|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
After panelists at The Light’s recent Community Conversation on housing cited the city’s housing plan without specifics and acted enthused about a suggestion for a regional approach as housing here affects every municipality, the moderator asked why, if it has been in the plan, it has not already begun.
It became a panel of Ralph Kramden trying to explain himself to Alice with, “Hummina. Hummina.”
The audience members were people seriously concerned about housing, so questions were serious and the people wanted answers.
The panelists touted programs available and were in total agreement that these programs addressed many housing problems, but it was obvious these were unknown to the audience of interested people and would be unknown to the general public. When asked how this information is being made known to the general public, it was clear nothing effective was actually being done as the panelist answering the question suggested they could utilize the schools.
This relies on the common practice of non-educators assigning responsibility and accountability to schools to avoid it.
The panel basically reduced the city’s plan to getting the city ready for people not here yet while driving out those who have stayed with the city during its darkest days. It seems to ignore the city’s strength and history to produce another cookie cutter city based on finances elsewhere and not the reality here producing a city different from another only by how the interior of the Hard Rock Cafe is laid out.
There was discussion of increasing the housing stock, but none about preventing outside investors and LLCs from forcing out citizens by raising rents to where locals cannot afford them.
There seemed no overarching design being aimed for, just grasping at whatever seems good at the moment, like with a casino and an aquarium as the savior.
A room full of people were told plans with nice titles but nothing concrete. The plan is not for the citizens but people not here yet, so everything must address their assumed needs.
Sadly, the event was an infomercial in which the panelists told the audience to wait because there’s more when nothing was actually presented that would have anyone know what the “more” would be since knowledge of what the offer is was never explained.
Joe Quigley is a political cartoonist and local activist.