Cara Letofsky asked: 1. Why have the ordinance if it is never enforced in the very neighborhoods that led to the ordinance in the first place? Was it all placating politics meant to quiet neighborhood activists in the first place?
[GDL] I have an honest question, hopefully answerable by someone steeped in the city code: was this historically the reason for the 1/4 mile spacing requirement--i.e., to answer activists' calls for a lesser impact on certain neighborhoods? Or, historically was this ordinance intended to be used to exclude facilities in general? That is, some communities have enacted spacing requirements like this one for the very reason to prevent projects like Lydia House and CVI from being built, thus the use and need for the federal Fair Housing laws. John Cevette wrote: > Mr. Luce is impressed with the City Council action in the Zoning and > Planning Committee to approve the application of CVI, a supportive housing > project of PPL that will tear down affordable housing to locate additional > special needs populations in Phillips. [GDL] I think everyone needs to be careful these days about calling one thing or another affordable housing. As I've seen day to day in a number of properties, it is affordable (but often not) because of the conditions of the properties, conditions many people never see because they don't work directly with the people who live in those conditions. While I don't have personal knowledge about the buildings on the CVI site, I'm told they are in really bad shape. > As well, I am impressed that Minneapolis, one of most segregated cities in > North America, marches so steadily to tune of discrimination, segregation, > re-institutionalization, and redlining of its most vulnerable populations > into the neighborhoods Phillips, Stevens Square and Whittier. I grew up in Tulsa, OK, and have always thought that it and other southern towns like it were damn well the most segregated around, but that's a debate not worth engaging. While I get John's point and agree that segregation obviously is here in Minneapolis, my experience is more along the lines of class segregation than ethnic, racial, or anything else. In the tenants I meet each day, I'm actually pretty impressed by the wide variety of backgrounds, with the common denominator typically being low-income, with people often paying 70 to 80 percent of their income in rent. > For 30 years concentrating residential facilities into social service > enclaves has been well-recognized as discriminatory, and contrary to the > important national health policy of de-institutionalization. Concentration > serves neither the disabled client nor the neighborhood, who every right to > live where they want. I'm not seeing the "disabled" denied a right to live where they choose, any more so than denying low-income tenants the right to choose where they want to live. There are obvious financial constraints that ultimately become the biggest barriers. > Mr. Luce (North Phillips - Work) lauds the Committee's commitment to > openness, fairness, and full participation. Full participation? Really? I > didn't see the full participation of the people who will use supportive > housing being asked if they prefer to live in the highest crime area of the > city, in part because it is inundated with vulnerable people who need > support. Rather I saw the over participation of those who draw financial > gain from these enterprises. Sorry to see a cheap shot about living vs. working in the neighborhood (after all, one of the Lydia House plaintiffs in the Court case merely "works" in the neighborhood), but the question that follows is actually one I asked in one of my first posts on this subject: who has spoken to the people who wish to live in Lydia House or CVI or any other such housing, and what are those individual's wishes? That's the biggest silence in this debate, and an unfortunate silence because the void it creates is often filled by shouting on both sides about what is best for the ultimate residents. Gregory Luce North Phillips (work) _______________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A Civil City Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest option, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
