Open Thread

Dibs:
T&T exports crude oil,Calypso and um Roti!
geesh!

I just went back and reread the article. Nowhere did I see it stated how much subsidy this woman gets for her apartment. Subsidized housing works on a sliding scale. She may be paying 90% of her rent. She may be paying 100%. I don’t know, and neither do any of you. You ASSUME she is getting the free ride of all free rides, but no one knows. Great.

She has lived here all of her life. She is entitled to die there of advanced old age in her 3 bedroom apartment, surrounding by her stuff. I’ve helped clean out the apartments of senior citizens who did the same thing. Why, because it is their home. A home they were eligible for when they moved in, stayed eligible for for their entire lives, and were happy to die in when they reached the end. During which time, these projects went from positive places built to help New Yorkers of modest means, to crime ridden scourges that the police were afraid to enter.

Anyone ever been in your average NYC projects apartment? They are not large, and the bedrooms are scarcely big enough for a bed and a dresser. The kitchens are small and antiquated, with old cabinets and storage, and the living rooms aren’t that big, either. They have old, antiquated heating systems, the windows are drafty, and the walls are cinder blocks. The bathroom has one of those toilets with no tank, and old tubs with the shower head in the wall. If your neighbor has roaches or mice, you will too, no matter how clean you are. You can smell everyone’s cooking, hear everyone’s tv, stereo, fights and sexual activity. The elevators don’t always work, and smell like a urninal, because they are one. The stairways are dangerous, and people get raped in them, and on the roof often. Going up in an elevator was an activity involving invocations to God for safety. In the summer, sitting outside could be life threatening. You are surrounded by people who are just like you, decent, hard working folk, but also by a small group of predators, gang members, lazy-ass deadbeats, people who don’t know clean from Adam, and pigs. Most of the people are great, and just want to live in peace, it’s the minority of the rest of them who make it hard, and give the whole system a bad name. But they are on your floor, could be next door.

This woman lived that, still lives that, and is positive. She lost a relative right across the street to gun violence, and still she has mentored hundreds of girls, trying to keep them from early pregnancy and to have some self respect. Sweet Jesus, we should be giving her an award, not speculating on how many square feet she is occupying, for how much, in a place no one here would go to during the day. She is the kind of person projects should import by the thousands to make them again what they were designed to be. How much better would that be than to state that projects are antiquated failures that should be gotten rid of. Let’s come up with solutions that work first, not condemnation.

It’s probably the only export of Trinidad & Tobago.

“how can there be a bitters shortage????”

I guess people are more well-adjusted and happy these days?

“where is Last Exit? what subway stop is it near?”

LOL. Pick a subway, any subway *rob*. It’s conveniently located never every train that stops downtown.