The National Affordable Housing Act requires all municipalities to have at least 10% of homes be affordable. As of earlier this year, the percent of affordable homes in the north shore hovers around 5% (Patch).
Last Friday, we conducted a quick experiment: draw a square, and let it represent the boundaries of say, Winnetka. Then, pretend that you are a city planner, who must make 10% of the households affordable. Where will the affordable houses be built?
Only about ⅕ of the class split up the “affordable areas” into small dots throughout the square, while a majority of the class drew a square in the corner (side note: if our local city planners ever took this law seriously, there’d be no way in hell you’d find an affordable home on Sheridan Road).
It’s reasonable to assume that most city planners wouldn't give this much thought. After all, this law is very good at being slightly inconvenient to those that it affects. It stands to reason that a city planner wouldn't normally give it much thought, and section off a small area like many of us did. Is this zoning intentional? Probably not, but there may be something more subtle at play here.
Material objects (including one’s wealth), often inhibit our ability to empathize with others. In his book Between the World and Me, Ta-nehisi Coates develops his version of the American Dream. “…The Dream thrives on generalization...”. City planners in our area are probably living in some variation of the Dream. If the Dream thrives on generalization, then smaller details (like what one might empathize about) are lost to a superficial term: Empathy. The planners know about empathy, but without empathizing with the less fortunate, they can’t build a community that welcomes lower income families.
Coats also talks about the possibility of: “the small chance of the Dreamers coming into consciousness”. If city planners were to come into consciousness, the law requiring affordable homes wouldn't be required. In the past, de jure (by law) segregation existed, and now we (as a society) are moving away from that de jure segregation. However, de facto segregation has partially replaced the law. The refusal of the Dreamers to leave the past and their claims of “it’s always been like this” are the root of de facto segregation. Stubbornness comes with a lack of empathy, thus the Dreamers can’t understand how dotting affordable homes around the community helps others.
