POVERTY CHIC: HABITAT FOR INHUMANITY -- A Theme Park For Bleeding Hearts

ICONOCLAST ^ | June 4, 2003 | By Paul Walfield

[BurkesLaw]

Now Habitat For Humanity is beginning a new construction project on 6 ½ acres of land right outside of Americus, Georgia. The amazing thing is that this project is not intended to bring affordable housing to people who really need it. It's purpose is to attract tourists.

And how do people who build homes for the poor with other people's money attract tourists? Well, according to a report in the Boston Globe, they build a theme park depicting the most repellant slums ever to grace our planet's poorest Third World countries and cities...

[BurkesLaw]

The new alternative vacation destination to Disney World -- LeftistLand.

[Scothia]

And will they import "natives" from actual poverty-stricken areas to "exhibit"? Or will they have actor portrayals, complete with paid vacations and smoke breaks?

[lilylangtree]

Put the theme park in the backyard of Streisand's luxury Malibu accommodations.

[Onelifetogive]

they build a theme park depicting the most repellant slums ever to grace our planet's poorest Third World countries and cities...

I would be willing to donate some human waste to the project to add that "aroma of authenticity."

[RonF]

Does anyone actually need to see a train wreck to want safe trains?

Um, yeah, actually, some people do. Which is why just before prom week and New Year's Eve, the local cops tow a car that someone has just wrapped around a tree out next to a local busy intersection and put a big sign on it that says, "Don't Drink and Drive." To borrow another cliche, sometimes you have to hit a mule in the head with a 2 x 4 to get its attention.

My local Scout Council sent a contingent of Scouts to Thailand. After they came back, a couple of the Scouts came to Roundtable (a monthly meeting of the District's adult leaders) to describe their experience. They were asked about what had made an impression on them. One thing they mentioned was their trip to a city (I don't think it was Bangkok) where they saw both fantastic riches and disgusting slums, right next to each other and mixed in with commerical and industrial areas (apparently zoning is a Western concept). The extreme poverty was something they'd never seen and it made a big impression.

[Salman]

Not a new idea.

My old neighborhood in NYC, formerly the Lower East Side (now the East Village), has a "tenement museum" built in a renovated tenement. It actually gets Federal money.

[daviddennis]

There are organized tours of the Faevlas [slums] in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

They are on a steep hillside with amazing development potential. The shacks, if spread out a bit, would be worth about a million dollars each (!) if placed in Malibu. (They have similar ocean and city lights views).

Unfortunately, the organizers of the settlements forgot to learn about sanitation and electricity is noted primarily by its absence. Oops.

If you want to see third-world poverty up-close and personal, simply travel to the third world and there's plenty of it. There is surely no need to make more.

D

[MonroeDNA]

As another freeper put it,

MARXLAND!!!

[randog]

...concession stands and gift shops selling used trash bags for clothing, cardboard boxes for shelters and rat-meat burgers for a tasty slum-style snack.

Whatever you do, don't eat the "Tijuana Hot Dogs".

[Mugwumps]

Habitat for Humanity evidently has *way* too much money on its hands...