As I've said previously, my experience as a drone in the machinery of the city convinces me that until the elected officials take RESPONSIBILITY to follow how the people act whom they are supposed to supervise (which in the past did not happen for Ward 9), NRP is actually MORE democratic than anything the city does. As such, the description of the process doesn't bother me at all. And it should come as no surprise, then, that the outcome seems more rational than a lot of what my city government does. It seems to me there are only two rational ways to use NRP to get people into affordable housing: subsidize rents or guarantee mortgages. You could ADD units, but then what happens to the unoccupied units out there now? I'm no great lover of the whole class of landlords, but hey, if they've got empty units and someone is hunting shelter every day, we HAVE to find a way to bring these two things together. I won't support a plan that makes anyone RICH in the process, but with some safeguards, I'm very much for sliding some homeless people (hopefully, the ones who aren't without housing due to being very bad tenants) into empty existing shelters.
It seems like NRP did one of the rational things. Now if they can see a way to do the other one, we may be on our way.
Jim Mork Cooper
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