There seems to be some outrage that a supposedly “affordable” housing project in Fairfax County includes in its mix of units housing for families making between $50, 000-$100, 000 per year. Famously conservative County Supervisor Pat Herrity calls the plan “government run amok.”

With the caveat that I know absolutely nothing about this proposal except for what it says in that article, I have to say that the outrage is probably misguided. The whole concept of building entire neighborhoods for a single narrow income group is outdated. The government built plenty of low-income only “project housing” back in the 20th Century, with awful results. When you take a bunch of poor people and cosntraint them to living in places exclusively for poor people, the result is a ghetto with an often crime-ridden and permanently stratified population. Hardly desirable goals for taxpayer subsidy. Current thinking on the subject suggests that mixing incomes produces all sorts of nice effects, not the least important of which is that neighbors value their neighborhood as something other than a government handout to be used and then destroyed. If you can make your affordable housing seem like normal housing, that’s generally good for the city (or county) and for the people living there.

So while I sympathize with the knee-jerk reaction to oppose government help for families earning close to $100, 000 per year, it is probably legitimately good policy to do so. Having those folks mixed in with those earning less than $50, 000 a year will make the neighborhood better.

PS: Lest I be accused to equating “rich” with “better”, the concept of mixed income neighborhoods is equally true on the other side of the spectrum. Neighborhoods that are exclusively for the wealthy are also undesirable for the city. The best neighborhoods are those open to everyone, in which the same person can live as they go from student to wage-earner to high-roller, and from single to partnered to having a family.