Back To Amber Waves of Grain, or How We All Got Priced Out of the Boondocks
I was having a conversation the other night with someone about the trend of remote housing communities being abandoned and ghettoized in some rare cases due to the fact that no one could afford to live there or keep the place watched by whomever. The other party in the conversation is someone who lives in a remote community (a very well-established one with no chance of this happening), and became enraged and dismissive of the suggestion.
So today, Governor Patterson of New York is saying that shit’s already hit the fan:
“When I travel across the state, I see communities suffering,” Mr. Paterson said in his address, from the Red Room of the State Capitol in Albany. “Everywhere I go, I meet people who are losing their jobs and their homes. I meet families who are forced to pay more for gasoline and for food while their paychecks stay the same. Next winter, some of these families will have to choose between heating their homes and feeding their children. The rising cost of health care means that they cannot afford to get sick.”
Hah, they cannot afford to get sick. What an artful way of saying, “They don’t have the means to finance medical treatment like the upper crust always does.” Wouldn’t that most accurately describe the problem, in regards to the wealth gap in society? It’s not that it’s a technological problem, that medicine does not exist to treat people for illness. It’s not as if being sick and down-for-the-count were a privilege that only trust funders could execute.
But I am leading you far from the point.
He says, “When I travel across the state, I see communities suffering.” And that’s a lot of traveling. New York State is BIG. New York State has huge differences of population density among its metropolitan areas and rural towns. New York City is well known to ship more money upstate than it gets back in budgetary considerations. Where does it go? Small towns and small cities that expect more spending per capita for government service than what would be given if it were all distributed evenly. New York State has one of the biggest cities in the world, resulting in extraordinary efficiencies of public services (and a lot of elbow bumping, too), and the savings of that money goes into what amounts to welfare checks for upstate residents. Not actual welfare checks, but money put into things that people expect from government. Administrative functions. Police. Fire patrol. Hospitals. Road building and repairs. All of which cost WAY more per person for a rural resident than, say, someone who lives in Harlem.
But not everyone can afford to live in the city, either. Some people have actual moneymaking jobs out there in the boondocks, and those jobs provide economic activity and business products/services that all of us need to buy, and those jobs are only sustainable on wide-open land, not quite on 125th Street. (I, for one, would not buy apples grown on 125th Street.)
But there are people who, say, live 45 minutes outside of Syracuse and commute in by car every day, for no other reason than it was cheaper and easier in that corner of the state to get enough land and permission to build a garishly large house on an embarassingly wide swath of land. I’m sure there are a lot of people living in that situation.
(This is to say nothing of the hidden or indirect subsidies/tax breaks that NYS gives to companies who would otherwise threaten to move to Mexico or China. It’s a little safer to bet nowadays that it’s a bluff.)
I’m just as sure that there are poor people in New York State collecting checks from the government, maybe not for weeks but for years, for whatever government entitlement programs exist, except that no one’s thinking to add in the cost of the road to their house (plus the cost of riding police cars by several times a day, the cost of building power and phone lines out there and the land that gets ripped up or wrecked to make that happen, or the cost of having a firehouse on standby even if the firemen themselves are volunteers) as an additional personal subsidy.
No, no one thinks to count all of that. No one’s entitled to any of it, really, but those expenses exist, and it’s politically unpopular to single out those people for service discontinuations or higher taxes.
Which is why people upstate have the upper hand.
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So now we’re in an era of $4 gas and a mortgage crisis. Houses are suddenly impossible to sell, and long-distance commuting is prohibitively expensive. Risky decisions are turning into intractable problems for individuals, without the government’s help. And, as we can see, the government is in no position to help those people anyway. They’re wondering who they can fuck over to get that budget deficit fixed. They’re probably looking right at Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx. (Manhattan never gets fucked over. It would hurt tourism.)
If the state government is serious about both helping out their budget woes and keeping its citizens protected and well taken-care-of, it might be time for people to make some reasonable sacrifices. As in, move a little closer together, or else we’re going to tax your asses right out of your farmhouses.
People find this unconscionable. OMG, YOU CAN’T RIP PEOPLE OUT OF THEIR HOMES.
Sure you can. It’s been done before. To build a highway or an airport, you do it with the strike of a pen. “Eminent domain.” I’m not saying this is the same situation. I’m just arguing that it’s not impossible or immoral politically for the government to guide relocations. Gently, tactfully, of course.
So, if it is possible, does it not seem sensible that NYS should take a look at the idea of reversing the suburban and rural diaspora? (a phenomenon significantly accelerated by all that very irresponsible mortgage financing in the first place) This a place where we have the infrastructure to support additional people in the cities or better-planned suburbs, with close access to both jobs and cost-saving facilities like supermarkets, retail pedestrian malls, frequent public transit, parks and playgrounds, consolidated schools, etc. It’s easier to try it here than anywhere else. Especially with the backup governor in control, and most of the self-centered senior government leaders already out the door.
And, even though it’s not always comfortable to move, it would be in the better interests of everyone in the long run. Better services for lower costs. There is so much more that is possible when you don’t have many individuals continually making decisions that work against the success of government and public services, for whatever reason. (Especially when you’re fucking over the people who live most efficiently.)
The truth is that our society is not in a position to avoid compromise at this point. Everyone is going to have to take a big step back from the expectations drilled into our heads over the past 10 years. There’s a war going on, there’s a healthcare crisis, there’s an energy crisis, and now there’s an economic crisis. (With an environmental crisis about 10-15 years out) We have to focus, we have to prioritize, and then we have to change whatever is dragging us down. If there’s any clear indicator of where to look for a clue as to what is dragging us down, it’s the disparity between NYC’s taxes sent upstate and budget money coming back down.
And, finally, what to do with all those abandoned communities/housing/infrastructure? Well, you can’t sell it for 10 cents on the dollar anyway, and no one can afford to continually drive out there anymore except the filthy rich. So let nature have it back. Fuck it. In 20 years it’ll all be amazing abandoned housing for bored amateur photographers like me to photography endlessly for Flickr. You can charge them for a tour license - $50 for the permit, and a $200 fine if you don’t have one. (and, also, metered parking)