope that it will come off as a few
things worth responding to, rather than just signaling:

1\. If you haven't read Jane Jacob's "Death and Life of Great American
Cities", it's so important that it's almost worth putting everything else
about this project on hold. It offers explanations of why people flee areas,
the mechanics of slum formation and revival, and a lot of other things that
would give you a different perspective.

2\. On a national level, probably the best action we could take against
disjointed, segregated housing and towns would be to entirely rid ourselves of
FHA loans. They make it extremely difficult for small-scale developers to
compete with rent-seeking speculators who build huge buildings and complexes.
For problems with those places, refer back to (1).

3\. The article you cited about Atlanta mentioned that whites are moving into
the city center and into exurbs, while blacks are moving to the places in
between. This looks to me like two different patterns. The first is the
resurgence of cities you see all across the country. The second is that
suburban whites are fleeing the 1st and 2nd generation suburbs in favor of new
ones. The inherent instability and insolvency of these car dependent subrubs
mean that you can only do well in them if you stay ahead of the wave of decay
that comes as maintenance bills come due and stores move out. For more about
this Ponzi scheme, I recommend Strong Towns (strongtowns.org).

As I hopefully implied earlier, I'd be happy to dive deeper if anything here
piqued your interest.

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EleventhSun
\- Add an upper bound to the number of investment properties someone can own.
Owning more than one or two is clearly parasitic behavior. Banning this
parasitic behavior allows breathing room for minorities to get onto the
property ladder.

\- Add tax subsidies to encourage employees working from home. This will help
stop gentrification, etc, since developers can work from unconventional
neighborhoods more easily, and also means that employees don't have to pay
extortionary rent/interest for housing.

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charlescearl
Thanks there! These are some progressive ideas to start.

There is [https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-
employe...](https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-
employed/home-office-deduction), but I imagine would have to be cooperative
effort with employers, e.g. remote offices in what were called "Enterprise
Zones" [http://www.nytimes.com/1985/07/28/us/reagan-urges-
enterprise...](http://www.nytimes.com/1985/07/28/us/reagan-urges-enterprise-
zones.html) in the Reagan Era.

Encourages me to at least attend a few city planning meetings.

