----- Original Message ----- From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Saturday, February 01, 2003 8:43 AM Subject: Re: [Mpls] Affordable Housing -RT doublecross/Modeling Barrett's Caveat?
[snip] > > Is it fair to model Jordan's action/outcome rather then his rhetoric? Perhaps > Barrett SHOULD have said, " When City policies fail the Central City > Minneapolis neighborhoods, people who can afford to move out, such as Jordan > Kushner, will exit Mpls. And they will commute to DT, or not. If we fail to > do our duty here . . . then we will fail the poorest people in the city > because the rich, AND MIDDLE INCOME, people will leave and concentrate > poverty in their wake. That would have been a better argument, but not an honest one. Lane and Ryback's fiscal policies are not designed to fulfill any duties to poor and middle income residents in the central city neighborhoods, but to protect the the higher quality of life for residents of the most affluent neighborhoods - even at the expense of any effort to meet basic unmet needs in central city communities. The debate referenced in the Strib, involved the administration's apparently successful efforts to scrap a program to finance affordable housing and economic development in neighborhoods with the most need. (In response Keith Reitman's personal reference to me, I can certainly attest that development to make the neighorhood around Chicago and Lake Street a more stable and safe community would have greatly increased the chances that we would have found it safe for my wife and expected child. We lived on the block where a 13 year old committed a homicide last summer. A walk to the grocery store one block away would take us within the Chicago-Lake open air drug market. If the City has put a fraction of the funds into the Sears site that it had used to subsidize the downtown Target, it would have done wonders for the area) These concerns would seem to be at least as important to residents of those neighborhhoods as Barrett Lane's expressed concern with about "keeping the lights" in Linden Hills. Yet when the budget gets tight, RT clearly shows his preference for maintaining the comforts his and Barrett's Linden Hills neighborhood over investing in the basic living needs in the central city neighborhoods. The distaste of the affluent for "class warfare" argument does not negate its basic reality. (Gary Bowman's comment about the rich and poor being interdependent is often true, especially to the extent the the rich often obtain and keep their position at the expense of the poor). In the zero sum game of government spending that gives rise to this discussion, someone wins and someone loses. It is obvious that in the current city administration, the rich and most affluent continue to win and others continue to lose. Jordan Kushner on temporary suburban [partial] leave > > Keith Reitman NearNorth > TEMPORARY REMINDER: 1. Send all posts in plain-text format. 2. Cut as much of the post you're responding to as possible. ________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
