
Camden, New Jersey: America's Most Desperate Town - georgecmu
http://m.rollingstone.com/culture/news/apocalypse-new-jersey-a-dispatch-from-americas-most-desperate-town-20131211
======
blisterpeanuts
If I were the king, I would fix Camden (and dozens of other grim urban
districts around the country such as Detroit, north St. Louis, etc.) with the
following plan:

1\. Legalize drugs. Allow local municipalities to regulate and tax
recreational substances. Boom. You have an instant local revenue stream, the
police are suddenly out of the business of arresting people for "possession",
and can focus more on violent crime, domestic disturbances, etc. In the short
term, drug-funded gangs will turn to theft and robbery to stay in business,
but anyway a major, relatively safe and easy source of revenue will be gone.

2\. Declare certain urban areas to be economic development zones with
drastically reduced taxes and regulations. Make it dirt cheap to locate
factories and plants there. Provide start-up grants to local entrepreneurs,
with real oversight, not just feel-good handouts. Lower the barriers to
business start-ups and there will be business activity, and it will accelerate
as the cycle of crime and poverty is reduced.

3\. Fix the K-12 schools. Double the teachers' pay, double the security around
the schools and provide secure bus rides to and from the projects and
tenements. Make the school day longer, and ratchet up the standards. Demand
higher achievement, and don't let a kid just flunk and walk away; make them
re-take, make them realize the importance. Make school a destination, not a
chore.

Teach democracy in the schools. Emphasize basic literacy skills, ethics and
morality, history, how to speak and write properly, mathematics and science.
Make the schools the best in the state in terms of standards.

These are all easier said than done, but can we afford to do anything less? We
have spent trillions of dollars trying to fix similar problems in other
countries, so why not spend a tenth of that or a thousandth of that fixing
some of the problems in our own country?

~~~
rayiner
I'm not sure about the impact of drug legalization on the local economies of
these areas. Right now, the drug trade is actually one of the few sources of
remunerative work available for unskilled people in these cities. You mention
police arresting people for "possession" but the fact is that they have little
time for that around here. There's enough dealers and traffickers to keep them
busy. You think all those guys are going to go straight when drugs are
legalized? I think legalization would help, don't get me wrong, but I think
the positive impact would be a lot less than many opponents of the drug war
would like to believe.

These areas are already very cheap to build in. Delaware, Pennsylvania, and
New Jersey practically give away abandoned industrial sites hoping to find
companies to take them over. Getting rid of regulations can be iffy. After
all, the outputs of polluting activities in Camden flow down the Delaware
River to a whole bunch of other people.

Fixing education in these communities is intractable. You can't teach kids in
a community where gang leaders have more authority than parents. You have to
fix the community before you can make a dent in the education problem.

~~~
djs123sdj
Agreed with legalization not necessarily reducing criminal behavior. Where I
live in the Bay Area, the reduction in the street drug dealing trade (perhaps
due to legalized dispensaries, and also the prevalence of smartphones) has
coincided with an increase in the armed robbery and burglary rate.

Local police investigators have confirmed that many individuals who have been
apprehended for robberies were previously involved in the local drug trade.

------
SyneRyder
For folks wondering why this is on HN, there's some interesting info in the
middle of the article about the tech the new police force are using in Camden:

"There are 35 microphones planted around the city that can instantly detect
the exact location of a gunshot down to a few meters (and just as instantly
train cameras on escape routes)."

~~~
jmngomes
"For folks wondering why this is on HN"

I'm glad it is. There are (much) bigger problems in the world than growth
hacking and nginx performance.

There are many bright people here, it'd be a waste if important issues like
these weren't discussed in this forum.

~~~
Kynlyn
And there are countless forums to discuss such "important" issues. Just
because a story has humanistic touch, that doesn't mean it belongs here.

~~~
_of
You don't need to read it if you are not interested. I'm a tech guy and I
found it very interesting to read.

------
JackFr
According to Taibbi, the only person in the state of New Jersey with any moral
responsibility for his or her actions is the governor. The city of Camden is
populated entirely by victims, and the cause of their misery is Chris
Christie.

~~~
Edmond
I believe Camden is more or less under state control so it is right to blame
the state. NJ has an awful track record when it comes to how it treats its
urban areas. Newark, which would be considered a crown jewel anywhere else has
been left to rot for 40yrs. The state is very unequal in terms of investment
to various areas, basically you can quickly tell where the high income earners
live and where the rest live wherever you go in NJ.

I didn't realize how shitty NJ's resource distribution model was until I moved
down to Baltimore and saw how differently Maryland invests in the state as a
whole.

~~~
yummyfajitas
According to the article Christie was unable to take over the schools in
Camden, and took over the police force in 2013. Blaming him for not fixing the
problems of Camden in less than a year is a little silly.

Complaining that NJ didn't force Hoboken to subsidize Newark is silly - San
Fransisco and Toronto didn't subsidize Camden either, but I don't see you
blaming them.

~~~
Edmond
In a single comment you've managed to deploy all the dismissive language anti-
government folks use to derail meaningful discussion.

 __Complaining __:

Pointing out problems isn't complaining.

 __Subsidize __:

Investing and subsidizing aren't the same thing. When the arena was built in
Newark I am sure some state help was involved, the end result has been an
attraction that brings hockey fans to Newark who otherwise would have no
reason to be there and patronize businesses.

I am not sure where SF and Toronto factor into what goes on in NJ.

 __Blaming __:

You mean as opposed to the poor citizens taking responsibility and rebuilding
the city?

~~~
JackFr
"...derail meaningful discussion..." Oh. Who's being dismissive, Kay?

You refuse to address the parent's arguments on their own terms, purposefully
reading them in as obdurate a manner as possible, completely failing to engage
them, and then blame the parent's "dismissive language". They are meaningful
discussion.

------
bluedino
>> The police force alone in Camden costs more than $65 million a year.

I'd be curious as to how much of that $65,000,000 goes towards funding things
like pensions and healthcare for retired workers. All of the new cops are
starting without pensions in most municipalities (at least the ones that are
low on money) and a huge part of their budget is paying for long-retired cops.

~~~
invalidOrTaken
I'd like to play devil's advocate for a bit: are we ignoring the value of
credibility with cops? Cut off benefits previously promised, and you find
potential workers no longer trust you.

This really is devil's advocate, because I think pensions are outdated and
shouldn't be offered to new workers. But part of the bargain with the civil
service has been, basically, lifetime employment + retirement. There are costs
to backing out on that.

------
JimWillTri
Camden was a shithole even in the early '70s. My great grandmother was robbed,
beaten, tied up and left for dead on the floor of her tenement looking
apartment. She was found alive a few days later.

~~~
RankingMember
Woah. I'm not questioning the authenticity of your story, but do you have a
news article about that? That's a crazy thing to have happen to you anywhere
and I'd be curious where exactly in Camden it occurred.

~~~
JimWillTri
This was the 70s so of course you can't exactly link a story. This wouldn't
have been that big of a story back then - too much crime going on at once.

------
bluedino
>> In September, its last supermarket closed, and the city has been declared a
"food desert" by the USDA.

There might not be a Safeway or a Kroger, but there are still places to buy
groceries.

[http://i.imgur.com/Ey903PW.png](http://i.imgur.com/Ey903PW.png)

Really tied of the media exaggerating the term 'food desert'

~~~
xionon
What are these buildings? Are they discount grocers, with cheap but OK food,
or are they gas stations, with lunchables and frozen pizzas? It's hard to tell
from a screenshot of a map.

I'm not denying that the term "food desert" is suspect, I just can't tell what
you're trying to prove.

~~~
gphil
Based on street view (and my limited knowledge of Camden based on living
across the Delaware River in Philadelphia) these are all corner stores and
bodegas that in some cases may have some limited fresh food, but most of the
sales volume is likely packaged goods.

The idea of a "food desert" as I understand it is that it's an area with
limited access to nutritious foods. Most of Camden definitely qualifies,
especially for residents without cars.

------
dmschulman
I believe the term is "poverty porn":
[http://www.phillymag.com/news/2013/12/12/rolling-stone-
camde...](http://www.phillymag.com/news/2013/12/12/rolling-stone-camden-
article-poverty-porn-rutgers-professor/)

Thanks Taibbi for stoking people's fears needlessly

------
djs123sdj
The greatest tragedy of places like this is that the law abiding population is
held hostage by the threat (and exercise) of violence by the dangerous members
of their own community - who are relatively fewer in number.

In such circumstances, those who can afford to leave - leave, and those who
must stay make the choice to speak out against the situation and put
themselves at terrible risk, or stay quiet, and witness the decline of the
community.

------
nakedrobot2
"a graphic preview of what might lie ahead for communities that don't generate
enough of their own tax revenue to keep their lights on. "

With shrinking tax revenue from corporations cheating on their taxes and the
rise of bitcoin sucking even more fiat currency away from taxes, I do not like
this future.

------
VLM
A disappointing effort by Taibbi, usually does a lot better. Way too much
exaggeration.

Its a dying city because its population dropped about 0.3% per year. Like
saying my blood pressure has dropped about 1 point due to some (minimal)
exercise in the last month, therefore I'm dead. And then later on the
population is now booming because of white heroin addicts moving into the
city, but its also dying anyway at the same time or some foolishness.

The rust belt was news and new and insightful in 1970 or so. Unfortunately its
almost the spring of 2014. That's all ancient history. Like reading breathless
reporting of the activities of Martin Luther (not MLKjr, I mean the original
ML). My grandpa thought stories about "rust belts" are "news", and I'm not
that young anymore.

"Not long ago" means a century ago, in a nation with a 24 hour news cycle. Uh
huh. Just a few moments ago I was driving my covered wagon to work and ... oh
wait.

There is some insight in the "future is already here, just unevenly
distributed" aspect of the story. Also its got some "true crime" voyeurism.

He's a good writer, usually better than this. If joe average journalist wrote
this I wouldn't be as... offended. For my local fishwrap of a newspaper this
would be an average tolerable article, which might be why its going out of
business slowly, the point is he usually does much better than this.

It is funny to see articles like this on a site with so many hard core
followers of urban living. For 99% of the population, Camden is "real urban
living" not SV/SFO and NYC. So you can see the disbelief bordering on laughter
WRT urban revival. Yeah I can't wait until I can live in Camden and walk to
work LOL, sounds like paradise. And Camden is a thousand miles from here, but
where I live you need a car and a suburban house and a (short) commute if you
don't want to live in Camden-Lite. And that's what the real world is like.

~~~
rayiner
> The rust belt was news and new and insightful in 1970 or so

As someone living in a city gutted by de-industrialization and the drug trade
(Wilmington, DE), I think it's news that 40 years later, these places are
still in poor shape. The usual response to concerns about technology or
globalization putting people out of work is that it just frees them up to work
on something better and more useful. "New jobs will replace those that are
lost." Well, the people here are still waiting for those new jobs to replace
the ones that got automated or outsourced away.

> And Camden is a thousand miles from here, but where I live you need a car
> and a suburban house and a (short) commute if you don't want to live in
> Camden-Lite.

I think this is quite exaggerated. Aside from Detroit and New Orleans, cities
in the Delaware Valley like Camden and Wilmington have some of the worst crime
in the country, because they face the challenges of other Rust-belt cities and
are also on the major drug trade route up I-95.

Fully a quarter of the U.S. population lives in the metro areas of just six
cities: New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, San Jose/San Francisco,
and Boston. These cities are all quite safe, and the idea that people might
either move into the core cities or to satellite cities in those areas is
hardly ridiculous. And there's a long list of cities that are perfectly safe
that aren't one of those six: San Diego, Austin, Seattle, Portland, Charlotte,
etc. And there are even more cities that are perfectly safe in the areas
middle class people would actually live. I lived for seven years in Atlanta,
and it was very safe as long as you lived on the north side.

~~~
bluedino
>> Fully a quarter of the U.S. population lives in the metro areas of just six
cities: New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, San Jose/San Francisco,
and Boston.

Chicago and Los Angeles are safe if you live in a upper-middle class white
neighborhood. Chicago is the most dangerous large city in the US.

~~~
tptacek
First, no, Chicago is not the most dangerous city in the US. Per capita, it's
not even in the top ten. People have a bad habit of looking at Chicago's
totals while forgetting that the city is gigantic. The logic that says Chicago
is the most dangerous city in the US also says that Camden is safer than
Dallas.

Second, it is not true that Chicago is only safe if you live in rich white
enclaves. What is instead true is that two large tracts on the south and west
sides of the city (Englewood and Lawndale, respectively) are currently lost to
gang violence. But Chicago also has huge swaths of lower-middle-class
neighborhoods that are no more dangerous than those of any other big city. A
huge portion of those neighborhoods are hispanic, and there are many majority-
African American neighborhoods with low crime stats as well.

It is possible that your friends who live in Chicago don't realize this,
because what is also true about Chicago is that the 20-something hipster
demographic lives almost exclusively in just a few neighborhoods on the north
and near northwest sides.

------
geoka9
> Elsewhere, struggling white rural America is stocking up on canned goods and
> embracing the politics of chaos, sending pols to Washington ready to hit the
> default button and start the whole national experiment all over again.

Is it really that bad?

------
squozzer
I think Camden and other cities in similar situations can provide us with
learning --

1) Can cities outlive their usefulness? My answer = yes. 2) If yes, what
should happen when they do? My answer = most try to hang on or re-invent
themselves, but restructuring sooner rather than later might be best.

