Even if we had commie blocks in the US, believing they would ever be affordable is pure fantasy. The corpofascists would just collude with each other and price fix things so that they’d cost the $3k/month that current lowest-tier shithole apartments cost and then everything else would get a major price hike.
Well, this picture is just poor city development. Living in appartement buildings 3-5-7-9 floors high is all very fine, IF
- The neighbourhood is (pedestrian) permeable enough. The space around it must be pedestrian/cycle friendly and green. The blocks in this picture are way to wide, forming too big barriers for local slow traffic
- there is a bit of variation in colour, size, shape. A neighbourhood with such blocks can surely have 4 identical buildings, but not 30… It feels uneasy to humans this way. We need a taller or oddly shaped or nicely coloured one once in a while, as a reference point, as things that give the neighbourhood a bit of an identity
- The buildings themselves are high enough quality (well insulated, every appartement has 1 or 2 real balconies, …)
- there are plenty of playgrounds and sports facilities and cars are in general carparks in garages at the edge of the neighbourhood, not on the streets
- neighbourhood is well connected to the rest of the city
- there are plenty of jobs in the area. Probably the hardest part.
May I introduce you to the concept of microdistrict. That’s how the original soviet developments were planned out - every house is guaranteed to have necessities like stores, a polyclinic, a school, a kindergarden, or a fire department within reasonable distance. Usually, walking distance. Everything is pedestrian permeable, there’s public transport connecting the “sleeping districts” where there were mostly apartments to the industrial areas where the jobs were. And yeah, playgrounds in or near every building.
Jobs in the same area as apartments isn’t really happening though, office buildings and industry tends to be away.
Good on paper, terrible when commuting to work 2 hours one way in a packed train.
Yeah, but at least we got WFH nowadays.
Giving people housing doesn’t solve the problems that caused them to be homeless in the first place.
Now you have a concentrated block of people with not just issues, but subscriptions. Mental health, drug, and alcohol abuse.
You have to address those issues FIRST, THEN get them housed.
Otherwise you get this:
or this:
or this:
https://www.opb.org/article/2023/10/16/argyle-gardens-north-portland-housing/
Giving people housing doesn’t solve the problems that caused them to be homeless in the first place.
Yes
Now you have a concentrated block of people with not just issues, but subscriptions. Mental health, drug, and alcohol abuse.
Yes
You have to address those issues FIRST, THEN get them housed.
No.
You house them and then help then with those issues while in their new homes.
Now the hard and really really important part, you address what caused the issues they were facing.
You create jobs (big incentives for businesses to set up near by), you directly employ people in meaningful government funded projects.
You provide first rate education opertunities (both for adults and children).
You provide good high quality social areas (both indoor and outdoor).
You provide first rate socially funded healthcare both for physical and mental issues.
You legalise drugs so their access can be safe and better controlled. You use the tax money from that to go hard on any non legal drugs.
Or, now follow me on this… OR you hospitalize them while they are being treated.
Not as a default. People should only be hospitalised if they medically need it.
It also doesn’t address the societal issues which lead to their addiction in the first place.
Again, that’s what I’m talking about. If someone is mentally ill or has addiction issues so severe they are homeless then hospitalization is medically necessary.
Get them fit first, get them the tools they need to survive, then get them housed.
Otherwise all you’re doing is sealing them in a room with untreated issues, making it all 1000x worse.
Again, that’s what I’m talking about. If someone is mentally ill or has addiction issues so severe they are homeless then hospitalization is medically necessary.
How the fuck can notary can notarize selling home by an addict? They are supposed to verify mental wellbeing of both parites, especially seller. Not just home, but the only home! Notaries refuse selling the only home even by mentally stable and not addicted people for tiniest reasons.
Oh, nobody is talking about SELLING homes to addicts, they’re owned by some non-profit and are just supposed to give them to addicts. :)
As someone from a post-soviet country, and had to live in one of those… there’s plenty of reasons to shit on them.
Ok im gonna try typing out some of the observations of living in commie blocks from personal experience as well as some stories from my friends. Im also spoilering it for anyone who doesn’t want to read the list… also also… not a comprehensive list of everything, just what I can think of on my lunch break
here goes
- The first thing to point out in my opinion is the construction: The construction of these were often rushed so at best they require expensive renovations and at worst they collapse, see tofu dreg in china
- Safety: This is something I remember from my safety classes back in school. We had to make a fire escape plan for our houses, with at least 2 exits… which I really struggled with cause I lived on a high floor, so no jumpimg out the window, and no fire escapes only meant I could do 1. So the commie apartments don’t meet our modern safety standards
- Location: A lot of this down to the economic collapse of various commusist countries, but many of them are quite literally in a middle of nowhere, in terms of finding a job. This is something I struggled with a lot, cause any job I could find would require a car to commute
- Parking space: The commie blocks were often designed with green space in mind which would be nice, if they weren’t also not designed with the idea of every household having a car, so when you have 16 parking spaces and the rest of the 40 cars in the mud that was once grass they start to look a lot more depressing
- Accesability: The majority of commie blocks had no elevators, with the exception of quite tall ones. And even then the elevator usually started at the first floor rather than ground floor. This means if you’re disabled and the only available social housing is commie blocks… tough shit cause you’re not getting in. I know someone who’s a single mother with a disabled adult daughter who’s she the primary caretaker off. She would have to carry her daugher up and down a flight of stairs everyday, and then also drag the electric wheelchair up
- Renovations: Pretty simple - the apartments are usually owned by individuals, rather than a housing company, and getting all 60 or so people to agree to renovate the outside of the building is imposible, with both poorer people and older people stubborn to change, as well as alcoholics and the like
- Utilities/equipment: Many of the commie blocks in my area didn’t have city gas, that means for cooking anything you either had to have an electric stove, or more commonly from what I’ve seen buy big gas tanks and lug them up to your floor. They also lacked extractor fans, so I hope you like greasy walls
- Insulation: Have you seen soviet wall carpets? It’s cause even with the windows closed you could feel the breeze through the walls. The winters there meant multiple jackets indoors, and the summers were unbearably hot too
- Insulation pt 2: With high humidity it also meant mold. Fun right?
- Insulation pt 3: No noise insulation either. At least meant the cops got called a lot for all the spousal abuse
Just to name a few :3… im gonna go eat now
Woah! Thanks for this, interesting hearing a firsthand account. Very similar to trailer park life in the US, in my experience. Public housing/the projects are also similar but I never spent much time in them, strong racial divide in most of the US between trailer parks and projects.
I’m assuming a fair amount of drugs/addiction, small scale petty crime, and domestic violence? Cookouts and parties? Is there pride in being from a commie block? Is there a culture and music? Also, while I’m blasting you with questions, any chance you know a good documentary or book/article?
