Ann Arbor can’t have it both ways.

Being a beacon of inclusion, compassion, diversity and sustainability doesn’t exactly jibe with being the eighth most segregated metro area in the country.

Shielding your eyes from acute concentrations of poverty in a neighboring community while paying lip service to ideals of tolerance and altruism – that just won’t do.

That warm and fuzzy feeling you get after volunteering at a soup kitchen should quickly turn to nausea when you realize just how many children in your own county are doomed.

And even if you’ve got the stomach for it, the broader effects of economic imbalance and instability that come with such extreme disparities between adjacent communities will, soon enough, take their toll.

An MLive analysis of housing voucher data published last week illustrated how poor people are funneled into already low-income neighborhoods, and kept from accessing the schools, jobs and opportunities that offer the best chance at climbing out of poverty.

Washtenaw County’s lopsided housing market, along with tenant screening policies, fees and high security deposits keep voucher recipients in very specific parts of Ypsilanti and Ypsilanti Township, some of which are riddled with violence and drug activity.

Meanwhile, rental rates in Ann Arbor have risen 12 percent in just the last three years, averaging $1,503 in February, according rental market analysis website Rent Café. And restaurants in the city can’t find enough workers to fill service jobs.

A 2015 report commissioned by the city, the county, the federal government and the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority warned that “the imbalance in income, education and opportunity between the jurisdictions along with the segregation that goes with it will hamper the regional economic growth potential of the area.”

Talks of boosting affordable housing in Ann Arbor have been underway for years.

They’ve produced little.

That’s in part because many wealthy people don't like seeing beat-up cars, discount retailers and check-cashing shops in their neighborhoods.

They don’t want to live next door to poor people.

They may support the general idea of more affordable rentals in Ann Arbor, just as long as it’s not in their own neighborhood.

It’s going to take major change, institutional and cultural, to free Ann Arbor of the distinction of being a top 10 town for segregation.

Landlords see greater risk in renting to low-income tenants, because of high rates of missed payments and property damage. And neighbors fear property value declines.

It will require getting uncomfortably honest and uncommonly active.

Spreading and diversifying low-income housing options will mean offering incentives to landlords to rent to poor people; convincing developers to reserve units for low-income tenants; calling out discrimination against voucher recipients; and putting a stop to steering poor people toward Ypsilanti.

Year after year, Ann Arbor City Council candidates run and win on affordable housing promises. And while there has been progress on renovating existing public housing stock, the city hasn’t significantly expanded the supply, failing to get on track to meet its own goal, set in 2015, of adding 2,800 new affordable units by 2035.

Now is the time – especially as the council tries to figure out what to do with more than $2 million in new annual revenue from a countywide tax – for some bold action.

If any town can afford the costs and risks associated with supporting integrated, affordable housing, it's Ann Arbor.

So, for those who care about poor people: It's absurd to continue to allow generation after generation of poor kids to grow up under conditions that allow only the very smartest, luckiest and most connected to scratch and claw their way out of poverty.

And for those who are unmoved by the plight of the less fortunate, who aren’t driven by tenderheartedness, but by the laws of nature and the free market: Continuing to perpetuate a vicious cycle that has clear, adverse economic effects on everyone, including rich folks, would be, frankly, stupid.