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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   29600 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 6, 2023

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I’ll even cop to the even more villainous take that I rather like the high property values here in part because they serve as an effective barrier against living around the kind of people I don’t want to live around.

This would only be true if such neighborhoods were closed off from pedestrians, which they often are not. Mentally ill people rummaging through garbage early in the morning or other problems occur even in expensive areas.

Affordable housing is not right. This is something that seems to be lost on the media. What makes certain areas desirable also generally makes them expensive.

Mentally ill people rummaging through garbage early in the morning or other problems occur even in expensive areas.

Not in the suburbs! I know OP was focused on city living, but still, I want to put a good word in for my preferred environment. Source: I live in a suburb, not even a particularly expensive one (by Bay Area standards anyway), and it's blissfully isolated from all manner of city problems, including a wide swathe of undesirables undertaking undesirable behavior. One perk of the car-centric setup is that you need to minimally have your shit together to own a car, and it wouldn't be practical to live here without one. (For whatever reason the hooligans who steal vehicles don't penetrate here often — perhaps it's not a particularly lucrative environment for thievery?)

The suburban version of hobos rummaging through your trash is the metal scavengers getting out earlier than the trash truck on bulk pickup day. They tend to not leave as much of a mess though.

Those guys perform an actual public service, as they take larger metal items the trash collectors won't.

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