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Dave Stack wrote:
> Mpls-Issues tip: PLEASE trim the previous message when responding. The redundant
>characters make tough reading for Digest subscribers and needlessly lengthens
>download times.
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> Not providing adequate replacement housing for the displaced residents is
> probably the one major sin of this project's implementers.
What I see in taking Holman housing down is that it is very close to the core city,
therefore the potential for making big taxes exists. The Homan lawsuit was about the
poor
being forced into a ghetto situation in a housing project. At the same time the city
wanted to force the burbs to build affordable housing. Since the city wanted to (was
mandated
by the law suit) scatter the poor, they did not build replacement housing before
taking the buildings down.
Too, research has apparently shown (and this makes sense) that the poor do better when
we are scattered, theoretically because we have models of behaviors which people who
are
not overwhelmingly poor practice.
That may be true, but every time I see people coming out of the 29th St. depression
(becoming the greenway) of a morning, I get angry about taking down the housing. Add
to that
that Becky Yannish headed MCDA through that period and was also taking down affordable
housing at a clip and one has to wonder if the practice of 'real politik' is anything
more
than hardening one's heart against poor members of the community for the benefit of
the taxes accrued.
Loss of housing makes people miserable, of course, but the tenuous existence they live
also makes them feral. People act crazy as a way of protecting themselves from
two-legged
preditors. After a while, they become crazy, partly from the act they put on to
protect themselves and partly, I would argue, from poor nutrition and all the other
issues which
arise when one is homeless.
Homeless people can be very dangerous because homelessness clearly tells them they are
not part of the fabric of the community--they have no place in it. Outsiders who, by
rights, should be insiders are a dangerous lot. Nothing holds them away from becoming
predators themselves as a reaction to the anger being homeless generates in one's soul.
I lived in the projects from 1944 until 1952. My aunt lived there too and some
cousins, as well as my grandparents. However, that was during and immediately
following WWII.
Many of the families living in the projects were returning GIs like my dad. The next
door neighbor, a Navy pilot/instructor, was working on his PhD in English. (Later, he
helped
me go to college after my parents died.) I'm assuming there was a housing shortage of
some dimension during that period. I do remember that moving to the projects was a way
in
which people improved their housing--it was a step up. However, one one's dad came
back from the war and got a job that paid even close to a living wage, the family was
forced
out because it had too much income to stay. It made it impossible to create tight
community since the better off folks had to leave. There is a downward spiral of
expectations
lurking in that.
WizardMarks, Central
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