Today's New York Times has an interesting Mireya Navarro article about "poor doors" -- how you access your low-income apartment that's tucked into a luxury high-rise. Heaven forfend that you should pass through the same lobby as your betters.
Heavy sarcasm here, in case you had any doubts.
It's not quite as simple, or simply distasteful, as it sounds.
Developers say the configuration of one building with an attached affordable segment works better when the market-rate units are for sale, as in the case of condos. If that is the choice, the developer is required to provide two separate entrances under the current rules of the program. [The affordable units are only available as rentals.]
Moreover, as Gina Bellafante wrote in a July Times article about the issue,
It isn’t simply that rich people find poorer people yucky, though in some cases that will certainly be true, but that owners typically prefer living among other owners, out of the belief that this arrangement best protects the value of their asset. Renting has the taint of transience, diminished stability and so on.
But it still runs counter to what many of us love about cities -- the opportunities for all kinds of different people to cross paths under all kinds of circumstances.
And just think what the reaction would be if it were a "people of color door" and a "white door".
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