Save Our Shelter!
– posted by thehim
In all the debates over money, the environment, public transportation, and how many millions of dollars will be made by which developers when it comes to the viaduct, one constituency has been all but ignored.
Seattle’s homeless.
To many of these individuals, like Frank* here, the viaduct is more than just a monstrous eyesore ready to fall over in the next earthquake. It’s shelter from the rain. It’s a quiet place to read a week-old newspaper and take a dump on some gravel. And it may be the closest thing Seattle has to a heroin safe injection site.
But if all those trust-fund kids from Capitol Hill get their way, the state isn’t going to build a new one, and the days of window-shopping among the rows of secluded parked cars will be over. Even though GOP efforts have made it nearly impossible for Frank to vote, chances are your rich, computer-owning ass still can. So make sure you do the right thing and vote Yes! on the rebuild. A $2.8 billion freeway that blocks downtown from the waterfront is surely better than a second tent city.
* Probably not his real name
February 26th, 2007 at 8:07 pm
Well played.
February 26th, 2007 at 11:33 pm
Urban development has always been about driving out the poor and destitute.
The World Trade Center was built to take over the poverty oppressed Lower East Village of Manhattan and drive out the poor and minorities who lived there. Ironic isn’t it? Arab people, who say that the west has stolen the oil riches from their people and kept them in destitution, brought down the towers as a symbol of oppression of the rich. I wonder if bin Laden knew that the poor were driven out to build the WTC towers?
There’s karma in there somewhere.
February 27th, 2007 at 7:53 am
Pat,
You have your history & geography all wrong when it comes to the World Trade Center.
February 27th, 2007 at 3:07 pm
very, very, very good.
February 27th, 2007 at 10:55 pm
“The World Trade Center was built to take over the poverty oppressed Lower East Village of Manhattan and drive out the poor and minorities who lived there.”
Nobody lived there when WTC was built. Wall Street became the upscale urban residential neighborhood it now is because of the WTC. Ironically, the States of NY and NJ built a corporate-welfare monument, and it actually did encourage development of the surrounding neighborhood.
February 28th, 2007 at 1:57 pm
The WTC site was comprised of two pieces prior to construction of the WTC: 1) “Radio Row”, the biggest collection of electronics shops in the Western world, basically the American equivalent of the Akihabra district of Tokyo, and 2) Hudson Terminal, the main terminal and switching yard of the Hudson and Manhattan Railroad, later to become PATH as part of the deal that transferred control of the Hudson and Manhattan to the Port Authority. Most of those displaced by the WTC were small businessmen operating small electronics shops, not poor and minorities. While there was definitely some residential above that retail, it was by no means primarily or predominantly a residential district or particularly poor or oppressed.
But yes, urban redevelopment typically is a method to transfer ownership from ordinary citizens and small businessmen to cronies of those in power. That’s the American Way. Alas.