Reply #11: Though unspoken,the breaking point is education...

[catnhatnh]

Any decent town can put up a health clinic and a food pantry....but a single child at 5K a year is going to cost 60k to educate...and multiply that by 3 or 4 and we're talking real money...Now an affordable housing project for ten young couples means over 2 million tax dollars spent and even if you call 100k "affordable" then 100k x 10 x12 = 12 million dollars-meaning that even if you could tax the homes at 10 percent (1,2) million you would STILL lose money (800k)...Now suggest a complex for 500 affordable units...
I live in a city in this state with both a high tax rate and reasonable real estate prices (though only relatively,due to the bubble)...We have our own high school, a hospital,several shopping malls, and an industrial base...less than 20 miles from us you can find towns with a tax rate less than 1/4 of ours that have almost nothing...they come here to shop,they come here for health care,and they come here to work,and then retreat to their "nicer" communities...their town will usually pay tuition to a larger area and bus their kids to high school.And there ain't "affordable" housing within miles...
Until education is a federal or at least minimum state requirement,affordable housing is a dream of the poor and a curse for the cities...