Living up to your principles
A lot of times it can be hard to back up your beliefs. Take for instance supporting a program that helps homeless people get back on their feet and back into housing. Sounds great and like something you would want in your community. Let's say that program is buying an apartment building that will house 12 formerly homeless men. Still sounds great and exciting to hear that so many people can be helped by a wonderful program. How about if it was on your block? What if it was 2 doors down from your house? Theoretically I think many people would still support it and think it sounds great. (You would, right??).
How about when it is a real proposal and not just theoretical? I'm not going to lie and say when the first postcard came in the mail saying that this was proposed on my block that I jumped with joy. I had some concerns. I had already been thinking that it might be wise to look for a new house and sell our current one as I was worried that we were over improving for our neighborhood (especially given some changes that will be coming in the next 10 years or so).
However, I went to our first neighborhood meeting about this and heard from the director of the program about how the facility would be run. Plenty of questions were asked and good answers were given. I walked away from the meeting feeling better and emailed our alder to say that I was supportive of the plan. I have to admit that I also walked away from the meeting rather annoyed with some of the people in my neighborhood (especially those that seemed to live fairly distant from the property) who seemed highly opposed.
Last night was the second neighborhood meeting and I knew that it was going to be quite a meeting. The local newspaper had run a story and our neighborhood listserv was alive with comments.
Contrary to what it may seem and some people might think I am actually very sympathetic to people's concerns and especially to the couple who live right next door who have young children. I live in a very old neighborhood where there is little privacy as one house's windows generally look into the house next door or at the very least into each other's backyards. If I had young children I likely would have concerns about 12 formerly homeless men living next door who probably include some recovering addicts, some people with mental health issues and some people with criminal backgrounds. I don't have children but I would presume you would wonder how this will change your day-to-day behaviour and how you would handle this. You buy a house expecting to deal with (potentially) rowdy undergrads and now you have something different.
However, I am not sympathetic to the landlords who own property nearby but don't live in the neighborhood. One seemed to think that instead of the lovely tenants he has now that he would have to rent to young male partiers as no one else would live there (as if the current residents have never had a party!). I just don't agree with him and was super annoyed by his tone. I also don't agree with all the people who think our property values are about to plummet if this project happens. Sure if everyone decides to sell and move suddenly but I think we'd eventually recover even from that. I also don't understand why our neighborhood can't continue to develop into a "family" neighborhood (whatever that means) even with this housing. At most I would think it would impact people deciding to move to our block or maybe the block behind us but not the whole neighborhood.
At first I wasn't going to say anything at the meeting last night. I felt like I'd already shared my opinion with my alder and it hadn't changed since the first meeting so why take up more time. However, a 3 hour meeting will eventually beat you down until you have to say something. I was also annoyed that some people were making it seem that they were speaking on behalf of our part of the neighborhood (when it was really a small group that had formed to fight this after meeting 1). I just couldn't sit there and let it appear that everyone on our block was opposed to having transitional housing nearby.
I've lived in our house for over 15 years now and so I'm aware of the good and bad of our neighborhood. I'm not unaware of the challenges that face our neighborhood. However, I also have a lot of faith in our neighborhood and our resiliency. I really do think we can make this work. I know that some people feel that our neighborhood already shoulders more social service agencies than most other neighborhoods so we shouldn't be expected to take on more. Someone mapped the various types of housing (single, duplex, apts) and the social service agency programs in our neighborhood to help illustrate that. I can't help but think that given our neighborhood's long ago history as the melting pot of Madison that perhaps it's appropriate we have more social service agencies.
One tv news station was there last night and shot some footage including a couple shots of my wonderful block in case you'd like to know more (or at least know as much as you can learn in a 10 second news piece).
Oh yeah, and when I got home I warned Dave that we might be neighborhood pariahs for a while (not that we were ever wildly popular as we are the weird biker/skiers who painted their house trim purple and have drug out our yard landscaping project out over many, many years). I also let him know that we were now morally obligated to live in our house forever if the transitional housing proposal happens.
How about when it is a real proposal and not just theoretical? I'm not going to lie and say when the first postcard came in the mail saying that this was proposed on my block that I jumped with joy. I had some concerns. I had already been thinking that it might be wise to look for a new house and sell our current one as I was worried that we were over improving for our neighborhood (especially given some changes that will be coming in the next 10 years or so).
However, I went to our first neighborhood meeting about this and heard from the director of the program about how the facility would be run. Plenty of questions were asked and good answers were given. I walked away from the meeting feeling better and emailed our alder to say that I was supportive of the plan. I have to admit that I also walked away from the meeting rather annoyed with some of the people in my neighborhood (especially those that seemed to live fairly distant from the property) who seemed highly opposed.
Last night was the second neighborhood meeting and I knew that it was going to be quite a meeting. The local newspaper had run a story and our neighborhood listserv was alive with comments.
Contrary to what it may seem and some people might think I am actually very sympathetic to people's concerns and especially to the couple who live right next door who have young children. I live in a very old neighborhood where there is little privacy as one house's windows generally look into the house next door or at the very least into each other's backyards. If I had young children I likely would have concerns about 12 formerly homeless men living next door who probably include some recovering addicts, some people with mental health issues and some people with criminal backgrounds. I don't have children but I would presume you would wonder how this will change your day-to-day behaviour and how you would handle this. You buy a house expecting to deal with (potentially) rowdy undergrads and now you have something different.
However, I am not sympathetic to the landlords who own property nearby but don't live in the neighborhood. One seemed to think that instead of the lovely tenants he has now that he would have to rent to young male partiers as no one else would live there (as if the current residents have never had a party!). I just don't agree with him and was super annoyed by his tone. I also don't agree with all the people who think our property values are about to plummet if this project happens. Sure if everyone decides to sell and move suddenly but I think we'd eventually recover even from that. I also don't understand why our neighborhood can't continue to develop into a "family" neighborhood (whatever that means) even with this housing. At most I would think it would impact people deciding to move to our block or maybe the block behind us but not the whole neighborhood.
At first I wasn't going to say anything at the meeting last night. I felt like I'd already shared my opinion with my alder and it hadn't changed since the first meeting so why take up more time. However, a 3 hour meeting will eventually beat you down until you have to say something. I was also annoyed that some people were making it seem that they were speaking on behalf of our part of the neighborhood (when it was really a small group that had formed to fight this after meeting 1). I just couldn't sit there and let it appear that everyone on our block was opposed to having transitional housing nearby.
I've lived in our house for over 15 years now and so I'm aware of the good and bad of our neighborhood. I'm not unaware of the challenges that face our neighborhood. However, I also have a lot of faith in our neighborhood and our resiliency. I really do think we can make this work. I know that some people feel that our neighborhood already shoulders more social service agencies than most other neighborhoods so we shouldn't be expected to take on more. Someone mapped the various types of housing (single, duplex, apts) and the social service agency programs in our neighborhood to help illustrate that. I can't help but think that given our neighborhood's long ago history as the melting pot of Madison that perhaps it's appropriate we have more social service agencies.
One tv news station was there last night and shot some footage including a couple shots of my wonderful block in case you'd like to know more (or at least know as much as you can learn in a 10 second news piece).
Oh yeah, and when I got home I warned Dave that we might be neighborhood pariahs for a while (not that we were ever wildly popular as we are the weird biker/skiers who painted their house trim purple and have drug out our yard landscaping project out over many, many years). I also let him know that we were now morally obligated to live in our house forever if the transitional housing proposal happens.
posted by MadCross at 6:25 AM
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