David Strom asks and answers the question …

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Once they shipped Bernie sanders back to England, the plymouth bay colonists prospered

What Does It Mean to Say Somebody Has a 'Right' to Something?

Most people agree that we don't want to live in a society with people starving and living on the streets. We want everybody to have the basics necessary to live. 

But does it make sense to say that people have a "right" to such things? Is it outrageous to demand that able-bodied people work to feed and house themselves?

Many people who call themselves socialists think so. Everybody should have a right to food, clothing, housing, medical care, and all the basics that we expect today. 

…. Socialists always skip the producer. They talk endlessly about consumption as if food grows in grocery stores, homes build themselves, electricity appears by magic, and doctors don't have to work. Every "basic necessity" they demand is someone else's profession, skill, investment, and effort. They speak as though declaring something a right somehow abolishes the need for someone else to create it. It doesn't. If you make consumption the entitlement while treating production as an obligation, you don't eliminate scarcity. You eliminate the incentive to produce.

This claim, though, is based on a fundamentally broken understanding of how those "basics" come to be. None of them merely exist in nature; each of them is the product of somebody's labor, and when you make the claim that everybody has a "right" to them, it is equivalent to saying that they have the right to others' labor. 

Food doesn't just appear. Houses and apartments don't just grow out of the ground. Medical care is not magically produced in the air. All these things are produced, and one reason they are unevenly distributed is that some people and some systems are far better at producing them than others. 

Industrial capitalism is extraordinarily good at producing them—so good, in fact, that the burden for giving them away is relatively small and people are willing to give them away without thinking that much about them. Some of that is out of the goodness of their hearts, and some is just a practical decision based on the fact that we don't want to be stepping over drug addicts who poop in the streets. 

Whatever the reason, it's not that the recipients of others' largesse have a "right" to the labor and efforts of others. And if we rearrange our societies based on the mistaken notion that they do, it turns out the very system that produces all that extra wealth we are generally happy to share collapses.

It's not theoretical that this is the case. Socialism has been tried in many forms and many places*. The Nordic countries, which many socialists wrongly believe are socialist, gave up on the idea back in the 80s and 90s and are now free-market systems (in many cases freer than our own, which has become bogged down with excessive government regulations) with a high level of social insurance. 

One of the reasons why all these countries are working mightily to kick migrants out is that they treat that social insurance as a "right" to state support and thus abuse the system, which is supposed to be for the aged, infirm, and those in temporary distress. When people demand something for free, they are really demanding that others do all the work while they get to consume the product of others' labor. 

This is why communes tend to fall apart. I looked it up, and 90% of all communes fall apart within the first year. Almost none persist for any length of time. There are always makers and takers. 

On a practical level, you can see how perverse the incentives are just by looking at the arguments around SNAP benefits, or all the welfare fraud that we have seen over the past few years. The less people feel that welfare is something to be avoided, the more people abuse the system. 

Telling people they have a "right" to something inevitably means that they have no obligations attached to getting it. 

When some states removed sugary drinks, snacks, cakes, and cookies from eligibility for SNAP benefits, the internet exploded with outrage. Democrats went apoplectic, based on the bizarre notion that it is wrong for taxpayers to have a say in how their money is spent. 

The "basics" aren't manna from heaven. They only exist because people produce them. And there is more than enough to go around, and people are willing to share with others less fortunate, only when you have an economic system that generates a lot of surplus. 

That's capitalism. Before capitalism, every society lived on the edge of famine. Under capitalism, starvation is nonexistent. 

We can argue about the appropriate level of social insurance, who should receive it, and for how long. But once you cross the line into claiming that people have a "right" to the labor of others, you've gone off the rails. 

*We’ve known this since the Pilgrims’ experiment with socialism in 1620-1622

AI Overview:

The Pilgrims arrived in 1620 and were originally required by their English investors to live and farm under a communal system, known as the "common course". This resulted in chronic food shortages, low morale, and near-starvation.

By the spring of 1623, facing another potential famine, Governor William Bradford abandoned the experiment and assigned private parcels of land to each family. This shift in economic incentives drastically increased productivity, and the colony never faced severe food shortages again.

(You can read more on the Pilgrims’ experience here).

“In 1620 Plymouth Plantation was founded with a system of communal property rights. Food and supplies were held in common and then distributed based on equality and need as determined by Plantation officials. People received the same rations whether or not they contributed to producing the food, and residents were forbidden from producing their own food. Governor William Bradford, in his 1647 history, Of Plymouth Plantation, wrote that this system was found to breed much confusion and discontent and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort. The problem was that young men, that were most able and fit for labour, did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men’s wives and children without any recompense. Because of the poor incentives, little food was produced.”

Uh oh

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In response to on X-poster;s comment “if the fact that he is a woman abusing, rape promoting, neo-nazi didn't stop the left from supporting him nothing will”, the author of the Twitchy Post, “Just Mindy” suggests “Maybe he sent a message saying he secretly supports Israel and the right of Jewish people to exist.”

I think she’s kidding.

What's the difference between a rooster and a lawyer? A rooster clucks defiance, while a lawyer f***s de clients

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Lawyer for Columbia University’s Jewish students netted $6.4M payday while preying on own clients: lawsuit

A high-profile lawyer who became one of the nation’s most prominent advocates for Jewish college students after Oct. 7 netted a whopping $6.4 million payday from a settlement with Columbia University — by preying on his own clients, a shocking new lawsuit claims.

Marc Kasowitz’s firm had represented 43 Jewish and Israeli students who alleged Columbia failed to protect them during the violent anti-Israel protests and encampments that engulfed the Ivy League campus in Manhattan after the Oct. 7, 2023, terror attacks on Israel.

The plaintiffs said that at first, they were thrilled to be repped by Kasowitz, a veteran Manhattan litigator who was the legal face of a national campaign against campus antisemitism.

“When Kasowitz rode in on his white horse and was like, ‘Hey, we’re gonna fix this and make this right,’ I was like, ‘Hell, yeah,’ ” said Miles Rubin, a 31-year-old Columbia graduate and former Israel Defense Force reservist whose friends were killed during Hamas’ Oct. 7 assault, to The Post.

Kasowitz’s firm eventually reached a confidential mega-settlement with Columbia over the students’ accusations earlier this year, according to the new lawsuit, which was filed in Manhattan Supreme Court on Sunday.

But Kasowitz then allegedly refused to give the plaintiffs his firm’s billing records from their case, while his cut totaled more than $6.4 million — well over half the settlement’s total payout, court documents claimed.

The top lawyer also allegedly distributed the remaining settlement proceeds through a secretive non-appealable process and threatened that students who refused to sign the deal would have to proceed without his firm’s representation, according to the complaint.

….

According to the new lawsuit, the student plaintiffs were told a third party would cover their legal fees, then were given just five days over the Christmas holiday to sign sweeping releases of their claims.

Only after signing did many learn how much they would actually receive — awards that ultimately ranged from $34,000 to $300,000 — leaving them with no opportunity to reject the settlement or challenge the firm’s allocation of the money, their suit alleges.

The complaint alleges that the remaining settlement funds were divided through a secretive, non-appealable process that offered no explanation for why one student received nearly nine times as much as another.

The lawsuit also challenges the firm’s billing records, alleging Kasowitz refused repeated requests for detailed invoices before eventually producing only a summary claiming more than 7,700 hours of legal work and listing his own billing rate at $2,500 an hour.

The plaintiffs contend in their suit that the firm never produced the underlying bills supporting its more than $6.4 million fee.

They allege in their suit that the firm’s related work hours and fees were “inflated and false,” noting the Columbia case settled before depositions or formal discovery.

Noah Miller, a plaintiff who graduated from Columbia’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation in 2025, said he trusted the firm’s assurances that someone else would pay the legal bills.

“I signed a retainer that said that a third party was paying for everything,” Miller, 28, claimed to The Post.

…..

Lawyer Susan Chana Lask, who filed the new lawsuit against Kasowitz and his firm on behalf of the students, said the case boils down to a simple proposition.

“These students got suckered in,” Lask told The Post. “The retainer said there would be no legal fees. Then they signed away all of their claims before they even knew what they were getting.”

Lask also blasted the firm’s claimed billing records, claiming no court overseeing a civil rights case would approve rates as high as those claimed by Kasowitz.

“If any court sees this, and they will, there is no court that I believe would allow $2,500 an hour,” said Lask, a veteran civil rights litigator who has argued landmark civil rights cases in both the US Supreme Court and the Second Circuit.

Pending in Riverside

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24 Oval Avenue, guide price $2.495million, 19 days. 1939 Tudor, convenient to everything and on a nice street.

The late owner lived there until he died last December at age 99, so he and his family got full use of the house since their purchase in the 1960s. Some improvements to the house were made recently, but the new owners, assuming this isn’t being sold to a developer, will want to upgrade the kitchen and baths at the very least, and — who knows? — maybe even add a garage.

Oh, the humanity!

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New work requirements could end Medicaid for 1/3 of current welfare recipients in CT.

Starting this January, 2027, those collecting welfare from their working neighbors will have to spend 80 hours a month either:

  • working

  • Participating in job training

  • volunteering, and/or

  • Enrolling in and attending higher education, technical school or a high school equivalency program.

Twenty hours a week devoted to any combination of those activities unless the welfare recipient:

  • suffers from blindness, other disabilities,

  • is enjoying a “chronic substance use disorder” (alcocholics and junkies, you can relax),

  • is nuts

  • Has cancer or HIV or any number of other debilitating illnesses

Connecticut Department of Social Services estimates that one-third of the 316,000 recipients of HUSKY D could be forced to get out of their houses and do something useful either for themselves or others; that’s a lot of deadbeats who are going to suffer such an indignity, so it’s no wonder Connecticut has joined with 24 other Democrat-led states to block the changes.

I’m so old, I remember when Bill Clinton and his Democrats enacted the same workfare requirements, only harsher:


AI Overview

President Bill Clinton reformed welfare through the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) of 1996. The legislation replaced the open-ended entitlement program with the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) block grant, mandating that recipients engage in work activities within two years of receiving benefits or face termination of assistance.

Key federal workfare requirements of the law include:

  • Time Limits: A lifetime limit of 60 months (5 years) for federal welfare assistance.

  • Work Hours: Able-bodied adults are typically required to participate in work or work-related activities for at least 30 hours per week. [Trump wants 20 — Ed]

  • State Flexibility & Sanctions: States design their own specific workfare programs but must meet strict federal participation rates. If states fail to move a required percentage of their caseloads into the workforce, their federal funding is reduced.

    Food Stamp Limits: For childless, able-bodied adults, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits are generally limited to three months in a 36-month period unless the individual is working or participating in a workfare program.

Schumer: "we'll substitute cow dung for hamburger"

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Bringing new meaning to “Chuck steak”

STEVE FORBES: Chuck Schumer has a beef with beef, but doesn’t even know how to grill it

Politicians who demonized beef now want Washington to get involved in regulating the industry

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has never worked a cattle ranch. He has never run a meatpacking plant. And after America saw his backyard grilling stunt, it is fair to ask whether he knows how to properly grill a cheeseburger.

Yet as Americans prepare to celebrate the 250th anniversary of our nation’s independence this July 4th — in the heart of summer grilling season — Schumer wants Washington to muscle its way into the U.S. beef industry.

What could possibly go wrong?

Schumer’s so-called "Family Grocer and Farmer Relief Act" is classic Washington liberalism: find a real problem, misdiagnose the cause, prescribe a cure that makes things worse and call it "relief." We have seen this in healthcare, energy, housing and education. Politicians create or worsen a crisis, blame private enterprise and then use the pain as an excuse to expand government control.

Beef prices are high. Families feel it every time they go to the grocery store. But the cause is not a cartoon conspiracy by meatpackers. It is basic economics: strong demand and tight supply.

Retail beef demand rose sharply from 2019 to 2025, while America’s cattle herd fell to its lowest level in 75 years. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, total U.S. cattle and calves stood at just 86.2 million head as of Jan. 1, 2026. That is down sharply from Jan. 1, 2019, when the inventory stood at 94.8 million head, a drop of roughly 9% in seven years. The 2025 calf crop was a record-low 32.9 million head, the second consecutive year a new record low was set.

That is not price gouging. That is supply and demand.

For years, drought battered major cattle-producing states. Ranchers faced soaring feed, energy, land, labor and regulatory costs. Inflationary Biden-era policies — backed by Schumer and his allies — made everything more expensive for farmers, processors and consumers alike.

Now Schumer wants to punish the very supply chain families depend on.

Cattle are not widgets. Congress cannot pass a bill and produce more beef. Chickens can be raised for market in weeks. Beef cattle take years. From the birth of a heifer to the point where her offspring can ultimately enter beef production, the process can take roughly three years. That long cycle depends on weather, feed, financing, land, labor, trade policy and confidence that government will not suddenly change the rules midstream.

No Senate press conference can speed up biology.

The facts on meatpacking also demolish the Democratic price-gouging narrative. Beef packer margins in 2025 averaged a loss of roughly $138 per head. Tyson Foods reported an operating loss of more than $1 billion in its beef division that year. These are not the numbers of monopolists pocketing windfall profits. They are the numbers of a capital-intensive industry squeezed by the tightest cattle supply in more than three generations.

But Schumer’s bill ignores all that. It also ignores the damage done by years of anti-business policies imposed by the same politicians now pretending to be champions of consumers.

Instead of lowering costs, reducing regulatory barriers, encouraging investment, expanding processing capacity and keeping trade channels open Schumer wants Washington to politically restructure the beef industry in the middle of a supply crunch.

That is economic malpractice.

Breaking up companies may make for good populist sound bites, but it is rarely clean, quick or cheap. In meat processing, forced restructuring would mean duplicated infrastructure, higher financing costs, stalled investment, litigation and uncertainty across the supply chain. The likely result: fewer efficiencies, less capacity, more risk and higher prices at the meat counter.

Wealthy shoppers buying prime cuts from boutique butchers may barely notice. Working families buying ground beef for burgers, tacos, meatloaf and weeknight dinners will.

There is a better way. Washington should reduce the cost pressures that made beef more expensive in the first place. Ease unnecessary regulatory burdens on farmers, ranchers and processors. Lower energy and transportation costs. Keep import and export markets open during changing supply cycles. Reduce tariff and input-cost pressures that make herd rebuilding slower and more expensive.

Most of all, let markets work.

And let us not forget who is pushing this scheme. Schumer’s allies include the Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Sen Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., wing of politics — the same crowd that has spent years demonizing beef, lecturing Americans about what they eat, and flirting with Green New Deal ideas that would make food, fuel and electricity more expensive.

Inflationary Biden-era policies — backed by Schumer and his allies — made everything more expensive for farmers, processors and consumers alike.

One day they tell us to eat less beef to save the planet. The next day they pretend to be shocked that beef is more expensive.

America’s beef market will recover, but not if Washington turns a supply problem into a government-control problem. Herds can be rebuilt. Investment can return. Prices can ease. But that requires stability, lower costs and confidence — not politicians threatening to remake an entire industry for a campaign talking point.

Price cuts

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48 Byfield Lane, 3% — $3.495 million to $3.395. I might have been tempted to take a larger reduction, given current market conditions that are seeing properties go almost overnight, but at least this cut was taken after just nine days; no sense waiting around.

Speaking of “adjusting” an original price, the Stamford blockhouse (Greenwich mailing address) at 198 E. Middle Patent Road has taken a second, modest reduction after 245 days on the market: $1.995 November 4, 2025, $1.895 on January 15th, and now $1.795 as of today.

"People's" Housing" and "People's Rutabaga Emporiums" – Tammany Hall returns to New York

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Update, but I’ll put it here on top, to set the stage:

DON SURBER: Why They Try Communism. “Communism is not about economics. It is about power.”

Mamdani officials scramble to ease concerns about public supermarkets — but local business leaders aren’t buying it

The Mamdani administration is scrambling to ease concerns about its plans to open government-owned supermarkets — but recent talks have instead raised even greater alarms among local business owners, The Post has learned.

New York City bodega owners came to City Hall last week for a “roundtable discussion” at the invitation of Julie Su, deputy mayor for economic justice — only to get barraged with “intrusive” questions about their businesses, a source close to the situation said.

[“Deputy mayor for economic justice” says it all. — Ed]

Ahead of the meeting last Monday — attended by reps from city agencies and trade groups for the city’s 13,000 bodegas — Su asked the group in a questionnaire, “What items are sold the most at your stores?” and “Where is your profit margin the greatest?” sources said.

There are some 13,000 bodegas in New York City, who were represented at a meeting on Monday with city officials.c.moulton – stock.adobe.com

The bodega reps declined to answer, according to sources.

“They wanted us to share proprietary information with them but they don’t answer our questions and that’s why there is distrust,” said a bodega rep who did not want to be identified.

Business owners gripe that city officials are only now seeking their input — and seemingly as an afterthought — after sparking alarms in April with a surprise plan to build a public grocery store in East Harlem at La Marqueta. That store will cost a whopping $30 million to build – and threatens the livelihood of more than a dozen existing stores nearby.

The city insists its socialist-inspired vision for at least one public supermarket in each of the city’s five boroughs – the first of which will open in Hunts Point in the Bronx next year – will not directly compete with existing stores nearby.

“We met with bodega owners so they could help us plan and ensure that we take into account their challenges and their role as a part of the food ecosystem,” Su said in a statement to The Post.

“One of the questions we wanted to understand is whether there are key products bodegas sell and rely on that we should not sell. That’s how serious we are about not undercutting them.” 

Grocers and bodega owners, however, are struggling to make sense of such claims.

“Mamdani’s plan to subsidize the grocery stores with taxpayer funds so they can offer rock-bottom prices on essential items threatens grocers who operate on 2% to 3% profit margins. They say they have been forced to raise prices as costs from fuel, tariffs and property taxes have soared.”

….

So far, the Mamdani administration’s promises sound like empty campaign slogans, say industry executives. Meanwhile, it’s provoking alarms with nosy questions that have also included, “What is the main thing people come into your store for? What else do they buy while there?”

“It seems like a clumsy, one-sided fishing expedition,” a food policy expert who did not want to be identified told The Post.

“I would be put off if my local government asked me questions about my profits and margins,” the source who does business with the city said. “It’s none of their business.”

Of course, like all socialist projects, it’s about graft and loot passed on to cronies, not “the People”. This particular 9,000 sq. ft vegetable stall will cost $3,000 sq. ft. vs the typical $900 sq. ft. a Trader Joe’s or other commercial supermarket spends: $30 million vs $2.7 million: plenty of money to pass around to political friends.

Mamdani’s $30M city-owned grocery store will cost 4 times the normal price to build — and lose $300K a year in perpetuity: experts

Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s $30 million city‑owned East Harlem grocery store is going to cost taxpayers roughly four times what rival markets spend on construction, industry sources told The Post — and will likely run at a loss in perpetuity.

At $30 million, Mamdani’s 9,000-square-foot East Harlem grocery store [built on city-owned land] would cost more than $3,000 per square foot to construct.

But when it comes to building a new Whole Foods or a Trader Joe’s from the ground up, the costs are much lower, according to a real estate broker who works with prominent grocery chains. Those costs would run at about $800 per square foot, or $7.2 million, for a 9,000-square-foot location.

As for Mamdani’s $30 million shop, according to a grocery store consultant with knowledge of New York development, “no supermarket operator would pay that number.”

“Over $3,000 psf?” the broker emailed. “Someone is making extra vacation money!”

What’s more, the market would have to bring in a whopping $137,000 in daily sales (equivalent to $50 million a year) — which would convert to a roughly $13,000 daily profit — to recoup the $30 million outlay in six years.

That’s an astonishing annual sum, especially because the top five city supermarkets — often with larger footprints — roughly earned between $16 million to $27 million in annual sales in 2025, according to Food Trade News.

The ranking of the top 20 city markets overall for annual sales included familiar names. Key Food notched about $11 million per store, Krasdale scored about $9.4 million per location, ASG Stores — with brands like Associated — also did about $11 million per store. Fine Fare brought in $6.5 million per locale, and Food Bazaar averaged about $20 million per store.

The store will likely lose at least $300,000 a year, possibly in perpetuity, despite the store being rent-free, according to the consultant, a cost that will have to be borne by the taxpayer.

The La Marqueta store wouldn’t open until 2029, with other municipal grocery store sites selected and opened sooner, officials said.

It wasn’t immediately clear why it would require so many years for the store to open. Typically, upon taking possession of a space, it would take six to 12 months to construct a grocery store, the firm partner said.

The store will likely lose at least $300,000 a year, possibly in perpetuity, despite the store being rent-free, according to the consultant, a cost that will have to be borne by the taxpayer.

The La Marqueta store wouldn’t open until 2029, with other municipal grocery store sites selected and opened sooner, officials said.

“It wasn’t immediately clear [and never will be — Ed] why it would require so many years for the store to open. Typically, upon taking possession of a space, it would take six to 12 months to construct a grocery store, the firm partner said.”

PUBLIC SLUMS

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Mamdani's Rent Freeze Threatens Everyone Who Owns Anything

David Strom, HotAir:

  Tenants' groups and leftwing activists are cheering New York City's newly announced multiyear rent freeze. But Mayor Zohran Mamdani's rent scheme is headed for a judicial smackdown at the U.S. Supreme Court.

        In 2023 and twice in 2024, a hesitant Supreme Court declined to hear challenges by building owners to New York state's rent regulations. Lower courts had ruled that the regulations diminished the value of rental properties, but the state had good reasons to balance the rights of owners with the need to protect tenants.

        At that time, Justice Clarence Thomas said the constitutionality of New York's rent regulations is "an important and pressing question," and he looked forward to a case that clearly demonstrated the government was going too far to take an owner's property.

        Mamdani is giving Thomas what he's been waiting for -- on a silver platter.

        Moscow Mamdani's scheme to deny landlords any rent hikes at all reeks of the kind of expropriation of private property that occurs in Cuba, Venezuela and other socialist nations. Not in America. It is prohibited by the U.S. Constitution.

        The Fifth Amendment bars government from imposing regulations that make a person's property worthless.

        Everyone who owns anything -- a home or a business of any sort -- should feel threatened by Mamdani's Bolshevik scheme to deny building owners fair compensation, doom rental properties to rapid decay, and then literally seize their buildings. After landlords, who's next?

        Under the framework established by the New York state legislature, the Rent Guidelines Board must determine allowable rent hikes based on the specific costs landlords incur. But Mamdani's handpicked RGB members threw the letter of the law out the window.

        Fuel costs went up 11% in the last year, and insurance went up 10.5%, but Mamdani's RGB announced Thursday that landlords will get no increases this year or the next. And, according to Mamdani's campaign promises, not even in the years after, as long as he is mayor.

        Zero rent hikes will cause buildings to rapidly fall into disrepair -- just what the new mayor intends. On May 29, he announced that when landlords fail to keep buildings up to code, "we will take aggressive legal action" to "transfer ownership to responsible stewards -- stewards that include community land trusts, nonprofits and even the tenants themselves."

        New York law already allows that, but only under extreme circumstances. It applied to fewer than 30 properties in 2024 and generally doesn't result in permanent confiscation. But Mamdani's rent freeze will turn many landlords into targets because they'll lack the revenue to keep apartments up to code. The rent freeze deliberately creates the conditions for widespread confiscation. Building owners get zip.

        Think Bolshevik Moscow in 1917, when the communists annulled private property rights, seized buildings and decreed them communal living spaces. Lefties now become the new land barons.

And what happens when “the people” do take over housing? Exactly what you

We've Never Tried 'Real Social Housing': Hall Of Eternal Shame

Mitch Berg 8:30 AM | July 03, 2026

It's one of those things that probably sounds like a great idea in a sophomore political science study group, or at a tony yoga studio full of upper-middle-class non-profit workers:   get rid of landlords, and convert the housing market to "social housing".   Which is another term for "socialist housing", without the "ist".  

I mean, like so many things coming from the ultra-left, it seems to wrap a solution to a difficult problem in a neat, simplistic, dare I say reductionist package that rolls right off the tongue, or the keyboard:

To paraphrase the classic sophomore political science cliché, just like the problems with Marxism, "we've never tried "real" "public builder social housing".  

But if you are old enough to have cognitive memories of Bill Clinton's administration, you know - yes, we have. 

In the 1950s-1960s, when a previous, much more innocent generation of the left embarked on the "Great Society and the War on Poverty", there was a well-meaning campaign of building public ("social") housing.   

The results were socially, criminologically, and economically catastrophic.  Some of the projects are still synonyms for horribly misguided government interventions with horrific results.  

For those that are too young to remember that more sensible age, and whose education ignored that history, I present to you...

...the Top Ten Worst "Social Housing" Fiascos Of the 1950s- 1990s.  

These are the ten worst, most dismal examples of "social housing".  

So far. 

10, 9 and 8. Rockwell Gardens, Henry Horner Homes and Stateway Gardens

Chicago's housing authority was particularly aggressive at building "social housing" from the 1950s into the '70s; the city was (and remains) highly represented on lists of places with tight correlations between government housing and all manner of blight.   

All three were demolished in the 2000s as even Chicago started to realize they had a problem:

You can follow the link to Berg’s top ten list, but closer to home, we have Bridgeport’s Father Panik Village as the perfect example:

I originally drafted this post with lengthy excerpts from two different articles and you can read them here and here, but this post is already too long, so here’s an AI summary: bottom line, two-parent, blue collar working families moved out, welfare-mothers and their undisciplined children moved in, chaos and destruction followed.


AI Overview

Father Panik Village, a public housing project in Bridgeport, Connecticut, was demolished in 1994 due to severe gang violence, open-air drug markets, deindustrialization, and chronic municipal neglect. The area ultimately fell into such extreme decay that officials condemned it as a "criminal's paradise".

The demise of the complex was driven by several interconnected factors:

  • Deindustrialization: Following WWII, the factories bordering the complex (like the Remington Arms plant) downsized or closed. This led to mass unemployment and poverty within the community.

  • Drug Epidemic & Gang Violence: In the 1970s and 1980s, the complex was heavily impacted by the crack cocaine epidemic. Courtyards became open-air drug markets, and the area was plagued by constant shootings, murders, and firebombings.

  • Systemic Disinvestment & Poor Management: The Bridgeport Housing Authority failed to properly maintain the property. As conditions worsened, maintenance ceased, leading to severe rodent infestations, uncollected trash, and broken-down facilities.

As for what awaits New York City, we already know that, too: we have the example of that city’s largest slumlord, the New York City Housing Authority:

AI Overview

The New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) faces a systemic crisis of disrepair across its 330+ developments. The agency requires an estimated $78 billion in capital repairs, struggling with aging infrastructure, vermin infestations, lead hazards, frequent heat and hot water outages, and broken plumbing.