Dyna Sluyther, I don't know where you are coming from.
I'm coming from the viewpoint of one of this city's old ladies who refuse to give up their one and only family homestead to a great big developer, nonprofit or otherwise. My grandma and grandpa moved in in 1941, bought the house on contract for deed in 1942, and it's been in the family ever since. We're not about to surrender our family homestead to a newby developer with not even half as much experience. Go ahead and get your buddies at the city to use eminent domain to evict us old ladies- you'll need deadly force to remove us from our homes and one of the larger Cat products to destroy our homes. Then we'll come back and haunt the ramshackle cardboard and plastic "projects" you build to replace our homes.
The one thing we have done in Hawthorne is work cooperatively with the Hawthorne Area Community Counicl to build several new single-family homes on vacant lots.
I sat in on the housing committee meeting where your minion presented PPL's original scheme. We were told that PPL only wanted to build new whole block sized rental projects. Our Hawthorne neighbors held the line and said no. That's why PPL had to work "cooperatively" with the neighborhood and build what we want- the single family owner occupied homes that have historically composed our neighborhood on vacant land rather than "blockbusting."
In a way we did PPL a favor in Hawthorne by forcing PPL back to their original and quite honorable roots. Maybe if we keep the pressure on PPL might even bring back the tool loan program- I need a way to get 20 feet up to paint some trim.
If thats what you wanted, thats exactly what you got from PPL in cooperation with your legitimate neighborhood organization.
Which raises the question- why weren't the wishes of Ventura Village similarly honored? Could it be that PPL perceives Ventura Village as a poorer neighborhood with more people of color and immigrants than Hawthorne? And thusly easier to bully? And let's not just limit this query to the containment zones like Ventura Village and Hawthorne- I've seen plenty of buildable land for PPL's projects in the fortress neighborhoods of Minneapolis and the suburbs. Why isn't PPL throwing up it's mega projects in those fortress neighborhoods? Or is it easier to dump them on the 'hoods?
By the way, I don't have an enemies list.
Well, it certainly sounds like PPL has the good citizens of Ventura Village on their's for a start.
In closing, by now a number of citizens have told PPL they need to get back to their roots and quite bullying neighborhoods. There's an old AA saying about if one person tells you that you have a tail, ignore it. If two people tell you you have a tail, take a look back there. If three people tell you that you have a tail, it's there even if you still can't see it and you'd best do something about it. At this point PPL is looking like a many tailed monster.
Battening down the hatches in Hawthorne,
Dyna Sluyter
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