Go read my article!

[kenberg]

Oh yes, we have these large areas of subsidized housing here as well. You don't want to live in them. Or walk through them. But I am thinking that Passed had a different experience. Having a family in with other families, the difference being that some of one family's rent is being subsidized, is a lot more hopeful. I have mentioned in other places that in the 1940s my parents rented out (no subsidy other than my parents, this was the 40s!) the top floor of our house (a small house, the top floor is smaller) to a mother and her two daughters. It worked, at least it reasonably well worked.

 

Of course I am largely ignorant of the magnitude of the problem today. Perhaps it is just too large. But a family having troubles, put into a functioning neighborhood and helped to survive there, is a very good approach.

[Vampyr]

Having a family in with other families, the difference being that some of one family's rent is being subsidized, is a lot more hopeful.

 

This is the way it is when private homes are rented through the council -- you have a rental property in a normal area, and you rent it to the council, who pay you a market rent, and the tenant pays a lower rent to the council.

 

My friend has such an apartment next door. The tenants are a woman and her child, but the boyfriend is there when he is not in jail; the woman vacillates between having a restraining order against him and getting back together. The police are always being called for one reason or another. He even steals other people's mail in case it has money in it.

 

This is not unusual. Another problem is that people who choose to have lots of kids and no jobs get houses that working people can only dream of living in, in areas that are totally out of reach for almost everybody. There was a story in the paper recently about a woman on benefits who received a huge house in the country for her and her children, and who is thinking about buying a second pony.

[PassedOut]

This is the way it is when private homes are rented through the council -- you have a rental property in a normal area, and you rent it to the council, who pay you a market rent, and the tenant pays a lower rent to the council.

Not exactly. I did not rent to the government, but to the woman herself, after I interviewed her and was pretty sure that she meant what she said. Her old place was in an unsafe neighborhood, and she very much wanted take her kids to a better place. This was a three-family place, and she was a fine tenant. If she had caused trouble, I'd have had her evicted.

 

I did have an occasional bad tenant back in the day, but none of them had subsidized rent.