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Reading Comprehension

Neighborhood

1
In Seattle, the neighbors don’t want apartments for formerly homeless seniors
2
nearby. In Los Angeles, they don’t want more high-rises. In San Jose, Calif., they
3
don’t want tiny homes. In Phoenix, they don’t want design that’s not midcentury
4
modern.
5
Homeowners in each of these places share a common conviction: that owning a
6
parcel of land gives them a right to shape the world beyond its boundaries. The roots
7
of this idea are as old as nuisance laws that have tried to limit how one property
8
owner can harm another. Over the decades, though, homeowners have expanded
9
their claim on the world beyond their lot lines. This means they look out for schools
10
and streets in ways that are vital to American communities. But increasingly it also
11
means the senior affordable housing, the high-rises and the tiny homes — also
12
arguably vital to the larger community — are never built.
13
“One of the reasons why we always justified the mortgage interest deduction was
14
we wanted people to be rooted in their communities,” said Vicki Been, the faculty
15
director of New York University’s Furman Center and a former commissioner of
16
Housing Preservation and Development in New York City. The idea was for people
17
to be invested in the quality of nearby schools, the safety of neighborhood parks
18
and the outcomes of local elections. In one sense, the triumph of this idea should
19
be celebrated, she said. But the danger of it is becoming more apparent, too.
20
“Communities always need to be changing,” she said, “and we can’t have a process
21
that gives every individual sort of a veto over change.”
22
The new tax law has raised the possibility that homeownership may be losing some
23
of its privileged status in American society, as the benefits of the mortgage interest
24
and property tax deductions shrink. Those changes could dampen how attractive
25
housing looks as an asset. But it would take much more to alter the belief that
26
owning a home in America today means that you effectively own a neighborhood,
27
too.
28
That notion didn’t make much sense when most Americans lived on farms, where
29
the neighbors were remote and the value of property came primarily from what
30
happened on it. The boom in city living changed both of these things. “As people
31
are increasingly living in urban areas really close to each other, it starts to be the
32
case that so much of the value of your property is bound up in things that are
33
happening outside of your parcel,” said Lee Fennell, a law professor at the
34
University of Chicago who has written about what she calls the “unbounded” nature
35
of our homes. In denser living, a trash dump or a park next door affects the value of
36
your parcel. So does the access to jobs, the ease of transportation and the amenities
37
nearby.
38
The story of how Americans came to peer beyond their own properties is also,
39
inescapably, about race. As urbanization brought blacks and whites closer together,
40
white communities reacted with racially restrictive covenants, aiming to keep blacks
41
and their perceived threat to property values out of white neighborhoods. The
42
Supreme Court ruled such covenants unenforceable in 1948, but they had long-
43
lasting effects on how homeowners looked at the world around them, and the need
44
to control it. “One of them was to make white people think that the value of their
45
homes depended on living in a segregated community,” said Carol Rose, a law
46
professor at Yale. “That outlived racially restrictive covenants.”
47
Another shift came with the advent of citywide zoning in New York City in 1916.
48
Nuisance laws had targeted problems like noxious odors or chemical spills that crept
49
across property lines. Zoning, rather than punishing people for proven harms that
50
came from their property, told people what they could do on their property in the first
51
place. And it prohibited many things — like buildings of a certain height — that had
52
never been considered nuisances before. Zoning effectively invited homeowners to
53
look beyond their properties in ways they hadn’t. And it helped create the
54
expectation that communities would change little over time — or that homeowners
55
would have a say if they did. “Prior to zoning, you didn’t ask yourself if you were
56
buying a piece of property, ‘What’s the use of the land next to me, or down the block,
57
or half a mile away?’ ” said William Fischel, an economist at Dartmouth. “Zoning
58
becomes an opportunity for you to think outside the box of the lot lines of your own
59
property. And people definitely start doing it.” [...]
60
These forces amount to a powerful brew: Our homes have become our wealth.
61
Racial fears linger even if they’ve become encoded in other language. Change
62
invariably looks like a threat. And the universe of threats has broadened from the
63
toxic spill to the garden shadow, from the property next door to the potential
64
development five blocks over. “We ask home equity to do so much more for us in
65
terms of providing retirement, providing a bridge during drought years, allowing us
66
to have collateral for other kinds of loans,” said Nathan Connolly, a historian at Johns
67
Hopkins University. “Then you add schools and crime into the mix.” “To the extent
68
that people can control anything,” he said of property values, “they try to control for
69
that.”
70
No wonder it has become so hard to untangle the benefits of community “ownership”
71
from the rising harms. We want people to be invested in their neighborhoods, but
72
not to the exclusion of anyone else who might live there, too. We want to empower
73
neighbors to fight a trash dump, but not to halt every housing project the region
74
needs. “Who speaks for the community as a whole?” Ms. Been said. “I worry about
75
that.”
(958 words)
source: Emily Badger, “How ‘Not in My Backyard’ Became ‘Not in My Neighborhood’” New York Times, January 3, 2018, accessed on October 15, 2021, slightly adapted
Instructions:
  • Tick the correct answer/statement or statements as indicated.
  • Provide a quotation from the text to support each correct answer: the line number(s) plus the first three and the last three words of the quotation.
  • If the quotation is six words or shorter, write it down in full.
0
Example: Tick the correct answer (true/false).
People in L.A. have the same expectations of their neighborhood as people in San Jose.
true
false
line(s): 2-3 In Los Angeles ... want tiny homes.
(0 P)
1
Tick the correct statement.
When people in the U.S. possess their own real estate, they feel
eager to buy more property.
responsible for their property.
urged to mobilize their neighbors.
entitled to influence their neighborhood.
line(s):
(1 P)
2
Tick the correct answer.
People were provided with financial incentives to establish a sense of belonging.
true
false
line(s):
(1 P)
3
Tick the correct statement.
According to Vicki Been, the development of a neighborhood
is linked to the voter turnout.
is a top priority in urban regions.
must not depend on everyone's agreement.
presents a major concern for young families.
line(s):
(1 P)
4
Complete the statement in your own words.
Due to recent modifications in the tax system, owning a house
(1 P)
5
Complete the statement in your own words.
Trying to influence one's neighborhood was not relevant in rural areas because

and because
(1 P)
6
Complete the statement in your own words.
Despite a Supreme Court ruling in 1948, whites

because
(1 P)
7
Tick the TWO correct statements.
Zoning
led to increased tensions.
resulted in nuisance laws.
imposed rules and restrictions.
provided stability in a community.
strengthened homeowner's rights.
quotation for the 1st correct statement:
line(s):
(1 P)
quotation for the 2nd correct statement:
line(s):
(1 P)
8
Complete the statement in your own words.
According to Nathan Connolly, the overall benefit of homeownership is
(1 P)
9
Tick the correct statement.
A desired effect of town planning is that people become
passionate advocates of their rights.
generous members of the neighborhood.
responsible citizens willing to compromise.
tolerant neighbors towards ethnic minorities.
line(s):
(1 P)

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