Too many people always associate subsidized housing with violent crime.

[traveller]

I've lived in HUD-subsidized housing for almost 7 years and other than one of my neighbors feeding raccoons and another flushing foreign things down their toilets and clogging the complex's septic system, I had no problems with my neighbors. There have never been any shootings, homicides, armed robberies, carjackings, or fights at my complex, including in the parking lot.

And yet all housing that isn't at least $3,000 a month or more is always considered synonymous with violent crime, gangs, shootings in broad daylight, homicides, armed carjackings, vandalism, and robberies. It's like every time someone thinks of subsidized housing, including for people with disabilities, where they get to pay only a third of their monthly income for rent, the only thing that comes to mind is like Detroit and even East St. Louis. Like, they think only of run-down old buildings where half the interior drywall is missing, even exposing the wood studs that support the wall, wiring prone to short circuits and electrical fires, half the roof all full of holes and areas of missing shingles, 75 percent of the building being vacant and used by gangs and gang recruits, people making methamphetamine and crack cocaine. Like clearly to those people, only gated communities, built like even the Los Angeles neighborhood of Beverly Park, are safe at all. Like to too many people, only the richest neighborhoods, where movie stars and famous Hollywood celebrities live, and that are surrounded by iron gates, concrete walls, and armed military security, are safe to live in.