Housing Trouble, Right Here in River City

I'd like to share my 'big, big' dream for Mason City, (I have so many dreams for my hometown, but this will likely take the longest and most work). I'd like to rejuvenate the near-central 'donut' of housing stock encircling downtown with affordable, efficient family homes--allowing our current residents with working-class wages to have stable long-term housing.  The 'circle' neighborhoods are filled with large older derelict homes that may appear cheap to purchase, but are beyond the capacity of most of our wage-earners to rehabilitate or maintain. They may have asbestos or other major issues that make selling or renovating them impractical. As a result, they rot--and often, the families living in these homes are trapped with utility bills that are an enormous burden.  However, with such a beautiful downtown, into which so much has been invested, it would be a shame to allow this situation to continue.

Don't get me wrong--every home that could be restored and preserved, especially in a historic district, should be. I love old homes. However, I realize that some are simply beyond repair, or may not have been built quite so well in the first place. Our community has quite a few 'white-tagged' buildings--ones that are no longer deemed habitable. Fairly often, people still inhabit them regardless. One of them is across the street. The owner is desperate to get enough to pay off her debt on it, but it's more than the house is worth.

I would like to form a coalition to replace these homes with efficient, easy to maintain homes that allow for reasonable urban density as well as home ownership. I think in some places, it might make the most sense to introduce a small (3-4) row of 3 bedroom townhomes, with garages, front porches, and a bit of backyard privacy.

I think a mix of allowing people to purchase these townhomes via traditional means (i.e., a mortgage) and a graduated ownership program for those with a good rental payment history but unable to qualify for traditional mortgages would be wise. I would like a way to offer families who would like the option to buy out their crumbling homes and re-house them in these new homes, and then putting those homes or land back into the program. I would like to offer shared home maintenance.

I've seen similar programs at work in other communities where I have served, and I think we could bring this to Mason City as well.

I know we'll need to build a coalition representing multiple sectors within our community--families, faith leaders, local government, social service agencies, civic groups and other non-profit organizations, builders, businesses, etc. However, I am hopeful that as other communities have learned to do this, we might be able to do this, too.

Rugged Individualism, Systemic Injustice, and Sharing Resources for a Better World

A thought for this morning: our nation has an almost cult-like devotion to 'rugged individualism,' in which we have learned to reject systemic understandings of doing good and doing harm.

This ripples out in many painful ways. We denigrate ideas of forming systems to ensure that all people in our nation have access to adequate food, shelter, healthcare, education, meaningful, constructive vocation, and caregiving support. If a person lacks any of these, then we assume it must be a personal moral failing. If there is racism or sexism, then it is a matter of individual personal choices or 'bad apples,' rather than systems designed to discriminate. If we have relatively few struggles for survival in our personal lives, we attribute it to our personal merit.

In these pandemic times, rather than creating systems to ensure the largest umber of people survive, we leave those who already carry the greatest burdens in our society to wrestle with more impossible choices. The countries which have come through this time most successfully were the ones who ensured their people could afford life's basic needs even if they couldn't work.  In this country, we heaped shame on people who were already suffering.

I often think of the enormous human potential we waste because we are so certain our neighbor does not deserve what we have; and that fulfilling our own wants are more important than ensuring everyone's basic needs are met. We could do so much better; we could be so much more, if we weren't constantly tearing others down for trying to survive in a system that is so fragmented and broken. Our systems are designed for a few to benefit, and for most to struggle until their dying breath.

Save the Children (No, Not Those Children)

Close the Camps, an advocacy organization for child immigrants in detention camps, posted on Facebook  about the Save Our Children hashtag (I'm not connecting the hashtag here, because that was an awful mess and I don't want to add to their popularity count). The meme said:  "Save Our Children," followed by a montage of photos of immigrant children in our detention camps, cages packed to the gills with them, all looking utterly miserable.  

The final statement?  "No, Not Those Children."  Ouch.  

You can find the image here:

https://www.facebook.com/CloseCamps/posts/2722954831326631

I'm going to be blunt about this: I find it crazy that up here in Iowa, we shut down businesses for lack of workers, schools for lack of students, main street services and towns for lack of taxpayers--and yet, due to their country of origin and the color of their skin, someone on the southern border decides we don't need these people here. 

I'm radical enough to say that anyone who wants to come here and work hard and start their own business and contribute, who isn't going to harm anyone else, ought to be able to come. Or at least, shouldn't be on a 20 year waitlist for family reunification. 

And certainly never caged up like this, worse than animals.