So in New York, housing developers have the option to participate in an “inclusionary zoning program,” which requires them to set aside 20 percent of the units for affordable housing. This means that those apartments are granted to households making less than $42,950 a year.

Smart idea, NYC

Mayor Bill de Blasio wants to make inclusionary zoning mandatory in order to create more affordable units, according to The New York Times. De Blasio “hopes to get both bigger buildings and more affordable units within those buildings.”

New York, you’re on a roll!

But just as I’m about to clasp my hands together and give New York the standing ovation that I thought they deserved; they approved a plan for an Upper West Side condo building to have a separate door for low-income tenants. Yes, a separate door.

Now correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought the days of Jim Crow Laws were long behind us. I mean we’ve elected a half-black President, a black attorney general, and honored the legendary Martin Luther King Jr. with a national holiday. This sends us back to 1920 when segregation ran rampant in this country. Are you happy New York? You took an innovative, progressive, awe-inspiring idea and just destroyed it.

The new Upper West Side apartment complex joins another building that already makes its lower class tenants use a “poor door.” Yes, there is another building where the rich have a separate door, just so they don’t have to rub shoulders with the poor. The apartment complex is in Williamsburg, a neighborhood once occupied by minorities and low-income citizens.

Gentrification at it’s finest folks. Disgusting.

“No one ever said that the goal was full integration of these populations, I think it’s unfair to expect very high-income homeowners who paid a fortune to live in their building to have to be in the same boat as low-income renters, who are very fortunate to live in a new building in a great neighborhood.”

This guy cant be serious…

First off, these really really rich people are not even close to being in the same boat as the low-income renters; they’re not even on the same island, hell they don’t even live on the same planet. They get to come home through the front door to their nicely furnished apartments and relax with a glass of red wine, while the “peasants” have to use the back entrance and hide their faces, for they are too poor to be seen. Who is he to demean a person’s life, who is he to say that the rich are better than the poor, who is he to disrespect the hardworking people of this country and strip them of their dignity through his comments?

Thankfully not everyone in New York agrees with this pompous idiot. Former City Council Speaker Christine Quinn told the New York Post, “I do not believe that these discriminatory practices were ever contemplated by the legislature, we need to change state law so that developers provide common entrances and facilities for residents in the building.”

You know New York, since you are the most diverse city in the world I thought you’d be better than this. I thought you were the city that inspired people, influenced masses, and made dreams come true. Not the city that discourages people and makes them believe they are worthless because of how much money is in their bank account. No one should be judged by how much money they make or whether they are renting or buying. New York, you are home to over 8 million people, and no matter how cliche you think it is, every single one of these people are special and unique. You do not get to choose who comes in the front and who goes in through the back. Poor or rich, black or white, people are people and you do not get to say otherwise.

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Trevor Smith

Featured image courtesy of [Light Brigading via Flickr]

Trevor Smith

Trevor Smith is a homegrown DMVer studying Journalism and Graphic Design at American University. Upon graduating he has hopes to work for the US State Department so that he can travel, learn, and make money at the same time. Contact Trevor at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post NYC ‘Poor Doors’ Separate Rich and Poor Tenants appeared first on Law Street.

Happy Thursday, folks! You’re almost there. Breathe with me. Friday’s coming.

In the meantime, let’s get to our biweekly session of bitching about the GOP, shall we? Today, we’re talking about school lunches. And poor kids. And how Rep. Jack Kingston of Georgia is a gigantic asshole.

Here’s what happened. Across the nation, kids from families whose income levels are below 130 percent of the poverty line can receive free school lunches. Kids from families with income levels between 130 and 185 percent of the federal poverty line are eligible for reduced lunch prices. This is news to no one.

Trust me on this. My awesome wife teaches in Newark, one of the poorest cities in New Jersey. Literally all of the kids at her school get free lunch. Free lunch for low income kids is nothing new.

Said no one.

Anyway! Rep. Kingston decided to make news out of something that’s not new — a common talent for many GOP rainmakers. This week, he went on the record saying that poor kids should NOT get free lunch — oh no! The blasphemy!

Instead, he made the following suggestions:

“Why don’t we have the kids pay a dime, pay a nickel to instill in them that there is, in fact, no such thing as a free lunch? Or maybe sweep the floor of the cafeteria — and yes, I understand that that would be an administrative problem, and I understand that it would probably lose you money. But think what we would gain as a society in getting people — getting the myth out of their head that there is such a thing as a free lunch.”

Oh my gosh I CAN’T. I cannot. What are you doing, Rep. Kingston? Really.

Friends is on my level today.

Let’s start with the first and most obvious issue with your solution to a non-problem: children are not possessors of money. They don’t work. That’s what being a child means. So, really, they all get free lunches. Every single one of them. Even the richest of rich kids are getting a free lunch. Because it’s not their money that paid for it. It’s their parents’ money.

Take me for example. I was a solidly middle-class child. My parents, being the health nuts that they are, were not big fans of the idea of me eating mystery meat in my elementary school cafeteria. So, every day, they dutifully packed me a brown bag lunch. I got a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on whole wheat bread and a handful of cookies, virtually every single day. For me, that lunch was free.

I didn’t pay for it. I didn’t even know that food cost money. Or that when my parents went to work, they were paid in money. I kind of just thought working was a thing that grownups had to do — the same way kids had to go to school — and all of the other stuff like food and housing was just magically bestowed upon people who followed the rules.

Baby me did not understand how much this leather jacket probably cost my big sister.

Clearly, I was a naïve child.

But! There was a kernel of truth in my naivety. For me, food really didn’t cost money. It just appeared in my brown bag every day, as if by magic. Nowadays, as a precariously middle-class adult who has to purchase food before it lands in my brown bag (I’m still packing a whole wheat PB&J for work, I’ll admit it), I’m fully aware that food was free when I was a kid.

I’m even more aware of it when my now gray-haired parents take me out for lunch.

My reaction whenever my parents invite me out to dinner.

Anyway! All children get free lunch. They aren’t working the night-shift to pay for their sandwiches. So, your argument is already inherently flawed, Rep. Kingston.

Moving right along. What is this obsession with punishing poor people for being poor? Seriously. The GOP is fixated on it. When you suggest forcing children to sweep the floors in order to earn their lunch, you’re talking about child labor. That’s bad enough, but when you’re only suggesting the poor kids participate, you’re talking about a caste system.

You’re talking about a world where rich kids learn early on that only certain people sweep floors. Namely, not them. You’re teaching them that someone else will always clean up after them. Someone else will always have to beg for their scraps.

Then, you wind up with kids like this boy, who killed 4 people because of pathological rich kid syndrome.

And, you’re teaching the poor kids that they’re the ones who need to beg for those scraps. Because of the social standing of their family — which they have zero control over — poor kids will understand themselves to be inherently less than. That’s a traumatic and debilitating lesson to learn at such a formative age.

Finally, there’s the looming issue at hand — the solution that Rep. Kingston is obviously hinting at, but isn’t explicitly articulating.

He’s saying that it would be better if these kids didn’t get a free school lunch at all. If we HAVE to give it to them, at least make them work for it, he’s saying. But really, his best case scenario is equally expensive lunches for all.

Folks, this is a classic case of a Republican who lacks empathy. It’s an alarmingly common quality among headline-making GOP’ers.

Where my wife teaches, all of the students qualify for free lunch. Every single one of them. These kids are poor. They don’t have the luxury to grow up naïve like I did. They know food costs money because they don’t have any of it. As in, neither food nor money.

For many of her kids, lunch is the only meal they eat. They hardly eat at all on weekends. Why? Because they’re poor. They can’t afford food. And the little food they do have at home, they give to their baby brothers and sisters.

My wife’s students are good kids. They’re smart and loving and talented, and hysterically funny. And they deserve to fucking eat.

So, Rep. Kingston? Shut the fuck up.

Stop talking about child labor, and a (not really) new caste system, and the idea that poor kids shouldn’t be fed lunch on the school’s dime. Stop talking out of your ass, and start feeding some children.

—

Hannah R. Winsten (@HannahRWinsten) is a freelance copywriter, marketing consultant, and blogger living in New York’s sixth borough. She hates tweeting but does it anyway. She aspires to be the next Rachel Maddow.

Featured image courtesy of [Philippe Put via Flickr]

Hannah R. Winsten

Hannah R. Winsten is a freelance copywriter, marketing consultant, and blogger living in New York’s sixth borough. She hates tweeting but does it anyway. She aspires to be the next Rachel Maddow. Contact Hannah at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post GOP to Hungry Kids: You Don’t Work Hard Enough appeared first on Law Street.