Reply to MoCo seeking feedback on proposal to limit single family zoning

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Argh, we have to have this conversation again?

It is possible to unintentionally encourage effects that are racist through actions that are not intended to.

For instance, policies that prioritize single family home ownership in a place with rapidly scaling home prices encourages racial segregation because of a historical racial wealth gap.

No one is trying to be racist, in fact in many cases the thought is that encouraging home ownership is a way to build wealth. but in a time of rising prices where a buyer  has to bring more and more money to the table to buy a house, and BIPoC people may not have the same generational resources (read, parents who don’t need financial support and can actually sometimes give money) as white people, the inequities are perpetuated, and more expensive houses are purchased by those who have more generational resources who tend to be white and richer, blah blah.

Didn’t we have the structural racism talk in 2020?

Policies that are designed to keep neighborhoods SFH and bias to home ownership have an unintended effect of perpetuating housing segregation, which has downstream effects on opportunities (for instance, access to good schools and jobs) for people. Diversifying neighborhoods with different home types (including renters!) is one tool to try to spread the opportunity around to people who don’t have access to generational wealth, and take one step to correcting for systemic racism inherent in society.

So no one is saying that you are racist for saving for and buying a house. What this is saying is that a reason a policy like this is good is because it is one of many steps to break down racial advantages, and opposing it may have the effect of contributing to the perpetuation of racial inequities.

[/quote]

You are assuming that people in these areas in Silver Spring are white. They are not universally white. This is where your “good intentions” have bad outcomes. My neighborhood is heavily Latino, Ethiopian, and black American. We are middle class and working class families. We are being told by YIMBYs we need to put up with the dismantling of racism and access to affordable housing …. We got affordable housing which we saved for. We are not all white - this is an incredibly diverse area. And this proposal will undercut our neighborhoods and the value of our homes.

Why is the inequity of this so hard for you understand?[/quote]

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