From: atfurman@cup.portal.com (A T Furman)
Newsgroups: alt.activism
Subject: Re: US D HOUSING & URBAN DEV
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 92 13:17:50 PDT
Organization: The Portal System (TM)
Distribution: world

>On Wednesday August 26, 1992 another murder victim was found at
>Queensbridge Houses. The victim was a well dressed man with shirt and
>tie shot in the head three times on the fifth floor at 41-11 10th
>Street, in Long Island City...
>
>US Department of Housing and Urban Development funded Queensbridge
>Houses averages two reported felonies per day and one homicide every
>three months.

Imagine my surprise.  Socialism doesn't seem to be working even in the USA.

>Guns are nothing new at Queensbridge Houses; Queensbridge children
>were recently chased away from a Police Athletic League playground by
>gun totting drug dealers. Police have not responded to that incident
>yet!

Imagine my surprise.  Gun control doesn't work either.

>Going back to the August 26, 1992 homicide, the lobby door of 41-11
>10 Street is kept unlocked. In a letter to tenants, HUD mentions a
>New York City Housing Authority "... policy which states that lobby
>doors should not be locked unless there is an active tenant patrol to
>open the door for visitors. We suggest that you deal with the NYCHA
>directly to try to alleviate your problem."

Imagine my surprise.  When a service provider can issue bureaucratic
dictats at will, and continue to receive the flow of subsidies extracted
from the public through the threat of the tax collector's gun, rather
than face the discipline of the market, the consumer gets screwed.

>The "Active tenant patrol" are tenants expected to sit unpaid,
>unarmed, untrained, without a phone and with minimal life insurance
>to guard their building lobby. Due to the high amount of felonies and
>drug dealing at Queensbridge Houses, the "Visitors" are quite
>possibly drug dealers, buyers or armed robbers. What would happen if
>the "Active tenant patrol" refuses to open the door for "Visitors?"...

Imagine my surprise.  Drug prohibition doesn't work.  It just concentrates
wealth in the hands of the most violent scum of the species.  Of course,
under conditions of nonintervention by the State, a private landlord could
always hire unskilled labor, like teenagers, at the lowest possible price,
to work as doorkeepers.  Of course, that would be illegal now, because of
the minimum wage laws.  And coincidentally, we have enormous Black
teenage unemployment rates.  Imagine my surprise.

>Who really profits from this "Active tenant patrol" idea? The New
>York City Housing Authority employees who are paid to supervise the
>unpaid "Active tenant patrol."...

Imagine still further surprise on my part.  Just maybe James Buchanan,
the Nobel laureate economist, is onto something when he concludes that
"public employees" like bureaucrats are not altruistic saints who think
of nothing but the "public good" (a term with the cretinous presupposition
of the total absence of diversity in peoples' individual values and
desires), but ordinary human beings like everyone else who try to
maximise their income and prestige.

If anyone really wants to help the long-suffering denizens of public
housing, the Trabbies of the housing industry, contact the Reason
Foundation, 3415 S. Sepulveda Blvd, Suite 400, Los Angeles, CA 90034.
They are a tax-exempt think tank pushing for PRIVATIZATION.

Statism doesn't work.


    Alan T. Furman         | VOTE LIBERTARIAN!!  Marrou/Lord in 92!!
---------------------------+----------------------------------------
  atfurman@cup.portal.sig  |   (800)682-1776 for more information
Newsgroups: alt.activism,soc.culture.african,soc.rights.human,talk.politics.misc