If you never had the time or inclination to read Thomas Piketty’s “Capital in the 21st Century,” you could still learn a good deal about economic inequality simply by reading the reviews.
Similarly, if you haven’t seen the six-part TV series “Show Me a Hero,” which concluded recently on HBO, you can still learn a little something about affordable housing just by skimming the reviews. (Disclosure: We haven’t read Piketty in full or watched “Show Me.”)
The series – co-written by David Simon (of “The Wire,” which we have seen and can recommend) — depicts a political struggle in Yonkers during the ‘80s. The “Show Me” story resonates today with a plot-line driven by a maverick political leader and opposition to affordable housing that’s evocative of recent attacks on HUD’s affirmatively furthering fair housing rule.
You can get a pretty good sense of the show, and its topical currency, in this treatment in the Washington Post, or in this one in the Guardian.
And lest you think the contesting attitudes and political battles are limited to the metropolis, think again. What the current director of public housing in Yonkers says , in this Slate interview, is true all over.
“There is always community resistance to affordable housing,” Joseph Shuldiner says. “People believe that affordable housing will bring down the value of their property and bring in people who are not desirable. I don’t think in most cases that’s proven to be the case. “
And he captures the dilemma of where to invest limited public resources:
“We really need to maximize the number of viable communities with affordable-housing opportunities. That means both getting affordable housing into already viable communities but it also means making the poverty concentrated areas viable so they will attract other-than low-income people.”