Posted on 07/31/2006 1:12:54 PM PDT by subterfuge
Our position: Government owes Hawthorne Village's poor better housing.
Posted July 31, 2006
It's shameful that the residents of Hawthorne Village in South Apopka have had to endure such squalor.
So bad are the complex's rats, rot and ramshackle condition that many residents there actually are welcoming plans to tear the government-subsidized property down.
But what's to come may prove worse for them. They could become homeless.
Government's outrageous neglect of Hawthorne Village since it was built in the early '80s is about to be eclipsed by its pitiful refusal to financially assist its residents as they relocate to new addresses. That mustn't be allowed to happen.
The families who live there generally can't pay more than $100 to $300 a month in rent. But because the U.S Department of Agriculture is refusing to provide them with vouchers
Some in government are trying to help.
snip---
U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown is working to find Hawthorne's residents places to live, a difficult task apart from the issue of securing relocation expenses for them. That's because there aren't enough subsidized units nearby to house them all. Ms. Brown, with the assistance of the Orlando Housing Authority, nevertheless has helped a handful of Hawthorne families find apartments. The USDA's willingness to issue "priority letters" to help push them higher on waiting lists won't provide much help.
The USDA, meanwhile, holds the mortgage on the property and agreed with its current manager, the Homes-in-Partnership nonprofit, that Hawthorne Villages should be demolished rather than refurbished.
snip-----
Too many in government for too long have looked away from the residents of Hawthorne Village. With just a month before the residents must abandon it, officials owe them their best efforts to secure them something better.
(Excerpt) Read more at orlandosentinel.com ...
If Corrine "Free-Car" Brown is helping you out, then happy days are just around the corner!! Snort!
This tale gets told whenever HOPE IV is being touted. Perfectly serviceable, if not scenic, public housing was bulldozed and replaced here, with really nice, craftsman-style cottages and duplexes, lavishly landscaped ... the cost well exceeded the average cost per square foot for private dwellings. Crime didn't drop, joblessness didn't decrease, but the residents of this place have a pretty house that is better than what the people paying for them live in, at least for now. I say give it a decade or even less, and it'll be a dump once again.
Solution - get a job and move. Don't have a kid before you are ready and married. Go to church, don't use drugs and don't expect the nanny government to give you everything...
These people have been on the dole for so long they never even consider that its possible to pull yourself up by the bootstraps.
I just have to ask: do these residents not know how to set out rat traps? Do they not know how to call an exterminator? If it is truly that bad, could they not organize and pool their meager resources to try and attack the problem?
It's true that landlords must take responsibility for conditions of their properties. But families must also take responsibility for their own living conditions - and when no one in authority takes action, it is time to exercise the authority invested in one's OWN TWO HANDS and try to tackle the problem oneself...
After the immediate problems have been addressed, then the issues with the landlord should be addressed by an organized body of tenants.
It can be done, if the people involved have the gumption.
Are you kidding? These people actually do something for themselves like maybe clean up the filth that attracts rats, roaches, etc? (sorry about the sarcasm) My question is what did these people do to make a relatively new building need to be demolished?
Just where the dimocraps and other socialists want them.
"My question is what did these people do to make a relatively new building need to be demolished?"
My aunt works for the housing athority in a neighboring city. Tenants won't even buy their own light-bulbs and the city has to issue trash bags or the tenants just let the trash pile up.
Screens are missing off wondows, shutters torn off, screen doors missing, holes in walls. etc. Then the people complain because they live in crap. They make it that way.
This statement sums up the entire problem with the Lefties: "the government OWES" something un-earned....the government, as always, HAS NO MONEY.
Why don't they properly re-phrase it to say:"All you people who have income and work for a living should have your earnings appropriated for our benefit, while we do NOTHING to help ourselves..."
I was going to say something similar, but your post can't be topped. Well said.
You want poverty? Go to Haiti. There is no such thing as real poverty here in the US.
I would suspect you would be hard-pressed to find more than 50% of the New Orleans refugees without tattoo's now.....
Here in San Francisco, the Episcopal Diocese funded the building of a four-story apartment building for "homeless" families. A friend of mine delivers Alhambra water to the building offices. He told me that within 90 days of the first people moving in, the hallways were covered with graffiti, the lights were broken, the elevators' metal walls were scratched with obscenities, and the windows were cracked.
But, of course, the "poor" just need affordable housing.
Behavior shows class. Or the lack of it.
Everyone is ENTITLED to a 3000 sq. ft. ranch home with a pool and room for a pony. /sarc
Friend of mine here was working contract until last month, when her company had to consolidate, and gave the permanent position to a Katrina refugee who "needs it, you know, and you're from Houston so you should have no trouble finding a job."
Her husband is a tattoo artist. He had quite a few FEMA cards offered to him as payment. Fortunately, since one pays for a tattoo up-front, he could decline it before he did the work.
good lord. people are so helpless. please master government come and save us from ourselves.
Kinda says it all. Like the Welfare Queens with the Ghetto-fabulous multi-colored tight braid hair styles that cost AT LEAST $300 holding up the checkout line while they pay with WIC checks.
Must be a Liberal who told her that; they pay them less, and brag about how they "helped the needy"....
Yeah. I stand behind them with my hotdogs, while they ring up their steaks.....
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