As cities rethink single-family zoning, traditional ideas of the American Dream are challenged

[conuly]

The article is interesting enough, but what got me is the comments.

I know, I know! But I like to look at the comments if only I can see what inane meme the far right is trying to promulgate today. (And it almost always is the far right. Say what you like about us bleeding-hearts, we've got no grasp of that level of propaganda.)

Today it appears they're going for some sort of hybrid "the housing crisis would vanish if it wasn't for illegal immigration" garbage, so here's the facts: There is nothing like 30 million undocumented immigrants in the US - reliable statistics put the number closer to 11 million, which is a tiny percentage of the population. In fact, it's approximately 3.5% of the population, which interestingly is about the total population of LGBT individuals in America. Slightly less.

I really should be glad. If I hadn't looked up the numbers, I'd never have put it together that the same people who never stop banging the drum about undocumented immigrants also whine and whine and whine about how LGBT people get "too much" airtime and attention paid to their issues given the percentage of the population they comprise. Ain't that a lovely bit of hypocrisy?

Comments

[konsectatrix]

Honestly, the US does not and never did have anything resembling a "no place for people to live" problem, it's almost always a "difficulty with supply/demand in specific neighborhoods that people want to live in problem," along with a "people simply cannot afford housing" problem and certain segments of the population aren't receiving the benefits of segregation and redlining any more.

Hell, there's Fox Business's latest on pecentages of empty homes -- they're a click lower than usual overall, but in my industry, the quarterly report still indicates 1.5 million zombie foreclosures (these are specifically only the ones that are reported hung up in the judicial queue for whatever reasons so the foreclosure process is stalled and they're vacant and unmaintained by any entity), and the usual quoted number of 18 million vacancies overall is still being thrown around from 2004.

[conuly]

We'd have to have way more people for that problem - the only two nations in the world with a larger landmass are Canada and Russia, and it goes without saying that most of their land is frozen.

US has no idea what density is or looks like.