Harvard makes the Daily Mail: “‘Are you in one of the affordable units?’ Director of the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative is accused of being a racist ‘Sidewalk Susie’ after slamming a mom and her biracial daughter, 3, for playing outside”
Cambridge has taken to calling its “steal from the (rich) developers and give to the poor” program “inclusionary housing”:
The Inclusionary Housing Ordinance applies to new residential developments or buildings converted to residential use which create 10 or more new housing units or over 10,000 square feet of residential space. The Ordinance requires that 20% of the residential floor area in a building be devoted to affordable units.
There are apparently roughly 1,100 units currently (source). This is in addition to the Cambridge Housing Authority, which provides 5,500 free and/or subsidized housing units. In a city of 110,000, however, in which most people with middle-class jobs have been forced to exile themselves to boring suburbs and unendurable commutes, there is near-infinite demand for free housing. The waiting lists therefore can stretch to infinity unless an applicant has some sort of hook into the system. Thus 99.99 percent of Americans are excluded, as a practical matter, from these “inclusionary” houses.
I guess the Cambridge Housing Authority forgot to read any sociology texts before mandating free housing for low-earns to live next to 80% multi-millionaires. If they had done some research, they would have found the highest incidents of theft and burglary occur in areas with large income gaps living in close proximity.
Folks used to say “a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged.” I wonder if the modern equivalent is “a conservative is a liberal who learns that a non-working neighbor enjoys pretty much the same lifestyle, courtesy of his or her tax dollars.”