Blog Posts
Jennifer Emerling / There Is More Work To Be Done
Jennifer Emerling / There Is More Work To Be Done
Battling Metropollyanna
Battling Metropollyanna
Can’t find affordable housing where you live? Just move to wherever the housing is. Rural Americans have long been told to “move to town” to improve their housing situations.
The late Clay Cochran, one of the founders of the modern rural housing movement, called this Metropollyanna: the belief that eventually everyone will move to the city and live happily ever after.
It is not uncommon to hear politicians, pundits, and policymakers question the value of social services and public spending in rural parts of the United States where populations are small and resources are limited. This idea came up a couple of months ago in a LinkedIn discussionabout a Rooflines post titled “What Does the Push for Transit Oriented Development Mean for Rural Areas?” One commenter responded: “It means people will have to live in more population-concentrated, urban-proximate areas.”
Needless to say, rural housing supporters disagree.
