Bill, you sound like a responsible rental property owner. Your posts have
always been reasonable, and indicated that you do care and expect the same
from landlords. The "Christian Landlord" was done with a little tongue in
cheek by me, and possibly by Tim I believe. It sort of came from my
discussion of what we should expect from "leaders", and how Ministers having
the conviction of their beliefs should bring their congregations into
pro-actively supporting families to "expect" more from their children.
I commend you Bill, for supporting your neighbors in the Whittier
Neighborhood by only renting to decent people. After all your decision
affects that whole community because of who you decide to bring to live
among those people. It is also a sound business decision. It is better to
leave an apartment un-rented for several months than to subject the
community, and your property, to the damage that bad tenants can do.
Bill asks, "What is the duty of a "Christian landlord?" My answer is to not
rent to anyone whom you would not gladly live in the same house with.
Because that is what you are forcing a whole community to do. The community
must "Live" with your decisions.
Are there people (I purposefully do not use the term family here) that do
not deserve to be housed in our community? Yes, indeed there are. Is it
"Christian" to allow the destruction of whole communities? To allow the
presence of evil in a community whose end result is the loss of the children
from families? In poor communities, and particularly communities of color,
there is such an effort that must be expended to simply survive and keep a
roof and food, that there is just not time to also contend with the social
engineering that is put upon these families and communities by
institutionalized concentration of more social problems. By the
institutional making of their communities into "containment zones" for
crime. Essentially that is what has occured with the "Impacted
Neighborhoods" of the City of Minneapolis. Minneapolis "Expects" poverty,
drugs, crime of all kinds, to be housed in three or four impacted
neighborhoods of the City, therefore that is where they (the politicians)
send most criminals. Please look at where the sex offenders for the whole
State of Minnesota are housed to see a stark example of this. They
concentrate such criminals into these containment zones and then do not
provide sufficient police to allow even minimum public safety.
Mr. Cullen exactly states the problem. The "NIMBY" that is real. We should
be re-training families with such problems in "Supportive" housing
environments. This does not mean warehousing criminals in four or five
neighborhoods, it means having facilities where very strong supervision and
support can be applied until families become functional. Unfortunately, the
City of Minneapolis "EXPECTS" that only a few impacted neighborhoods such as
Whittier, Phillips, and Ventura Village on the Southside and a few
neighborhoods on the Northside, should contain ALL of those facilities and
all those social problems. This concentration insures that both the family
and the communities have reduced chances to be functional. Neighborhoods
such as Ventura Village are NOT NIMBY, they are NJIMY, (Not Just In My
Backyard). It is the rest of the City of Minneapolis that is
institutionally NIMBY.
The recent Simpson attempt at housing people outside the "Zone" dramatically
demonstrates the reality of this situation. How many other supportive units
and "beds" were within the magic "1/4 mile" of that facility? That's right
the excuse was that they wanted a "Mixed-Use"- "Mixed-Income " development.
I believe that Ventura Village wanted the same when CVI was brought forward.
How many "mixed-income people live in the CVI project? The difference was
that the CVI facility sat within 1/4 mile of over of over seven hundred
"beds" where Minneapolis ordinance specifically states that only allows one
facility and 32 "beds" are allowed. Apparently six Minneapolis City Council
Members who felt so strongly that it was all right to concentrate such
problems in Ventura Village, also felt that such a facility just did not
"fit" within one of their "Fortress Neighborhoods". They expected all such
social problems and people to only be housed in poor impacted neighborhoods,
and they voted that way. I wonder if their hypocrisy ever enters their
minds. Ventura Village had to go to Federal Court and still might lose, all
a "Fortress Community" had to do was object in an election year. AMAZING how
institutionalized racism and classism slides its ugly head into our City's
politics isn't it?
The neighborhoods that were the most welcoming to poor people, and that did
the very most to house them, became the victims of their own kindness. It
became expected by politicians that only there were supportive housing and
troubled people to be housed. So much so that the politicians were outraged
by an "Impacted Neighborhood's" complaint that it was bad for the families,
and children of the families, to be concentrated into containment zones and
that Minneapolis should at least partially enforce its own laws.
Part of the tongue in cheek is the realization of the hypocrisy of some
"leaders".
Jim Graham,
Ventura Village
"The rarest of gems, with the greatest clarity,
and with the greatest brilliance is not the diamond.
The rarest of all gems is the truth.
Yet as scarce as truth is, the supply has always far
exceeded any demand for it. In fact it may well be the
lest desirable commodity in the Universe.
Ask any politician."
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