Quote:
Originally Posted by jmecklenborg
The abandonment of city neighborhoods after the 1960s wasn't caused directly by the government. Far more housing was built between 1960 and 2008 than the United States needed. This overwhelmingly took the form of greenfield sprawl, mega-retirement communities in Florida, and vacation houses/condos on the East, West, and Gulf coasts. It can be argued that "the government" backed the mortgages, and that "the government" built the bridges out to Hilton Head Island and all of the other intercoastal waterway peninsulas and islands, but the banks still took on a ton of risk and got away with it for decades.
Almost every city neighborhood in the United States lost relative value over that time period and thousands if not tens of thousands of prewar homes and apartments were demolished in the big cities.
The banks voluntarily pulled back on speculative construction lending after the 2008 mortgage disaster saw several of the country's biggest banks go bankrupt. Less housing has been built nationwide in the past 13 years than was needed to accommodate population growth and the demographic shifts that have affected the household character of various age groups.
What's more, the thought that dense development causes crime is false. Densely built but wealthy neighborhoods in the United States don't have crime problems. Neither does Hong Kong or the dozens of hyper-dense Asian cities.
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I mostly agree with what you said except for the first line. This all absolutely was caused by the government. The federal government fueled redlining by refusing to insure mortgages in areas where the black population exceeded a certain threshold. The federal government also provided the capital to finance white flight.