Jim Mork Wrote:
I agree with the idea that no city problem should be solved on the back of a poor neighborhood. Cooper or Kenwood could be a location as easily as any other. Two PRACTICAL problems I'd like seen addressed, though. Problem 1: Nice neighborhoods generally contain well-maintained properties. That fact TENDS to make it pretty expensive to acquire property for any kind of social institution. Contrast that with a poor neighborhood which probably has high densities uninhabitable properties. Poor people generally can't shoulder the expense nor have the energy for the kind of maintenance activities that keep property expensive. So, what is a practical choice. Spend MORE taxpayer dollars to acquire property that doesnt need a change of use? Or get rid of something that is unfit for use and build something new? Because I'm sorry but it is sounding to me like some of the residents of these poor neighborhoods have some real RESISTANCE about being neighbors to people who have problems. I guess I understand that, but to make a different "crusade" about shoving the people into Kenwood or somewhere else sounds like prejudice. OK, fine, prejudice is nobody's exclusive property. But it is aggravating to have the people who feel that way tee off on OTHERS about it seems a bit hypocritical. It sounds like these people are saying "OK, you made the effort to keep your property up. Here's your rewardd, the people WE don't want to live next to! Gotta love the justice of statements like that.
Dennis Plante Responds:
On the surface Jim, your contention that that well-maintained properties in more affluent neighborhoods would be cost-prohibitive to include in the affordable housing mix seems valid. However, I think it's important to way both all the costs and all the benefits before coming to that assumption.
I'd be curious to find-out just how proportinate the staffing of the 4th precinct is to the number of citizens it provides services to. Who pays for this currently? I'd be curious to find-out just how less likely a child would be to join a gang, commit a crime, or generally end-up not reaching their full potential IF they had at least some options for positive role models and options available to them? Who pays for this currently? I'd be curious to find-out just how many of the young African American males we currently have incarcerated MIGHT not be there, had they been afforded the same opportunities that their more fortunate WHITE counterparts had? How much does this cost, and who pays for it.
Not too awfully long ago, classroom size (in MN schools) was a hot topic. To make a bad analogy, would you rather have your child (assuming the teacher's skills were equal) enrolled in a school that had a class size of 20-1, or 40-1? I have known far too many minority children in my neighborhood that came from both stable and unstable homes, that were sucked into a life of crime and pverty due mainly to the overwhelming peer pressure they felt. Right now, the neighborhood I live in has a 40-1 ratio, and I want it changed.
My main reason for becoming a proponent on this issue is NOT because I want to "reward" Kenwood (or other affluent neighborhoods) for their hard work by making them take the people "I don't want to live next to", but to give the people that I live next to as close to the same chance (in life) as I have had. They will never get it as long as we compact them into very limited geographic spaces.
Not to say that this is the ideal end result, but I quite often read the outdoor section of the Strib. I recently came across an article written by a late 70's man (it had a photo) that had taken his grandson fishing at a northern Minnesota lake. The grandson caught a very nice Walleye. The grandfather was a "lilly-white" Norwegian, and his adopted grandson was a 10 year-old black child from Jamaica. For most of the children (in my neighborhood) the potential for this experience will never become part of their reality. Personally, I'd like them all to have the ability to experience it and form their own opinions.
Dennis Plante Jordan
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