Mixed Income Housing at Sacto City Council

     Tuesday night, September 1, I attended the regularly scheduled meeting of the Sacramento City Council at City Hall.  Topic I was interested in taking a stand on was Mixed Income Housing.  I understood the Council had made changes to its current plan in effect and wanted feedback.  Among these, a developer could opt out of the plan by paying a fine, as it were.


     I am familiar to some extent with the Singapore Mixed Income Model that has been discussed around the world for some years.  Two of its notable features are 1) enforcement of the provision that a developer must adhere to the plan and 2) the benefits accruing over those of other income housing models.  One benefit is housing becomes available to all peoples, including the homeless.  But the other is far more important and long range:  it virtually ends the social issue of segregation populace-wide!   This is because every culturally diverse group of the society is truly mixed in with every other within the same housing project.  It is true that government has a strong say in where people will live, but that is simply regarded as an opportunity cost in solving a social problem that  otherwise could have festered as it presently does in the US.


     I am also apprised of discussions at the federal level of the Singapore Model.  Indeed, Fareed Zakaria in his Sunday, August 31, edition of GPS on CNN made it his featured presentation.  Moreover, as I tried to point out to the Council members, I believe much money could be garnered from Federal sources for instituting this model even here in Sacramento, should the Council take interest in it.  It's that important to rid our society from the evils of segregation!


     Indeed, a program that can solve the segregation issue as well as offer badly needed housing to the community, as does the Singapore Model (their government saw the need to create an integrated society and so came up with their housing plan),.has much to recommend it at the Federal level
     I made my comments, which are housed on videotape beginning at the 7:30 PM mark, Tuesday, Sept. 1 and runs for two minutes to 7:32 P>M. 
.