Loft-y Ideals

I'm tired of all the news stories about the loft style apartments that are going up in Buffalo. Seriously. Why is this news? And why should I care?

So some developer bought some dilapidated property (with a tax break mind you) and turned it into something that they can make a profit off of.

And the news media is making a big deal of it because of the “medical corridor” that is being built all over downtown. And the people that are going to be working there need a place to live. And living in Buffalo would be convenient for them, so lets sell of beat up properties for a song and let private developers rehab them so that all these outsiders have a nice place to live.

And then there is Buffalo's White Elephant. Everyone knows this beast. It is so prominent that whether you are flying, driving, or arriving by bus you see this thing. One Seneca Tower. (Why did they have to name it after a First Nations tribe?) It is projected to cost over $200 million to clean up. And then add on the renovation costs and the tax breaks that we are going to have to shell out. (Not just Buffalo and Erie County. All of NY will be shelling out money for this because Albany will undoubtedly throw some cash at it or give whatever businessman buys this beast a tax break as well. Who knows. Federal money might just appear too.)

As an aside, we give out all these tax breaks. Is that why we are so broke?

Then there are the forgotten. The poor. The 4700 people that have applied for housing assistance or to live in public housing. And I'm not going to mansplain (½) the “We feel like Buffalo's forgotten people” article that Susan Schulman and Dan Herbeck wrote. Read it yourself and wonder how and why this happens?

All the federal and state cut backs on housing because the Democrats have to look “tough” when dealing with poverty. And Republicans never met a social program that they didn't want to cut or eliminate because they (supposedly) cost too much.

Never mind that stable housing cuts down poverty and crime rates. And other social problems as well. When those problems go away, other costs diminish as well.

I just find it repulsive that we, as a so called “Christian nation” spent over $700 million on a fighter plane that never worked and was (thankfully) canceled (The F-22). Don't get me started on the F-35. (The only plane that catches fire when the engines start.)

And President Obama want to spend over $1 trillion updating a weapons system that we have not used since World War II and (hopefully) will never use again because it is so hazardous to the user and the target. (The intended and unintended.) I'm talking about nuclear weapons.

And all the money we have wasted on wars in the Middle East. Iraq. Afghanistan. Libya. Now Syria. And our other misguided foreign interventions in Yemen, Somalia and other parts of Africa, and whatever the CIA is doing in Venezuela.

And I could list so many more things that we waste money on. And we do nothing for the least of our society. Or make it sound like it's too much of a burden to do.

And all they want is to be able to do is to be able to live in dignity.

Yet, because they are poor and (from my understanding) mostly minority, they don't fit the image that the Mayor's office is trying to project about Buffalo being in recovery.

And yet they are the people who need help recovering from the bad hand that they have been dealt.

Plus there is the rumor that the Perry Street Projects are where a new stadium for the Bills might go.

So why bother fixing it up.

Again, we sacrifice the poor for the image of the city.

Is this the picture we want to look at?

Updated:  I added the  link for the story.  I just remembered it.  My bad.