Posted on 12/09/2010 12:38:50 PM PST by Bulldawg Fan
CHICAGO (Dec. 9) -- The ungainly 15-story high-rise pierces the blue winter sky, a lonely emblem marking the end of an era in this city's public housing program.
Lights flicker on the 11th floor. Only one apartment is occupied -- and not for long.
Annie Ricks and five of her children (the youngest is 13) are packing their basketball trophies, framed photographs and TV sets -- a life in Chicago's most notorious project -- into a U-Haul today. They are leaving the Cabrini-Green high-rise to its fate, a demolition planned for early 2011, which closes a contentious chapter in Chicago history.
(Excerpt) Read more at aolnews.com ...
No prob. I just thought you may have meant to direct it to someone else. :)
I've worked in the private sector for 20 years. I've never met a executive, anywhere, in dozens of different companies, named "Tyresha" "LaQuita" "Da'Qua'n", etc.
I have worked with a bunch of "Jims", "Bobs", "Helens", and "Sarahs", though. Of all shapes, sizes, and colors, so it's not a racial thing.
I've no idea why anyone would start their child out with two strikes against them, intentionally.
I helped a Mexican woman, who got her green card from Carters amnesty program, by allowing her AND HER SIX KIDS to stay in my home while she looked for work. My wife found her a job, but she quit after two days because she wanted to be with her kids. This was in the very early nineties and welfare paid this illegal alien approximately $1,200 a month, but the job only paid $1,500.
After six weeks we got her into some government housing thing and never looked back. I’m done with that sort of thing and learned a valuable lesson.
Oh, and my three daughters got head lice from the kids.
Right, that was a place where the government was suppose to be creating a new world for people under the Great Society welfare state, but in actualaty turned it into a super ghetto/prison. I thought the place had been torn down years ago.
We recognize change is tough, but I do think Chicago is better off with the housing choices we’re making for our residents”
Said Lewis Jordan.
The people should be saying “We don’t need no stinkin Lewis Jordan telling us where & how to live”
"Poor" is not the same as "Squalid".
I used to commute through a low-income neighborhood. It was largely low, to low-middle class working people. Houses were small, but clean. Yards were neatly kept. A generally nice neighborhood, just not one populated by millionaires.
One of the offices that I worked at was in the "squalid" section of town. I'm no pantywaist, but I did not go there after dark, ever. There were entire legions of (mostly minority, to tell the truth) men hanging around outside of their project housing, or on street corners, doing nothing. Just watching. Didn't really matter what time of day, or weather. They just stood (or sat) and watched.
What was the difference? There were five churches in the "safe" neighborhood, all within a few blocks of each other, just on the route I drove. Plenty more off the route, as well, I'm sure.
No churches in the "squalid" neighborhood. Plenty of convenience (read: wine and beer) stores and pawn shops, though. And a really, really big homeless shelter that the city recently renovated to quite a bit of fanfare and the tune of several hundred grand.
You get what you subsidize, sez me. Glad that I moved out of the city. /rant off
The regrettable thing is that a lot of us bought our houses here brand-new, before the low-income houses were put up. We had no idea, and of course the builder didn’t tell us; he just showed us pictures of pretty townhouses to be built behind us. Now, a lot of potential home-buyers don’t want to buy here even in a good economic climate because of the proximity of the Section 8 housing. We were rather cheated, but the court system in this county doesn’t agree.
I remember James went to work on the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. That was a long time ago. He’s probably an avid hunter and a Republican now.
I wonder if Buffalo Butt found another job?
Get $300 less /month for sitting on her butt? Don't blame her, I'd do the same thing if I had lesser morals.
'Tis what's wrong with the system. Depending, I usually don't begrudge a hand up - for instance, you gave her a place to stay while she looked for work. It's when that degenerates into a constant handout that I get a little wrathy.
I'm actually surprised that she didn't work AND collect bennies. That was by far the most common fraud perpetrated, according to Mom. It's not too hard to figure out what's happening when a "client" of hers would show up driving a late model sports car....there's another income stream flowing into the household from somewhere.
What's worse is that the gov't auditors were "discouraged" from looking too hard at such things. I'm not sure of the politics and how it worked, but basically if the welfare recipient's case manager (Mom) caught them working (doubledipping), she could easily do something about it (check with employers, I'm guessing the tax dept, and so on). But when an auditor saw something out of line (someone on foodstamps driving a Mercedes, which happened frequently) they weren't allowed to make inquiries.
This was 15+ years ago. I can't imagine that it's changed all that much. More illegals, maybe.
And, for what it's worth, your comment about the lice made me laugh out loud.
uh.....the TV sitcom Good Times convinced most us us that Cabrini Green was a doomed, unlivable hell-hole. And that was in 1975!
Just like all the bad behaving people from New Orleans made their new communities better after Katrina.........
Location of churches dont make a bit of difference. In the ghetto sections of Atlanta there are churches on every block and murders every day in between.
Well, to be brutally frank, I'd feel the same way if I was a homebuyer. I lived in an apt complex that went Section 8. Place turned turned into a dump almost overnight. Difference was that I could break my lease.
I'd talk to the BBB about the builder. What he did may have been legal, but it certainly was unethical. And legally, if anything, I'd think that something like "Proximity to Sec 8 Housing" would be required under disclosure when you bought the place.
Good Luck. Remember that I'm not a lawyer, nor a real estate agent. I didn't even stay at a Holiday Inn last night.
In College their was a Ron’na who would go around to black students and chat with them. She often greeted them with “what up N****r?”
Kinda like putting rat droppings into a bucket of ice cream turns them into ice cream.
Right?
Back in the old days, black kids in school had names like John, Robert, Karen, Bill. They didn’t have these strange names then. When did black kids start getting such strange names? And why? Is it supposed to be an expression of African pride, perhaps????????
This all took place twenty years ago. We took it to court as a class-action suit, but the judge did not find in our favor. Water under the bridge now. I just want to somehow, somehow sell this place and get out.
I've never met a single African named "LaKeisha" or "Da'Quon". I actually worked with a large group of Kenyans at a previous position at a hospital.
They all preferred to be called "Doctor". :-) Darn smart bunch of guys - Usually the docs didn't care about their computer equipment ("just show me how to use it, I don't have time to be bothered with reading the manual") ... but these guys jumped in with both feet.
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