Worthy Goal-Fair Share Housing

There’s been some discussion in my circle of friends and family about Tacoma, crime, and certain neighborhoods getting the brunt of violent or dangerous felons residing there. I’ve been a little bit involved in working towards “Fair Share” agreements where certain areas of the city no longer accept halfway or transitional housing due to an oversaturation of felons in that neighborhood. And due to my observance, I’ve noticed that unfortunately, there are still people out there who would rather victimize poor neighborhoods and dump felons there as opposed to spreading out transitional housing so that no particular area is completely inundated with a high-risk population. It’s the typical “not in my backyard” mentality except that those without a political or strong financial voice don’t get any say. Instead, those residing in nicer areas push their representative council members or politicians to reject any such fair idea. In their minds, senior citizen housing is a burden enough in their neighborhoods (not to mention that Fair Share housing would be taking up valuable real estate and driving their land values lower). How dare anyone in lower neighborhoods reject any more housing opportunities? After all, don’t the residents of those lower income neighborhoods have the sense to move if there is any issue with the establishment of more half-way houses? Somehow I don’t think that train of thought was supposed to be the original design of local American politics.