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Today is Earth Day, a day a lot of people take to cleaning up the neighborhood around them including parks, lawns, and even streets in a sort of observation of anti-polution awareness. The morons students living in some of the trashier frat houses nearby (we live near the college campus) must have understood only the "clean" part of all of that and decided to wash their cars and treat their lawns and let the runoffs of soap/chemicals/other residues float out onto the boulevards and streets. The smacking sound you now hear is the sound of my head hitting any hard surface available.
My partner and our youngest son took to clearing out our front garden, pulling weeds and trash that had blown in from nearby houses (there was a party nearby last night that I'm sure did nothing to contribute to the red plastic cups lining the street and our garden). I took to cleaning a bit of the house using enviromentally friendly cleaners (Seventh Generation rocks). While outside, they were approached by a neighbor who would like us to join with others filing a complaint against the city. Apparently the noticable cut in police presence in our neighborhood, the increase partying, the increase trashing of lawns, the increased gang activity, the delays in repairs of both homes and little things like electrical and water outages are adding up. They are afraid that our neighborhood is being targeted like several other "older" neighborhoods to reduce the retail values of the homes and produce a sort of slum-like area. This happened to a friend of mine a while back, but she fought back and kept her house. What happens is that houses start to go to shit and the city sweeps in to condemn them, paying only the reduced property values on the homes to the people they kick out. The area is bulldozed and then there just happens to be developers waiting to put in place $200K or more condos that the city can tax the crap out of. Don't ask how the students can pay for them as apparently they just don't matter. Either that, or they are to live in the dorms and school sponsored apartment buildings that are less expensive than the condos but more expensive than renting some of the current houses. Did I mention the state-run school gets a large chunk of change for these things? Or that they have already done it on the other side of campus that was in far worse shape than our side has even been?
Sigh.
Our house is in damn good shape, as are the houses of several of our current neighbors. We need a new garage soon (ours is the original 100+ year old garage with the original horse hooks inside), and a paint job in a few years, but that's it. They are going to have to really search for a reason to take us down. Unless everywhere else around us goes to shit and we're forced out for the safety of our kids, I simply do not see a reason. I'm sure they'll find one eventually... if it ever gets that far.
Sigh again.
On the up side, I didn't hit a duck with my car like I did two years ago on my way into work on Earth Day, that's an improvement, right?
My partner and our youngest son took to clearing out our front garden, pulling weeds and trash that had blown in from nearby houses (there was a party nearby last night that I'm sure did nothing to contribute to the red plastic cups lining the street and our garden). I took to cleaning a bit of the house using enviromentally friendly cleaners (Seventh Generation rocks). While outside, they were approached by a neighbor who would like us to join with others filing a complaint against the city. Apparently the noticable cut in police presence in our neighborhood, the increase partying, the increase trashing of lawns, the increased gang activity, the delays in repairs of both homes and little things like electrical and water outages are adding up. They are afraid that our neighborhood is being targeted like several other "older" neighborhoods to reduce the retail values of the homes and produce a sort of slum-like area. This happened to a friend of mine a while back, but she fought back and kept her house. What happens is that houses start to go to shit and the city sweeps in to condemn them, paying only the reduced property values on the homes to the people they kick out. The area is bulldozed and then there just happens to be developers waiting to put in place $200K or more condos that the city can tax the crap out of. Don't ask how the students can pay for them as apparently they just don't matter. Either that, or they are to live in the dorms and school sponsored apartment buildings that are less expensive than the condos but more expensive than renting some of the current houses. Did I mention the state-run school gets a large chunk of change for these things? Or that they have already done it on the other side of campus that was in far worse shape than our side has even been?
Sigh.
Our house is in damn good shape, as are the houses of several of our current neighbors. We need a new garage soon (ours is the original 100+ year old garage with the original horse hooks inside), and a paint job in a few years, but that's it. They are going to have to really search for a reason to take us down. Unless everywhere else around us goes to shit and we're forced out for the safety of our kids, I simply do not see a reason. I'm sure they'll find one eventually... if it ever gets that far.
Sigh again.
On the up side, I didn't hit a duck with my car like I did two years ago on my way into work on Earth Day, that's an improvement, right?
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