Big stick

Last night, I read Sudhir Venkatesh's book Gang Leader for a Day. It was excellent. Some thoughts:

1. High rise public housing turned out to be a really bad idea.

2. The concentration of poor blacks in public housing was the result of a confluence of forces, variously malicious, well-intentioned, and impersonal.

malicious: the urban political machines (in the case of Gang Leader for a Day, the first Richard Daley) sought to appease powerful interests in their base. Developers, rich and middle class whites, etc. These political leaders used things like zoning and new infrastructure projects to PHYSICALLY disrupt and/or isolate poor, black communities. Redlining on the part of lending institutions also contributed to this isolation.

well-intentioned: the high-rise concept was designed to improve upon the dilapidated tenement housing that has preceeded it. The new buildings were supposed to be better quality dwellings. That was probably true, until the government stopped providing the money necessary to for upkeep.

Impersonal: simple economic forces eliminated many jobs for low-skilled people and shifted many existing and new jobs out of the ghettos and into the suburbs. Partially, this was the result of a decline in manufacturing employment generally, as we shifter to a service economy. And partially, this was the result of employers following the skill of the people.

3. Once poor people are concentrated in one place, two things happen. One. they become easy for powerful people to ignore. Two, they develop mechanisms for survival that the non-ignored places don't have to develop.

4. One of the central ways that poor people can survive in these places is to "hustle" out a living in the informal economy. Sometimes, this takes the form of simply selling normal goods and services to others (selling candy out of your home. Fixing cars. Child care. Etc). It's informal, because the income isn't reported officially. Sometimes, it takes the form of illegal activities...prostitution, drug dealing, con artistry, etc.

5. When a community is left without formal government, especially when people live in close quarters, it finds ways to adapt. In this book, the drug gangs maintain a sort of quasi-government in these anarchic towers. Moreover, community codes of behavior are enforced, both by the gangs, and by the general community. There is something to be said for having a stable community. Even the police recognize the quasi-authority of these drug leaders, helping to mediate conflict between gangs rather than focusing on "busting" people.

6. The motivation for demolishing the high rises was probably legitimate. They were definitely a bad idea, and they were implemented even more poorly, through a corrupt and inadequate Housing Authority that was consistently underfunded. But doing so had a price for the residents of those places. They had learned how to survive under the rules of that place. When they were forced to move, many of their ways of surviving (based on the social capital they had developed in that place) were eliminated.

7. I tend to dismiss conservative rhetoric about the inevitability of government inefficiency. But I am obliged to admit the following: social problems are often deeper and more complex than our public policies are capable of dealing with. And sometimes, yes...the solution creates more problems than it solves. To me, the lesson isn't that we should give up trying to improve the world through policy. It's just that, when problems are deep and complex, we have to be prepared to think deeply and complexly, and equally important, to SPEND deeply and complexly. When a young black man who has been given an inadequate education must decide between taking public transportation to get to a minimum wage job an hour and a half away, a job with virtually no prospect of advancement, and joining a drug gang where, if he is lucky and works hard, he will earn both respect from his peers and a living wage...well, i'm not sure that offering some midnight basketball is going to make a big difference.

If you got a big problem, you better be willing to get a big stick.