As an LCF homeowner, I’m appalled by the city’s income segregation. Affordable housing in cities with good public schools in job-rich areas is essential for mitigating the housing crisis and breaking multigenerational poverty. LCF should do its part for the common good.
I’m currently living near Paris, next to Gif-sur-Yvette, a beautiful city comparable to LCF in population, high-income earners (relative to French demographics), good schools, and some of the region’s priciest homes.
But there the similarity ends. Gif has logements sociaux — “social housing” for low- and moderate-income families. Of Gif’s nearly 10,000 dwellings, about 5,000 are individual houses and 2,900 of the apartments are social housing.
In France, a capitalist social democracy, the provision of social housing is considered a means of fostering social justice and cohesion.
In LCF, there’s handwringing that property values will suffer from affordable housing. A 2017 Stanford Graduate School of Business study “found that low-income housing developments were associated with … home value declines of 2.5% in higher-income neighborhoods” (but no increase in crime).
My response? The 2.5% private loss would be offset by a huge public gain: A positive, community-based contribution to help alleviate the nationwide problem of gross economic inequality and lack of opportunity. Among industrialized nations, the U.S. has the highest level of economic inequality in the world.
In 2000, France enacted the Solidarity and Urban Renewal (SRU) law. The SRU and related laws required that by 2025, nationwide, in municipalities in areas with housing tension, 25% of primary-residence units must be social housing. Nearly two-thirds of the municipalities are on track for achieving their required amount (and lagging municipalities are not off the hook).
When I return home to LCF, I hope the city will have embraced income integration and affordable housing so that people’s inalienable right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” isn’t eviscerated by the struggle for shelter. When will the segregationists’ blinkered self-interest be informed by an enlightened patriotism? How long before they understand that even the wealthy must do their fair share?
Lisa Novick
La Cañada Flintridge and Bures-sur-Yvette
First published in the August 24 print issue of the Outlook Valley Sun.
