Who wins from a slum? Part 2, the bystanders
[Continued from Part 1.]
Yesterday we began our journey into the population of a slum, a descent through spiraling rings of the economic underworld, with those who need a slum – extremely poor renters – and those who gain direct benefit – landlord of illicit structures, chiefs and headman, and protection rackets. They’re reprehensible, but there is worse to come.
Keep moving, keep moving, there’s more yet to see
C. Who takes advantage of the slum’s existence?
Now we descend another level, to those who, upon encountering a slum, find ways to use it for their own purposes.
As long as you’re here, we want to use you
7. Organized crime; guns and drugs. I’ve written before about clandestine occupancy, the uses to which unoccupied property can be put. Slums have always been associated with crime, for the simple reason that organized crime finds refuge in a slum, a convenient place that has seceded from the city around it. As I wrote in Haiti’s slums: houses of crime:
When a whole neighborhood becomes a haven of clandestine occupancy, not only does it threaten its own denizens, it imperils all around it. Unless the downward spiral of insular lawless tyranny is reversed, the consequences are appeasement, accommodation, or violence, as described in a horrifying New York Times story on the raids into
Power fills vacuums.
A window in the pediatric ward of a small hospital in Cite Soleil was shattered by a stray bullet of an unknown gunman. Nobody was hurt. [Photo: New York Times]
8. Criminals seeking human shields. Criminals love slums as hideouts, for by surrounding themselves with people, they neutralize the law. As I wrote in Haiti’s slums: houses of crime:
For what the gangs offer, whether as protection or as patronage, is order of a kind, order in servility.
The biggest of the United Nations operations have been aimed at one of the most wanted and feared of all the gang leaders, an unlikely and unpredictable power broker in his 20s who goes simply by the name Evans. Evans and his groups have been linked to a rash of kidnappings in the capital, and lately his men have been locked in fierce battles with United Nations peacekeepers.
By the imposition of order, and with the guise of ’speaking for the poor,’ the criminals gain a veneer of respectability, and they trade as if independent sovereigns:
In his initial months in office, Rene Preval, who had been Mr. Aristide’s prime minister as well as president from 1996 to 2001, followed a similarly conciliatory tack. He negotiated with gang leaders, including Evans, inviting them at times to face-to-face meetings in the presidential palace, officials say.
Appeasement never works — it emboldens the criminals.
The kidnapping spree at the end of last year (i.e. 2006 – Ed..] was the last straw. As the country prepared for Christmas, street thugs began grabbing people off the street, taking them into the slums and demanding ransoms.
Then the kidnappers began singling out children. In one horrible episode, a teenage girl was killed and her eyes were gouged out. Then a school bus of children was seized by gunmen, prompting many terrified parents to keep their children hidden at home.
Brazilian soldiers with the United Nations Stabilization Mission in
I stay away from reading such stories, because they are too upsetting – but they are part of some people’s lives every day.
Nice doggie gang, nice doggie
9. Politicians seeking vote banks. Slum dwellers are people too, and in genuine democracies, they get to vote, and their votes matter. Rich or poor, all votes are equal, so elected officials doing their political calculus realize that slums represent vote banks.
Our votes can dig your political grave
Though many a populist has arisen from the slums, slum dwellers get used to disappointment, because votes are political equity, with a variable return:
Affordable housing policy is always an output of the government factory, [which means that] voters and stakeholders [need] confidence that their elected officials will pursue and implement wise policies that enable the nation to thrive and its citizens to prosper.
Elections are periodic. If the investment fails, you make another investment. Elections thus create a feedback loop where the politicians have to demonstrate their returns. That periodicity of market dynamic is why democracy works. It creates accountability.
When the voters are empowered, that is. Slum dwellers are often disempowered, and deceived by political vaporware: promises made with no intention of their being kept, or even the best of intentions and the worst of commitments.
In the syllogism of public service, not all politicians are charlatans; many are champions. But many is the demagogue who rode to power on a wave of discontentment, and then simply forgot those who brought him to power.
“Every man a king!”
For them is reserved a special level in our economic underworld.
D. Who is happy to have a slum elsewhere?
You can ignore it as long as you don’t have to see it
Our last circle is reserved for those who are most distant from the slum, because they are distant from the slum dwellers.
10. Relocation-enablers. Long ago, when I was a college undergraduate, I had for a time during my freshman year a job with Buildings and Grounds (B&G), now since renamed Facilities maintenance Operations (FMO). In said job, I was paid something like four bucks and hour, given a broom or rake, and told to sweep freshman dorms (in one of which I lived) or rake leaves from the walkways.
One day it was raining, and arriving at work (a dormitory basement full of rakes, brooms, and Portuguese B&G men) and punching in, I reached for my rake, only to be told by the most senior of the workers, “Go hide.” What, I asked. What do you mean? “Go hide,” they urged me. “Go hide.”
But punch in first
I think of that because it is often the case that what passes for slum upgrading, or has passed for it in times gone by, essentially involves sweeping the poor out of their current slum, which has become an eyesore because it is visible from the high-rises nearby, and dispersing them somewhere else. Anywhere else.
Go hide, cities say to slum dwellers. Go hide. Live somewhere quietly, where I can’t see you and don’t have to think about you. Live near the prison, the work house, the asylum or the dump. Just don’t live near me:
Regulations such as ’snob zoning’ can be subconsciously used to make NIMBYism (Not In My Back Yard) respectable. In this we are no different from our forebears, who frequently would site affordable housing –
Columbia Point, 1955: so near to
– next to the prison, the workhouse, the mental institution, or the dump
Clean up the smelly dump, reads the sign, before it kills us all
– making it into an isolated enclave –
A world unto itself, a world inside
– where ’those people’ could live, out of sight and out of mind.
That kind of isolation is one of the many reasons I believe we should tear down the slum high-rises.
There is a special level in Hell reserved, I think, for those who could do something about slums, but can’t be bothered because it’s easier simply to warehouse the poor somewhere else, anywhere else.
Conclusion
Slums are robust because they are so interconnected, and also because they have so many hidden winners.
Watch out for hidden snares
This post has taken me hours to write, because it depresses me to discover just how many separate constituencies benefit from slums, and how many of them do so for cynical, selfish reasons. By nature I’m an optimist; that’s why AHI’ is working with Slum Dwellers International. Though difficult, these problems can be solved – but it sure would be easier without all those hidden winners preserving the status quo.
Even the righteous must be on the lookout
[Hat tip: Anne Usher, FUVAAL.]
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