From Stately Beginnings. . . Residents Protest Using House for Homeless (MD)

[MountainLaurel]

snip

So she finally listened to the developers who had been salivating for years over her 1.3 acres on a dramatic bluff just off Bradley Boulevard in the Hillmead neighborhood. But nothing's simple in Montgomery County. After many months of wrangling over whether her land could be subdivided, Piotrow won county permission, but by then the market had softened and the developers had slithered away.

Frustrated but determined to do right by her neighbors, Piotrow made a new deal -- with the county. She sold her house and property last fall for $2.5 million -- less than market value -- to Montgomery's parks commission, which intended to use the land to extend the adjacent community park. Everyone was happy.

Then somebody had an idea. The parks commission had planned to demolish Piotrow's 1930s house, at a cost of about $65,000. Instead, staffers at Montgomery's housing agency wondered, why not spend about twice the cost of demolition to renovate Piotrow's five-bedroom place and use it to house a large homeless family? After all, finding housing for large families is notoriously difficult, the county already shells out about $100,000 a year to keep a homeless family in a motel and at least six other houses in county parks are being used in similar fashion.

snip

"I simply cannot believe that anyone with an IQ above that of a retarded chicken would seriously consider putting a welfare brood sow and her 13 kids in a $2.5 million mansion paid for by the taxpayers of this county," Winston Dean wrote to council members.

"May I suggest that you let the poor family live next to you and you let us tear down the house at Hillmead citizens' expense and . . . let the earth be green," wrote Hillmead resident Myriam Gaviria.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/07/AR2008060701804.html

[Lifetimedem]

1. NIMBY

I will bet the "neighborhood " is full of limousine liberals that think we should spend millions to house the homeless as long as it is in YOUR back yard and not theirs.

These are the same kind of people that want YOU to use public transportation or a bike and sell your polluting SUV while they jet around the world in their private jets or set up their own "funds" to put money in because they have a 9 or 10,000 sq ft. air conditioned and always lit mansion . It eases the public cry of hypocrisy.. that should rightly be made. The dumb public doesn't realize they are deciding where their money from that fund go.


These moneyed people will win their fight because they can buy off the politicians ..something most of us do not have the ability to do.

[MountainLaurel]

5. That's exactly it

Montgomery County is hugely blue.

[JDPriestly]

2. We live in a lower middle class neighborhood of hardworking people.

The houses are old by L.A. standards. Some are well maintained. Others aren't. One of the largest and most beautiful homes in our neighborhood is a home for homeless or abused women and their children. The community has the right to protest and to insist that the homeless housing be well maintained, but they will soon learn to their amazement that, in fact, the shelter is a great addition to their community once it is built. It is nice to be able to point to such a building and tell new people to the community and your friends that something good, something that makes the lives of needy people better, is going on in your neighborhood. It costs you nothing (unless you want to take some food or gifts at Christmas or something like that), and you get to feel good about it. The shelter manicures the grounds of the shelter. That house looks better than any other house in the neighborhood.

It's just the idea that scares people. The reality is not a problem once it is there, once it is real. It's called community. Having a shelter in your community helps create that sense of community.

[varelse]

3. It looks like a good idea that will be killed by NIMBY

yet again

:(

[mrreowwr_kittty]

4. Winston Dean

What an asshole.

[MountainLaurel]

6. Followup

The Montgomery County Council rejected a proposal yesterday to use a sprawling Bethesda house to shelter a homeless family as a slim majority turned aside impassioned arguments that the affluent county needs to do more to welcome needy residents in prosperous neighborhoods.

After a bitter debate in which insults were traded and motives were questioned, council members voted 5 to 4 to open the way for the county's park and planning agency to tear down the house in the Hillmead neighborhood and use the land to expand a neighborhood park.

The leading opponent, council member Roger Berliner (D-Potomac-Bethesda), said the county did not do enough to notify neighbors that the house might be used for the homeless, but instead left them with the impression that the property would become part of a park. He and other opponents denied accusations that they were uninterested in helping the poor.

The debate over the fate of the 1930s-era house, which has raged for months on neighborhood e-mail discussion groups and in a flood of letters to county officials, has grown to symbolize tensions over how the county should expand its dwindling stock of affordable housing as the economic gap between Montgomery's haves and have-nots has widened.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/10/AR2008061002352.html