Raise the Drawbridge, I’m Already Inside

Last year I wrote a particularly sarcastic and nasty piece about Hanover County’s attitude toward the less affluent. It went pretty well unnoticed and that is good. I don’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings. Besides, since I live in the City of Richmond, how can I possibly understand the attitudes of my neighbors across the Chickahominy River?

My thoughts turned again to Hanover County as I read “Hanover debating Habitat plan” in today’s Times-Dispatch. According to TD reporter Reed Williams the county Board of Supervisors voted to return to the Planning Commission for further consideration a Habitat for Humanity plan to build in the county. This plan had been approved by the Planning Commission last month, but that was before Hanover residents learned of the proposed development.

Hanover Habitat for Humanity is an “ecumenical nonprofit Christian organization committed to eliminating substandard housing through the rehabilitation and building of simple, decent homes for those in need in Hanover County.” Habitat, which has already built or rebuilt 32 homes in Hanover County, seeks to break “the cycle of poverty by offering an opportunity for families to work for a new home.” Families are chosen by Habitat and must invest 350 hours of their own labor in building their home. Habitat arranges for zero-interest mortgages, which allow families to quickly establish equity in their homes.

Residents of the Cheroy Woods and Brown Grove communities, in the area where Habitat is planning to develop, object to the plan for three reasons. First, they say, the concentration of affordable housing in the area will lead to an increase in crime. Second, the Habitat houses would lower the property values of nearby properties. Third, lower income families moving into the area would “bring more foot traffic” to Ashcake Road, which is too narrow to accommodate them.

Now, where do you think my neighbors in Hanover County got the idea that lower income families living in a neighborhood will lead to a higher rate of crime? Can it be from Hanover Sheriff V. Stuart Cook who told the Hanover supervisors that they should heed resident’s concerns about the proposed development? Sheriff Cook told TD reporter Williams that he has seen concentrations of low-income homes create a breeding ground for crime and that he doesn’t want that in Hanover. I appreciate Cook’s desire to keep crime under control in his county, but isn’t his attitude creating stereotypes about people who live in affordable housing. And, dear reader, isn’t it stereotypes and the fears they produce what this is all about?

The residents of Cheroy Woods and Brown Grove oppose the Habitat development proposal because they are afraid that lower income families somehow produce crime. They are also afraid that lower income families will allow their homes to run down thus lowering the market value of other homes in the neighborhood. These fears are based on stereotypes. (I won’t talk about Ashcake Road because I’ve never seen it, but isn’t the assumption that lower-income families will bring more foot traffic to an area also based on stereotype)? Do the people up in Hanover really believe that all poorer people are criminals? Do they really believe that poorer people will have so little pride in their property that they will let it deteriorate?

The problem, friends, is that we’re dealing here with fear. And, as I hinted earlier in the week talking about the fear of some parents to send their kids to Richmond Public Schools, fear is not a rational feeling. It comes from the most primitive parts of our brain. I’m not sure how you dispel the fear other than showing that it is not rational. In the case of Hanover County that would be done by approving the Habitat development and then letting the present residents realize that their fears were unfounded. However, I don’t really believe that’s going to happen. Leaders of the anti-Habitat residents have made it clear that they will come out in large numbers to make sure that the Planning Commission doesn’t make the same mistake again.

For She’s a Jolly Good County

Years, perhaps decades, ago, while I was sojourning in northern Virginia, the District of Columbia had a sex problem. Well, it wasn’t exactly a sex problem; it really was a problem with too many women selling sex a few short blocks from the White House. (I am not implying that being close to the White House created a good market for these women. I assume it was merely a coincidence.) Anyhow, the newspapers wrote a story about it and the Chief of Police decided that these working women could no longer be tolerated along 14th Street. So, on one glorious night, hundreds of police officers took time off from protecting the city from serious crime and dedicated their efforts to freeing the city from vice. Countless women of the night were arrested and carted off. The next day the police put all the offending women in trucks, drove them across the 14th Street Bridge and released them in Arlington. And for one brief shining moment the District of Columbia had no prostitution problem.

This story popped into my head this morning while I was reading the news on page one of the Times-Dispatch. It wasn’t the story about LandAmerica cutting eleven hundred jobs, which is pretty bad news. It wasn’t the story about speed bumps and traffic circles, which isn’t news at all. It was the headline that read “Hanover boasts lowest poverty rate for its size.” The story was contained in the first paragraph, one sentence long: “New census figures released yesterday listed Hanover County with the lowest poverty rate in the nation among counties of its population.”

At first I was giddy with joy. Our neighbor, only a few miles away, had apparently fixed its poverty problem. This was great news indeed, especially after last week’s depressing cover story in Style Weekly, which suggested that Richmond Public Schools can never succeed because of the city’s high concentration of poverty. Hey, if Hanover County has such a low poverty rate they must be doing something that we can copy in Richmond. So what is it they are doing?

I read the article again. There wasn’t any clear explanation for how Hanover had achieved this great feat. The director of the county’s Department of Social Services was surprised by the low poverty rate. She had expected it to be twice as high. But she did make it clear that this low poverty rate didn’t mean that her job was unneeded. There are “many other residents who can’t make their mortgage, car, and day-care payments without [our] assistance.”

Hey, that’s it! The director of Social Services has been making so many assistance payments to residents of Hanover County that they no longer qualify as poor. Now they are merely strapped for cash. Hanover’s solution is easy. Give money to poor people and they will no longer be poor. Why hadn’t we in Richmond thought of it? How simple! We can eliminate our poverty problem by simply giving out more money.

But, wait! The next paragraph suggests that maybe Hanover didn’t do the obvious. It says that development in Hanover County has concentrated on single-family housing, which attracts married families. As everybody knows poverty is lowest among married families and highest among households headed by single women. (And you thought that the marriage amendment was stupid!) The article quoted a demographer (if you know your classical languages, you may understand what such a person does) as suggesting that Hanover had a lower rate of poverty because it was “family concentrated.”

So now things are making more sense. Hanover has less poverty because it has become unfriendly to the poor. It simply provides them with no affordable housing. They can’t live in Hanover if there is no place for them to live.

But would Hanover County be so Machiavellian? Would it deliberately control its zoning and development processes to exclude affordable housing for the less-affluent? Would government officials act this way in the 21st Century?

Wait! Isn’t this the same Hanover County that has Robert Setliff as the Chair of its county Board of Supervisors? Isn’t Setliff the person who was quoted in last week’s Style as saying that the problems of Richmond’s public schools is “none of [Hanover County’s] business,” and sees no value in regional cooperation? Is it so far-fetched that the leaders of such a county would avoid the problems that come with poverty by making sure that poor people stay in Richmond where they belong? Are they any different than the D.C. police who dealt with prostitution by trying to make it Arlington’s problem?

So, the next time you’re driving north and see a “Welcome to Hanover County” sign be sure to read the fine print that says “unless you’re poor.” Then read the engraving on Hanover’s statue of liberty:

Send us your wealthy and your white,
Your middle class we urge from you to flee,
Your wretched refuse we don’t want,
Keep your homeless and your weak,
Across the Chickahominy they can’t cross.