Posted on 04/11/2002 9:41:38 AM PDT by Constitution Day
Endless lease at parks?
Rocky Mount Telegram
There are two reasons why the flood victims still living in FEMA trailer parks have not been evicted. They range from the emotional to the political. Who wants to tell someone who has lost a home that he must leave, even 21/2 years after Hurricane Floyd? Who wants to bear the political baggage that comes with making such a decision?
Unfortunately, residents of the parks are taking advantage of the situation. Some people may protest otherwise, including Hazel Mack-Hilliard, director of Eastern Carolina Legal Services. But how else to explain the lack of effort among the remaining trailer park residents to secure permanent housing?
In a story In Monday's edition of the Rocky Mount Telegram, reporter Buck Young talked with Connie Connor, director of Tarboro's public housing authority. Connor noted that several two-bedroom units at Tarboro's main public housing facility, Hendrix Park, have come open in the past six months. Yet many of the remaining trailer park residents have passed on those opportunities, preferring to stay in what was supposed to have been temporary shelter established by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Connor even has sent housing counselors to the parks on Fridays and Saturdays to take applications - to no avail.
"We can't drag them in here," Connor said.
Mack-Hilliard says the trailer parks have gotten a bad rap in the press, where residents have been portrayed as "deadbeats."
But experiences such as the one Connor described do little to fight that image.
Keehlin Park in Tarboro remains the largest site for flood victims - 66 people living in 18 trailers. That's down considerably from the 208 who lived there in December 1999. But it's high time these folks found homes.
Neither they nor the state can resume anything resembling normalcy until they're out of there. If the residents can't be bothered even to fill applications for subsidized housing, then it's time for the state to do it for them.
That's not a politically popular responsibility. And we have our doubts about the amount of enthusiasm anyone will muster for the job.
But the cost of running the trailer parks is $250,000 a month.
North Carolina taxpayers have every right in the world to ask why we should continue paying the rent for people who show little sign of leaving.
1) You want to be added to my North Carolina ping-list.
2) You no longer want to be included in this North Carolina ping-list.
FRegards,
Constitution Day
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I'm very busy today, but saw all your comments on the NC locale board & decided to post this.
I've got to get back to work now, but this article is worth a read.
CD
Then what are they if they arent deadbeats?
Silly!
You are applying logic to illogical & immoral people.
To them, stealing is okay, extortion is a "contribution", and fraud is justified.
Good grief, their patron saint, Bill Clinton, didn't even know what "is" meant!
My boss is out of the country, and I've ended up working even harder than when he's here!
Couldn't we move them into the pent house of an upscale hotel and save a few bucks ?
They got to the lynch pin right away, didn't they?
I don't know if I can, but reading about the waste and utter stupidity of the powers that be in this Tax HellHole called NC just makes me sick.
Every day it's something new and I'm mad as HELL and it doesn't matter. Nobody seems to care or be able to see what is going on.
WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE PEOPLE OF NC?
I want to quit reading about it because it just gets my blood pressure up, drives me to (more) drinking and makes me not a very nice person to be around.
The only solution that I can see is to move out of this state, which we are not able to do right now. I'm going nuts here guys.
MKM
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