Wednesday, May 09, 2007

Zoning Laws (Part 6) Separation of the Poor

Read entire series here.

Since zoning laws essentially set the threshold wealth level of each community, the poor have little choice but to live only in the communities that they can afford. This means that the poor are usually lumped all together in a given community. The rich can afford to live elsewhere, so they usually do.

When the poor are lumped into one community, and the rich and their businesses can afford to thrive in other communities, the poor have diminished access to good jobs, thus reinforcing their poverty.

Part 5 . . . . . . . . Part 7

1 comment:

  1. When my kids were little, I would often 'deprogram' them on the way home from Sunday School. Things got said that just didn't sit well with my conscience. One such memorable morning was when they talked about charity. I quized them what they learned. "We should give to the poor." "Who is 'the poor'" "People who have less than us." "So some people have less money. But some people have less time and some people have more or less skills and talents. And that all might change over time, right?" "Okay." "So some people have more of certain things than us and we have more of certain thing than others." "Okay." "What does that mean?" "I guess sometimes we should help people and sometimes they should help us." "Right. Like when your grandpa died, neighbors were nice and helpful, and when our neighbor's husband died, we were the ones being helpful." "Right. And like we gave our cloths that we outgrew to the nieghbor kid cuz he's younger and their dad loaned us his tools when we fixed the car." "Exactly."

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