From the Omaha World-Herald --
LINCOLN - The mansions are right across the street. Up on the corner are the fancy SouthPointe Pavilions shopping center, retailers for every need and restaurants for every taste.
The New England style, the brick accents, even the vaguely suburban name - Wood Bridge - don't let on that these town houses are public housing. But that's what the Lincoln Housing Authority has built in south Lincoln.
One of the newest Lincoln public schools, Lincoln Southwest High, is less than a mile away. And Lincoln's fringe, where this suburban style meets farm field, isn't much farther.
The pounding and buzzing of home construction announce that more development is coming to south Lincoln. Yet Lincoln is quietly making a statement that the prosperous parts of the community are places for everyone.
In the middle of Lincoln's hot spot for growth, local housing leaders have carved out a place for affordable housing in the form of 130 apartments and town houses. The New England style, the brick accents, even the vaguely suburban name - Wood Bridge - don't let on that this is public housing.
That's by design, says Larry Potratz, executive director of the Lincoln Housing Authority, who proudly displays the organization's inroads on integration. It's a model the housing authority has followed in a second development nearby and soon will repeat at a third.
yeah, that's all verrrrry nice. Except that the Housing Authority only helps you if you have kids... so if I'd been irresponsible and spawned even though I couldn't take care of it, I'd be in. Nothing like rewarding irresponsible behavior... it's just like that shiny-eyed fundy freak state Senator of ours, Mike Foley. He wants to remove the welfare cap on women who have children 10 months or more after going on welfare... because he's afraid it encourages abortions... whatever. Why should people be rewarded for having more kids when they can't afford the ones they have, and expect the rest of us to pay for it?
The housing thing made me depressed and bitter because I had been working on an article about gentrification and displacement of the poor, which had a cite to a book by David Shipler, The Working Poor: Invisible in America "examining the 'forgotten America' in which citizens live consistently close to poverty despite a willingness to work hard and where a car breakdown or a brief illness can lead to an irreversible downward financial spiral" ... welcome to my world. Silly me. Instead of going to college, I should have just started popping out illegitimate children... I'd be getting a free ride now. I've decided if I got a serious illness, I'll just kill myself, because I'm having trouble paying off the tests and minor "surgery" I had last fall, and I ::have:: insurance...
posted by decemberx 5:50 PM[edit]
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