But no! They want this:
Posted on 02/14/2014 5:03:06 PM PST by dontreadthis
In today’s troubled economy, one would expect a low-income neighborhood would welcome a discount grocery store in their midst. Not only would it provide cheaper food closer to home, but it would also provide jobs for some of the area’s residents. But that’s just what the black residents of Portland, Oregon don’t want. Portland Development Commission is trying to help improve the community that is known as the Interstate Corridor urban area which is predominantly black. In their efforts to help, they recently approved the sale of a vacant piece of land to Majestic Realty for just $502,160 for the purpose of building a Trader Joe’s store on the lot. The property is worth $2.9 million, but the city believed the $2.4 million discount was worth it to bring in the discount store and jobs into an area they are trying to help renew. Trader Joe’s even awarded the construction contract to a minority owned construction company. Instead of being thankful for the city’s effort to bring the discount retailer and jobs to their community, the city’s blacks are up in arms over the project. The Portland African American Leadership Forum sent a scathing email to Portland Mayor Charlie Hays and the city commissioners telling them they didn’t want Trader Joe’s in their neighborhood. Why? In their email they stated one of the reasons as: “A new Trader Joes will increase the desirability of the neighborhood to non-oppressed populations…” Goodness, we can’t have the neighborhood become more desirable to others can we. We can’t have ‘non-oppressed’ people spending their money in their neighborhood which would support jobs for the locally oppressed people who desperately need work.
(Excerpt) Read more at godfatherpolitics.com ...
Glad to see they’re not lettin The Man keep them down. (eyeroll)
Are these people for real? Are these people certifiably nuts???
well if they prefer a vacant lot where people loiter and do God knows what, Iguess they will get their wish.............................
Liberals: born ignorant and regressing since.
“A new Trader Joes will increase the desirability of the neighborhood to non-oppressed populations…”
The only people oppressing them are their community organizer leaders.
FLOTUS says you have a food desert and you need this. Don’t make her baby daddy make it mandatory!
There is more to this story. The actual residents wanted it. The community “leaders” didn’t.
So, these “community leaders” are saying that they support segregation.
If the neighborhoods turn nice the “community organizer” types will lose their “jobs.”
If this is the same one I read about earlier, the locals want the store. It is outside “Community organizers” pulling the Al Sharpton/Jesse Jackson shakedown that ran them off.
Bingo!
or Trader Joe refused to pay them leaders the “membership fee”?
The story I remember from a talk radio show is that the “community organizers” wanted subsidized housing above the Trader Joe’s. Trader Joe (wisely) said no. There may have been more demands from the “organizers”.
Like our Community-organizer In Chief, they need to make sure their community continues to feel oppressed, victimized, and dependent on them. Gotta keep out those “foreign” concepts like free enterprise and the work ethic.
...I checked all the comments; none at that time linked to this other post, "Community Organizers Push Out Trader Joe’s and Jobs", whose source is a bit more objective, but still lacking. I've held off commenting on this for good reason...here-goes:A local/black community-organizing group sought to flex its muscles and 'be recognized, coming out swinging with the Portland Development Commission (PDC) on Trader Joe's; no wonder they pulled out. I know Portland and know the politics and left because (no pun intended) there weren't enough Conservatives to combat 'Left-turn'. But it's more than just about a Black Community-organizing group chasing out development; that was just 'the effect' reported by the media.
Others might want to check out Who is PAALF?...
...and here's a pre-PAALF article on Portland's 'gentrification' (barf alert...NYT & lots of 'Progressive-relative discussion, but important if you care to understand what the Trader Joe's controversy is all about).
In many ways PAALF has a point, as PAALF was formed POST-Interstate Corridor's 'Urban Renewal Area', which brought much development to predominantly-black North Portland with the Light Rail Project:
Tri-Met, the regional transit agency, completed its first LRT line in 1998, and sought to expand based on its initial success. Named the Yellow line, the extension’s alignment was planned to run along the existing Interstate Corridor. The initial plan was voted down by the city of Portland; however Tri-Met discovered that the residents of Corridor itself wanted the line to be constructed. The agency responded to this community input by creating an urban renewal area (URA) to finance the LRT line, which allowed for the line to bypass local funding and be matched by Federal grants. Created in 2000, the URA funded $28 million of the $350 million project cost. The Yellow line opened in 2004, and connects downtown Portland to Portland State University, also acting as a catalyst for redevelopment in the area.The URA created several subsidized loan programs for businesses and new or first-time homebuyers. An unintended consequence of these financing mechanisms was the impact on the African-American community. The increased feasibility of redevelopment coupled with the existing gentrification resulted in significant impacts. For example, the median home price increased over 100% in each of the Northeast neighborhoods between 2000 and 2010. This increase resulted in more than one-third of all households paying more than 30 percent of their income on housing costs, and 17 percent paying more than 50 percent. The subsidized loans were intended for all residents; however 56% of the money available from the Portland Development Commission’s homeowner and homebuyer assistance program went to white residents. Thus, homeownership became unaffordable to the existing African-American community, who then relocated to southeast Portlandor outside of the city. The existing business community along Williams Avenue changed to reflect the demands of the new residents, which meant that the African-American serving businesses followed the residential exit. Today, the neighborhood is described by realtors as a “newly revived area that is one of the hippest places to shop, dine and drink.”
The (no pun intended) dark irony here is that many residents of the area now complain that TriMet's LRT 'Yellow Line' has brought whites to the neighborhood, that any development within areas in the Urban Growth Boundary at all is pricing lower-income residents out of their homes and the loudest voices of it happen to be black, crying 'racism'; it affects ALL Portland residents not subject to public-sector incomes & job security, or privy to all the public monies lobbed around for all the Light Rail & High-density Housing (HDH) projects currently ongoing.
The City of Portland (OR) is currently engaged in enhancing its assets within the UGB via squeezing more people per square mile of land via the HDH projects, which include splitting single lots for 'mini-townhouses', via huge dependence on the regional Light Rail Plan for Federal Dollars (which is also enmeshed in the current controversy over the under-estimated $2.5 Billion Columbia River Crossing Project, the new Interstate 5 Bridge proposed over the Columbia River, whose cost has been estimated to tip the scales at over an estimated $10 Billion, but has left the State of Washington to reject the plan, mostly due to Portland's, & Salem's, insistence on the inclusion of Light Rail, the latter supported by the President, of course). And, by the way, the whole core of the concept is to get Portlanders out of their cars. I know: I was subjected to one of their 'Mass-transit/High-density Housing' seminars during a Chamber of Commerce breakfast.
For those interested in digging deeper, here is full-frontal on Portland's 'grand scheme', "Portland is a PR machine for light rail & streetcar. Here are Some Facts About Portland Oregon", and that's only a drop in the bucket.
Summary: It's not all about race...it's mostly about the "good-ol-boys" network of Progressives & the ongoing land games within the UGB...making this about race would be a mistake, but that's the angle PAALF uses, unfortunately, and misses the target completely.
Bet it would take a whole lot more
that a single TJ to make that area
desireable to most people.
Just don`t want the “man” in charge.
No doubt the city massaged the sale, but if the property was *worth* $2.9 million someone would have grabbed it for more than half a mil long before now. The city is taxing it at $2.9 mil value but the owner can't get rid of it for anything near that. What the taxing authority says is the value and what the market says is radically different.
As regards the local black "leaders", the community deserves what they get if they can't stand up to these so called leaders. I have ceased to care what happens to people that let these race hate mongers run their neighborhoods. Somewhere along the way you have to stand up for your family. Uh, that's assuming any of these people are members of what constitutes a family: [male] husband/father, [female] mother/wife, children born of wedded parents.
You got it. And after the membership fee there would be frequent shake down fees. Trader Joe wisely dodged a bullet.
The neighborhood 'leaders' made a big mistake. I was at our local Trader Joe's a couple of hours ago, it was crowded, of course. There were a lot of blacks shopping there.
Another “Portlandia” episode?
And you thought it was fiction!
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