I can understand the suspicion that this is a trick to allow apartment building owners (and construction companies) to further profit, and sold under the banner of fighting racism.
However, this is occurring in Minneapolis, which is significant.
The Minneapolis area is notorious for its socially progressive attitude, and I can almost guarantee you that this really is what it seems to be on the surface.
Some do-gooder SJW type noticed that black people were forced to live in the bad neighborhoods were multi-family units were allowed, and that the good neighborhoods were mostly only affordable to whitey who could afford to buy/rent single family homes.
Said do-gooder figured, "Hey, let's make it illegal to forbid multi-family structures in Minnesota neighborhoods! This will make the better areas more affordable for these black people, who have been pushed into the ghettos for decades due to these racist laws!"
And so it was done.
Will this result in a gain for certain people/companies in the construction and real estate industries?
Yes. But that's just a side effect from this sad attempt at multiculturalism.
As to why I call this socialism, it's because it's an extension of basic socialist principles.
Here's a textbook definition of socialism:
Socialism is an economic system where the ways of making a living (factories, offices, etc.) are owned by a society as a whole, meaning the value made belongs to everyone in that society, instead of a group of private owners.
While it's true that none of this has any effect on who owns what, it definitely has the effect (and in fact the intention) of reducing the fruits of the individual's success.
This basically denies the ability for the wealthier people to live among themselves in low-crime neighborhoods, and opens up all neighborhoods to more affordable multi-family housing.
Thus, the neighborhoods of Minneapolis now belong to everyone, rather than just the wealthy who can afford to buy homes in the nicer areas. And that sounds a hell of a lot like socialism to me.
Regardless of the term we are going to use to label it, I think it's pretty clear that this is a horrible idea.
verminaard's post about how this already killed neighborhoods in the LA area is correct.
When people with money notice their neighborhoods increasingly being inhabited by undesirables, they sell their property and move. This brings property values down, and eventually the entire neighborhood goes to crap.
The problem with the modern left is that they approach everything with, "Group A in society has more than Group B. Let's fix that and take away from Group A, so everyone can be equal."
They never bother to stop and consider that perhaps Group A earned what they have, or that perhaps Group B bears some of its own responsibility for its issues, or that attempting to equalize Group A and Group B will have all kinds of unforeseen side effects which are far worse than the inequality issue in the first place.
In general, the left has a very hard time with people being inherently different, which then leads to different results for each one. There's no way to equalize everything. Some people are born smarter, more talented, more athletic, more apt to learn specific skills, healthier, or into a family with existing wealth. In theory it would be great if we were all born under the exact same circumstances, but that will never happen, and even if it did, we would still have inequality due to both luck and different levels of effort people put forth in their life.
There needs to be a degree of compassion for the less fortunate, and a sincere attempt made to help them, but not by ruining what the fortunate already have, which seems to be the approach the left often seems to favor.
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Originally Posted by Dan Druff
